A few years back Disney created a stage version of the movie TARZAN for Broadway.  It didn’t do very well, but seeing as I am the Disney fan that I am, I still wanted to see it.  I mean, Phil Collins music!  Apes flying around the stage!  A guy in a loin cloth flies over the audience!  What’s not to love?  So, when the closing was announced, I secured myself tickets to the final performance.  I had never done a closing night before, but WOW, what a night!  The show was a blast and even though it is not one a critically acclaimed show or anything, I will always remember being present that night.  It is one of the most memorable shows I have ever seen on Broadway or on tour.

Jump forward to last fall.  I have an out of the blue conversation with Rick Blair about coming to Artisan Center Theater to play the Big Bopper in Buddy.  As he is showing me around the theater we talk about the fact that they put Disney’s Tarzan on their 2014 season.  Now, let me be quite honest here…I thought they were CRAZY!  How could you pull off this VERY technical show in such an intimate space?  But they had a plan.  And right there I knew that somehow I needed to be a part of that plan.  I dropped many not-so-subtle hints that I wanted to play Kerchak, the leader of the apes.

When it was time for auditions, I made my appointment and picked a song that I thought resembled the role pretty well.  I really felt like I did one of my best performances that night.  I sang my song and was around to sing some of Kerchak’s numbers from the show.  I left feeling like that I gave it my best, which is all you can do in these things.  For any of you that don’t know the harrowing experience auditioning is…well, watch A Chorus Line (not the movie, please) and that might give you a little taste.  It is the most miserable part of this crazy thing we actors do.  Some go well, some you just bomb.  Sometimes the one you did well still doesn’t lead to you being cast.  Sometimes the one you bombed gets you a role. 

The day after the audition I had a message on my phone from the director saying they were making decisions by the end of the week “but you sounded WONderful!”  Hey…I sounded wonderful.  Great!  I think I may have a shot here.  Days go by….nothing….  Then a call from the stage manager saying that I was not being offered a part.  It was just a few days later that I was laid off from my job.  I had also kicked butt at another audition I had been at for a show that I really wanted to sing.  I would have killed to have even been in the ensemble.  Didn’t get that one either.    As these things go, it was kind of depressing to have that much rejection in the span of under 2 weeks.

Don’t get me wrong.  Rejection is just part of the game when you are an actor.  You don’t get cast much more than you do.  You just have to keep at it, plugging away.  But sometimes shows come along that you really want to do for personal reasons.  Tarzan was that show for me.  See, first of all, I am a huge Disney fan but have never had the chance to be in a Disney show.  It would have meant so much for me to finally portray a Disney character.  Second, I love my nieces and nephew more than just about anything, but I have never had the chance to perform for them.  All of my shows of the last few years have been a bit too adult in nature.  But here was a DISNEY show…it would be perfect!  But it was not to be. 

But wait……

To be continued……