Imagine the thrill of suddenly getting the one thing you have always wanted most in life. It happened to Michelle Dowdy, who graduated straight from high school to the New York stage. But was she ready?
By LANE DeGREGORY, Times Staff Writer
Published December 4, 2005
[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
Before leaving for New York, Michelle hung out with her theater friends during a party at the Palm Harbor home of Amanda Witt, far right.
Michelle Dowdy, 18, saw herself in the play’s lead character.
As part of a high school project, Michelle created a copy of the Broadway playbill, using her face.
[Photo by Dudley Clapp]
For her senior project at Gibbs High in the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, Michelle, left, choreographed, directed and starred as Tracy Turnblad in scenes from Hairspray.
When the call came, Michelle Dowdy was rushing through New York's JFK Airport, trying to catch a plane home to Florida. She had to be back in St. Petersburg in a few hours for her high school commencement.
She flipped open her cell phone. "Hey!" she said, expecting someone she knew. Then she stopped walking, straining to hear above the airline announcements.
"Yeah . . .," she said. "Yes . . . this is Michelle." Her friends call her Dowdy, so whoever this was didn't know her.
Michelle listened, frozen by what she heard.
"You're kidding!" she gasped into the phone. She started screaming, right there in the airport, bouncing up and down in her scuffed Keds.
Racing onto the plane, throwing herself into her seat, she had time to make just one call. "Mom!" she breathed into her cell phone. "Omigod, Mom, this is crazy!"
At 18, with no professional acting experience, and just shy of getting her high school diploma, Michelle Dowdy was going to Broadway.
* * *
She had auditioned on a lark.
In January she had come to New York with her mom, Karla Harris, to visit colleges. A friend had phoned to tell Michelle about an open casting call for Hairspray. They needed someone to be the understudy to the lead character.
Michelle and her mom had stayed up past midnight, trying to piece together a resume. But what to say? Michelle had never studied with a private acting coach, never had a voice lesson. She had performed only in school productions, and never as the lead. A boisterous Size 14, she had always played the sidekicks and nameless others: Rizzo in Grease, Woodstock in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. In Alice in Wonderland, she was only a card.
Michelle was a dynamo onstage: funny, brassy and pitch-perfect. Her teachers marveled at her ability to lose herself in a part, to completely fill a role. But in the tiny world of high school theater, lots of kids seem talented.
Michelle didn't even have a glossy professional portrait. She had never needed one.
Her mom always carried a school picture in her wallet, so Michelle had stapled it to her makeshift bio and hoped the producers wouldn't laugh.
The morning of the audition, she and her mom had walked into the casting agency, dragging their borrowed suitcase behind them, wading through the first snow Michelle had ever seen. The rehearsal hall had been packed - dancers stretching on the wooden floor, singers squeezed against the mirrored walls.
"Every fat chick in New York must be here," Michelle had said. Of the 300, she had been the youngest, the only one who had brought her mom.
"Just be yourself, Honey," Karla had kept saying. "Have fun, and be yourself."
That was the easy part. From the first time she watched the John Waters film Hairspray in elementary school, Michelle had seen herself in the lead character, Tracy Turnblad, a fat girl who loves to sing and dance and yearns to be famous, but doesn't fit in. For her senior project at Gibbs High in the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, Michelle had performed scenes from the Broadway musical.
So when she skipped around the studio that morning in Manhattan, crooning, "I know every step, I know every song," she had really meant it. She was Tracy Turnblad: "Oh, oh, oh, don't make me wait one more moment for my life to start . . ."
They had made her wait. And wait. For three months, she didn't hear anything.
She had finished her senior year with flair, earning an A-plus on her Hairspray project and being named best actress in musical theater. She had gone to prom, been rejected from Juilliard and accepted at Marymount Manhattan. Figuring Broadway was a bust, she had started counting on college.
