Guest Blogger: Ben Rappaport

I can't believe it's May again. It marks a year since my audition process for Fiddler began. It also marks a year since I decided that if I booked the show, I was going to propose to my girlfriend on the stage.

I'm amazed at how many things I keep learning from doing this show every day. Yesterday, during the matinee, as we were performing the sons' section of 'Tradition', I discovered that I was holding my breath during certain pieces of choreography, which obviously inhibited my singing. I mean, you're reading that thinking, 'well duh, Ben'. You're right. Absolutely 'duh', but it took me six whole months to realize that. That's the odd phenomenon of this almost zen practice of eight shows a week in a long run.

'God, Ben. We get it, we get it. Arts in school blah blah blah.' I know, I know, but I have to piggyback on last week and tell you about what I got to witness this week.

'Twas the night before the Tony nominations, when all through midtown pretty much everyone was stirring. Especially that mouse (at least in pre-war buildings above restaurants). The iphones were charging on bedside tables with care in hopes that when the nomination list came out at 8:30, your name would be there.

The orchestra starts the waltz into 'Sunrise, Sunset'. Everyone is in place, Tevye sings, 'Is this the little girl I carried?' Nothing out of the ordinary, here. Then, four male ensemble members and the Rabbi slowly come up the upstage stairs from the trap, moving downstage center, where they slowly get into position with the chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy). One little problem, tonight. There's no chuppah (we later found out it had been broken). I look around the stage at my fellow cast members, who are all slowly registering this and getting that glint in the eye you get when you're about to crack up. Then, it hit me. Samantha Massell and I have a solo coming up in a second where we have to sing the lyric, 'Is there a canopy in store for me?' The irony of this is just too much for me and, no matter how hard I try, I sing this line with the stupidest grin on my face. I mean, you can't ignore it! I absolutely LIVE for moments like this. Happy accidents that keep things fresh, can breathe new life into the show, and remind us all that it's called a 'play' for a reason. It's supposed to be fun!

I must have been an incredibly naive 12 year old. As my family and I were leaving the Marriott Marquis Theatre after a performance of the revival of Annie Get Your Gun, we passed by the stage door. A hoard of people were crowded behind the barricades, eagerly clutching their playbills, sharpies, and cameras in hopes to snag an autograph or photo with Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat. We were watching from across the street. A security person was guarding the door, and would escort Bernadette and Tom as they made their way through the crowd, greeting their fans. Once they were done, they each got into the back seats of their respective black Lincoln town cars and rode off into the night. What I couldn't wrap my head around, at the time, was....where do they go?

I must have been an incredibly naive 12 year old. As my family and I were leaving the Marriott Marquis Theatre after a performance of the revival of Annie Get Your Gun, we passed by the stage door. A hoard of people were crowded behind the barricades, eagerly clutching their playbills, sharpies, and cameras in hopes to snag an autograph or photo with Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat. We were watching from across the street. A security person was guarding the door, and would escort Bernadette and Tom as they made their way through the crowd, greeting their fans. Once they were done, they each got into the back seats of their respective black Lincoln town cars and rode off into the night. What I couldn't wrap my head around, at the time, was....where do they go?

I've coined this new term. The power of the beard has not only led me to bow before it in awe and reverence, but also offer it the illustrious status of being a verb. To beard is about doing far more than simply growing it. It's about experiencing it and LIVING it.

My trip to visit my girlfriend came to an abrupt halt. I had just gotten off a conference call with my agent and manager, 'Get to the airport as soon as you can. They want to test you for the CBS pilot.' I was sitting on a bench at Lambert-St. Louis Airport next to the check in counters, before you go through security. Anxiously, I clutched my backpack and suitcase waiting for my manager to call and give the green light to check in for my flight to LA. They were negotiating my contract and hadn't reached a deal (when you test for a TV show, your contract has to be signed before the screen test. And if you don't book the job, the contract goes in the shredder). I couldn't board the plane until the deal was closed, and the test was first thing the next morning. After an hour of limbo, I finally got the call. The deal had closed! Time to get the ticket. Of course I had already missed the initial flight, and they had to book me on a later one. This was my first exposure to (what I didn't realize, then) the actor's eternal state of in between-ness.

In between takes of a scene on 'The Good Wife' a few years ago, I was commiserating with veteran actor Zach Grenier-'Why is it that I'm completely relaxed in every shot EXCEPT my close up?' His response? 'Because this is for the ages. This will exist long after you and I are gone.' That's the weight you carry on your back in TV, film, and in the recording studio that you don't have in the theatre. In a play, there's always tomorrow night.

In between takes of a scene on 'The Good Wife' a few years ago, I was commiserating with veteran actor Zach Grenier-'Why is it that I'm completely relaxed in every shot EXCEPT my close up?' His response? 'Because this is for the ages. This will exist long after you and I are gone.' That's the weight you carry on your back in TV, film, and in the recording studio that you don't have in the theatre. In a play, there's always tomorrow night.

'We are Russian Jews', my father would always tell me when I asked where we came from. From a very young age, I was curious about history; where people and things came from, origins, and remnants. Growing up in the US, I was used to the idea of the big melting pot - that a lot people here came from somewhere else for a better life. A lot of us, including myself, have very mixed backgrounds, and it can be overwhelming to piece together the puzzle that is your ancestry. Thankfully, we live in the golden age of the World Wide Web, and our collective curiosity and quest for a sense of identity and meaning has resulted in the creation of wonderful resources like ancestry.com.

Let's take a trip back in time, shall we? The year was 1993 (or '94, or '95....'96?), I was 7 (or 8, or 9...10?) years old, and my parents took my sister and me to the Three Little Bakers dinner theater in Wilmington, Delaware, where 'Fiddler On The Roof' was playing. Unfortunately, I don't remember much about this experience other than that it was the first time I ever had a Shirley Temple, the waitress made me cry, and the line for the prime rib buffet was very long. This was, however, the first time those famous first strains of Jerry Bock's violin solo entered the back of my brain and psyche, and never left. Over the next several years, Fiddler lightly weaved its way in and out of my life: the occasional off key rendition of 'Sunrise, Sunset' at Jewish Community North, catching the film on AMC, and that community theatre production that my synagogue's men's club brought their families to (ironically enough, the girl playing Hodel ended up being my prom date). While at Juilliard, my best friend, Scott and I saw the 2004 revival together TWICE. Once with Alfred Molina, and another time with Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O'Donnell. For over a decade, it's been part of our rotation of inside jokes to cast Tevye and Golde with obscure and asinine choices of actors, then perform 'Do You Love Me', impersonating said actors (Keanu Reaves as Tevye and Paula Deen as Golde, anyone?). As an American suburban Jewish kid growing up in the late '90s/early 00's, Fiddler was just part of the narrative -- Chinese Food on Christmas.