Showtime
After months of anticipation, Michelle Dowdy steps out of her understudy role and finds a new home in the Broadway spotlight.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published December 11, 2005
Last of six stories.
The stage manager wanted to see her.
Michelle climbed the stairs to his office, wondering what was up. Maybe he needed her to perform at a charity event or do a promotional appearance at a shopping center. As an understudy, she did lots of those. Maybe he wanted her to do another run-through.
"Are you ready?" he asked, when she stepped through the door.
Ready? What? To do the real show?
"You'll go on Thursday," he told her. Four days from now.
She couldn't believe it. After five months of waiting, of rehearsing and hoping, of listening to the show in the dressing room, Michelle Dowdy finally was going to make her debut on Broadway.
As she left the theater, she called her mom in Florida. Karla screamed and cried, and called JetBlue.
She got to Michelle's apartment the night before the show. They ordered pizza and sat on the rusty fire escape, watching the New York skyline, their arms around each other. Holding on.
At 1:30 a.m., Michelle made herself lie down. She had to be at the theater in 12 hours. She kept imagining herself on that enormous stage, wearing that hot pink dress and bouffant wig, doing all the scenes perfectly, but in the wrong order.
On any other day, Michelle would have had to climb five flights of stairs to the cramped dressing room she shared with two other understudies. But on Thursday, Oct. 27, the stage manager told her to get ready on the second floor - in the lead's dressing room. Someone had penciled her name on a purple card and taped it to the door.
Michelle smiled. This was so cool! Then she opened the door and gasped.
Flowers filled the room: daisies and lilies, red and yellow roses, sunflowers and tulips and chrysanthemums. A high school friend had shipped a box of chocolate-covered cherries. Darlene Love, the '60s singer who plays Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray, had sent a basket, 4 feet tall, filled with candy. In one corner, a giant purple balloon bobbed "Congratulations!"
"This is crazy," Michelle said out loud. "Crazy!"
After rehearsal, back in the dressing room, her cell phone rang. "Oh, the flowers are gorgeous." Her high school drama teacher had sent a spray of roses. "Of course, I'm nervous. All the bigwigs are going to be here." The producer, the director, the choreographer - they all wanted to see what she could do. That's why they were putting her on now.
"So," she told her drama teacher, "I better not suck."
Outside the Neil Simon Theatre, 15 of her friends were waiting. They had flown up from Florida and were shivering in the New York cold. They ambushed Michelle, circled her on the sidewalk.
"I'm so glad to see you guys," she said.
She hadn't eaten all day, so she went across the street to the Cosmic Diner and ordered a cheese omelet and fries.
She was worried about her hairpiece. It kept falling off during the detention scene.
She was thinking about I Can Hear the Bells, her fourth song and the longest by far. If she could remember to breathe and pace herself, as the music director had suggested, then she thought she'd be fine.
Michelle stared at her food. She didn't feel like eating.
Back in her dressing room, she arranged her good luck charms on the makeup counter: a penguin in a top hat, 2 inches tall; a rock with the word Believe etched into the top; a yellow rose from her mom.
She dropped a fizzy vitamin C tablet into a glass of water. She needed a boost. She was yawning the whole time people were pinning up her hair, tugging on her wig, making up her face.
She stretched to warm up her muscles, sang scales to warm up her voice. Her dresser zipped her into the first costume: a ruffled white blouse and straight skirt, white Keds.
Then Michelle crept downstairs. She opened the door to the stage where Ethel Merman once sang. Five minutes before her first call, she stood there, feeling the heat of the lights and the weight of her wig, staring at the back of the crimson and purple curtain, listening to the people shuffling into their seats.
When the usher handed Karla a Playbill, a small square of paper fluttered out: "At this performance the role of Tracy Turnblad will be played by Michelle Dowdy." Karla picked up the slip of paper and tucked it into her purse. "Can I have a few more of those?" she asked.
Michelle's bio was on Page 29. "MICHELLE DOWDY is making her Broadway debut in Hairspray." Nothing about experience or awards, like all the other cast members. "She would like to thank her mother for being the best person she has ever known." Karla wept, her tears splattering the paper.
The house lights went down and the audience fell silent and slowly the fluted curtain began to rise.
"Oh, oh, oh, woke up today, feeling the way I always do. Oh, oh, oh, hungry for something that I can't eat. Then I hear the beat . . ."
Michelle's voice, clear and strong, rang through the theater. She was stretching and yawning, in a bed 8 feet tall, alone onstage, in the spotlight.
She was Tracy Turnblad, a fat girl who loves to sing and dance, who has a loud, loving mom, who starts out as an outsider but winds up in the center of everything.
She remembered to breathe during I Can Hear the Bells - maybe too often. But she got through it smiling. And when her hairpiece flipped up during the detention scene, she just kept on dancing.
All she could think was: This is where I belong.
Before the last song ended, 1,350 people were on their feet. In the front row, Michelle's high school friends whooped and cheered. In the sixth row, Karla clapped her hands above her head while black eyeliner trickled down her cheeks.
Michelle couldn't see her mom in the glare of the lights, so she squinted into the theater and blew a kiss in hopes it would find her.
A crowd was waiting outside her dressing room. The producer, director, stage manager, dance captain. They came to her, gushing.
"You were fantastic! So comfortable," the producer said. "There was no sense at all this was your first time on Broadway. I'm just bowled over. A triumph, really."
"Like you were shot out of a cannon," the musical director said.
Michelle kept smiling outside the dressing room that wasn't really hers, nodding and not quite hearing everything. She couldn't believe she was here, that this was happening. She felt like she was outside herself, watching herself. Those two hours onstage had been the most fun ever.
Forget the cast party. Never mind the friends who were waiting, or the people with the posters and programs who were out on the sidewalk, eager to get her autograph. Michelle wanted, more than anything, to go back onstage right then and do it all again.
Karla waited until the show people left, then ducked into Michelle's dressing room and crushed her in a hug. Michelle squirmed back to look up at her.
"So, Mom," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Did you like it?"
WHERE'S MICHELLE NOW?Six weeks after making her Broadway debut, Michelle Dowdy is still understudy to the lead in Hairspray. She has performed the part several times onstage since then. But she spends most evenings waiting in the dressing room with the other understudies.
There is talk of a Hairspray show opening in Las Vegas. A new movie of the musical, produced by New Line Cinema, is in the making. John Travolta, Billy Crystal and Aretha Franklin have been mentioned as possible cast members.
No one is saying who might play Tracy Turnblad in either production.
- LANE DeGREGORY
ABOUT HAIRSPRAYHairspray 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 SERIESIt 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.
The photo of Michelle Dowdy that appeared on her Hairspray poster at Gibbs High was taken by Clinton Brentwood Lee of Brentwood photography.
Lane DeGregory can be reached at 727 893-8825 or degregory@sptimes.com Cherie Diez can be reached at (727) 893-8048 or cdiez@sptimes.com