Then, in May, four months after that audition, the casting director had finally called. Michelle was one of 50 finalists. Could she be back in New York by the end of the week?
Karla couldn't afford two plane tickets, so this time Michelle had traveled alone. The callback day had been a whirlwind: a song, a dance, more fat girls, a harried dash to JFK.
And a phone call at the airport.
* * *
By the time Michelle got to St. Petersburg for commencement, everyone knew. Her mom had told the whole world.
Karla steered into the parking lot of the Palladium theater in St. Petersburg and teenagers swarmed the car like paparazzi. "Omigod! Omigod! You're kidding, right?" her friends asked, crowding around her. They all wanted to hug Michelle, congratulate her, find out if it was really true.
Michelle had come straight from the airport, so she had to go to the bathroom to change out of her sweaty dance pants and into her long black dress and stilettoes. As she made her way through the lobby, teachers stopped to hug her.
Michelle was one of three seniors chosen to speak. She was supposed to be funny, but she didn't feel funny. To introduce her, a fellow student read from a bio she had written months before, back before she ever knew about the audition:
"One day," the student read, "she hopes to play Tracy Turnblad, her dream role, on Broadway."
The auditorium erupted. "Broadway!" hundreds of seniors, parents and teachers cheered. They stood up, clapping and whistling. It was her first standing ovation as a Broadway star and she hadn't even left Florida.
Slowly, carefully, trying to balance on her high heels, Michelle threaded her way toward the podium. Her bare shoulders shook. She was laughing and crying at the same time.
She turned the microphone toward her, beamed and wrinkled her freckled nose. Later, she wouldn't remember a word she had said. All she would remember was seeing her mom about halfway back in the crowd, still standing, still clapping.
In Hairspray, Tracy Turnblad asserts her independence, crying, "Mama, I'm a big girl now!" She wins a role on her favorite TV show, convinces everyone fat girls can dance, and drags her reluctant mom into the spotlight. Of course the play has a happy ending.
But what about Michelle's story? At 18, she didn't know how to drive, had never had a bank account or done laundry, had never even had a job. She depended on Karla for just about everything.
Could she tear herself away from her mom and make it on her own in New York?
Michelle didn't know it then, but she had to leave in three days.
* * *
ABOUT HAIRSPRAY
Hairspray is the story of Tracy Turnblad, a chubby teenager with big hair and even bigger dreams. She wants to dance on her favorite TV show. "I want to be famous!" she says.
Her hefty mom, Edna, worries. "They don't put people like us on TV - except to be laughed at."
Set in Baltimore in 1962, the show is about ignoring stereotypes and learning to accept yourself, about love and letting go, about growing up and chasing a dream.
John Waters wrote and directed the 1988 movie. The cast included Pia Zadora, Sonny Bono and Jerry Stiller. Ricki Lake launched her career as Tracy. And Divine, in drag, played her loud and loving mom.
The musical Hairspray debuted on Broadway in August 2002. The next year, it won eight Tony Awards, including best musical. Harvey Fierstein, working in drag, won best performance by a leading actor in a musical for his portrayal of Edna. Marissa Jaret Winokur, the original Tracy, won best performance by a leading actress in a musical.
The show plays on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W 52nd St., every day except Monday. Tickets cost $25 to $100. For more information, please see www.hairsprayonbroadway.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
This series is based on six months of reporting. St. Petersburg Times writer Lane DeGregory and photographer Cherie Diez met Michelle Dowdy and Karla Harris in May. They interviewed Michelle and her mom, as well as Michelle's teachers, friends and relatives in Florida. They also made three trips to New York City, where they interviewed the producer, stage manager and musical director of Hairspray and watched Michelle at work on Broadway. Most of the scenes described were witnessed by the reporters. Others are based on people's recollections.
Framed photos of Michelle line the wall above the couch in the Treasure Island apartment she shared with her mom, Karla. The couch is Karla’s bed. Michelle slept in the apartment’s only bedroom.
