Juilliard: An Epic Story Part 2
Getting to New York on March 13th meant I had to fly in on Friday the 12th. Thank God I have weekends off, I thought. But I started looking for flights from Jackson, Mississippi (our stop that morning on the tour) to New York, and realized that a) there were no direct flights from Jackson to New York and b) any flight leaving after my show came down would not get me to New York until 10:30, 11pm at night for an audition that was to BEGIN at 8am. Paranoid about getting the proper amount of sleep the night before what was going to be a 13+ hour day on Saturday the 13th followed by an 8am-6pm day on Sunday the 14th, I asked my production manager if it would be possible for my understudy to go on the morning of the 12th so I could make it to New York without any drama. She said no-perhaps reasonably-and I considered asking again and making a stronger case, when I did another search and found a flight that would get me to New York City by 8:10pm: more than enough time to allow me to get a good night’s rest for the long and challenging weekend.
The week leading up to my audition turned out to be far and away the most difficult of the tour thus far (yes, to this very date over a month later). We had two two-show days, and every drive was 3 or 4 hours long; meaning, after two shows, breakdown, load out, lunch, drive, dinner, drive, check-in and get to our hotel rooms, we were not getting in until 9 or 10 at night, and I was waking up sometime between 4:30am and 5am to do yoga before showering, breakfast, and making a 7:30 van call for a 8am load in, 10:30 show and repeat. It was also the week during which my stage manager decided to give me notes after every other show telling me how bad of an actor I was-from telling me my character was just coming across as laughable, “fake,” and “stupid,” to such astute criticism as “That was awful today.” I felt with all my being, by the time March 12th rolled around, worse about my acting capabilities than I did in eighth grade, when I would crouch in the corner, sweat, tremble, and hide from the audience. In addition, despite having asked to be given a bit of a break of navigating the van that week (which I promised to make up for the following week after the audition was over), my production manager purposefully decided to schedule me all four days as navigator, which essentially means those 3 or 4 hour drive each day when everyone else was sitting ht e back of the van sleeping off their exhaustion, I sat in the front and told the driver how to get to wherever we were going and got in trouble if I closed my eyes.
Nevertheless, though I felt my frustration with the negativity I was surrounded by as well as my lack of sleep weighing on me, I breathed a little, knowing that I’d have a decent amount of time to relax and nap on my flight to New York as well as plenty of time to sleep once I got to my hotel in New York.
March 12th came quickly, and after plenty of drama getting there-my cab showing up forty minutes late, not having a credit card machine though I specified that I’d be paying by card when I ordered it, and my food at the fast food place taking forty minutes to be served-I made my way through security at 2pm, about 20 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. When I arrived at my gate, I then saw that my flight had been delayed 2 hours to 4:25pm. I panicked, immediately thinking that if my flight was delayed, I would miss my layover in Atlanta to New York. And because most of the flights that day were already overbooked, how was I to get to New York that evening? I say with my blood boiling in the waiting area at the gate, and I started to hear people around me who were schedule to be on my flight make phone calls to hotels in Atlanta to book accommodations, and call friends and colleagues at their final destinations to inform them that they would be stuck in Atlanta for the night, due to missing their layover. After calling my Dad in a sobbing panic and talking to the woman manning the desk at the gate, she assured me that the flight delays that day were all due to weather problems in Atlanta left over from the morning and that delays were also in effect for flights leaving Atlanta. As 4pm approached, the woman came back onto the microphone to tell us that the plane would be arriving from Atlanta closer to 5pm. Sure enough, 5pm came, the plane landed, was emptied of its disgruntled passengers, and just as they were preparing to board us onto our flight to Atlanta, another announcement: Thank you for you’re patience, but we do have a maintenance issue with the plane that must be investigated before we can take off. We estimate another hour until take off.
Now, I really started to panic. If this was a maintenance problem with only this plane, what were the chances of my layover flight being delayed long enough for me to make it? Would I be able to get on the next flight to New York? What if I had to stay in Atlanta for the night? I’d have to pay for another hotel, and there’d be dozens of people like me looking to get onto the next flight to New York. How long would I have to wait until I could even get on a flight? And when were we supposed to do our monologues the next day? Would they change scheduling just for me, or would I lose my chances just because of forces out of my control? Seeing that it was almost 5pm central time-6pm eastern time, or, right as the offices at Juilliard were about to close-I called and spoke with Katherine, the administrative director who I had met and interviewed with at my inititial callback just as she was leaving the office. I told her the situation, and that I just wanted to let her know that things weren’t looking so good for me getting to New York that evening and I wanted to catch her just incase before the office was closed. She thanked me, wished me luck, and told me to call and leave a message to let her know what happened.
6pm central time was approaching, and the woman came on the microphone to inform us that the maintenance issue had been resolved, but now there was a ground hold in Atlanta due to traffic, and we could not board the plane until it was cleared. Not until 7:30pm did our plane take off from Jackson, MS to Atlanta, GA: twenty minutes after my flight was scheduled to land in New York. I did my best to get some sleep on the short flight, and when we arrived in Atlanta at 10pm EST, there was a mad rush to get off the plane, with the dozens on board unsure if they were going to make their layover flights. Upon getting off the plane, I saw that luckily (in a way), my flight had been delayed to 10:45 pm, which gave me enough time to get to the far side of the huge airport terminal and to make my flight to New York-an probably arrive at about 1am.
By the time I got to the far gate where my connecting flight would be leaving from, my flight had ben pushed back to 11pm. About 15 minutes later, 11:15pm, then 11:20, then an announcement asking if anyone in the airport was a legal, certified flight attendant because there were not enough for our light to take off, then 11:45pm , until finally they pushed the departure time back to 11:59pm. At about 11:50, the plane began to board, and the last time I looked at my phone before I turned it off for the flight to leave was 12:10am on the 13th.
At 2am EST, the violent shake of the plane touching the ground in New York awoke me from a light slumber, and I called my father to tell him I was there, could he come pick me up. An eternal 15minutes later, we pulled up to the gate, and by 2:30am I was off the plane, my eyes twitching with exhaustion, my brain slushing around with every step. At around 2:45, luggage started coming through the carousel at baggage claims. I watched in my exhausted daze, still awake from 4:30 that morning, emotionally wiped out, and wondering how I could pull my act together for the big day tomorrow. As the luggage began to came out, I saw black rolling suitcase and black rolling suitcase and realized I wasn’t even sure what exactly mine looked like. I saw a yellow bag come out the carousel and thought how smart that person was to have a different color so they could recognize their bag right away and run off. Then a hot pink bag with skull and cross bones came out, and I had the same thought. I saw another yellow bag, and laughed to myself that two people had the same idea, and waited for the confusion that would ensue over which yellow bag belonged to which passenger. I saw another skull and crossbones bag and had the same thought. By the third yellow suitcase and pink skull and crossbones suitcase, I realized that there were not multiple suitcases like these, I was just seeing the same ones go around and around, and mine was nowhere in sight. Remembering that my black suitcase suitcase actually had four wheels while most had two, I stayed and looked intently at each black suitcase going around one more time and saw two wheels, after two wheels, after two wheels. Not only had Delta Airlines caused me to arrive at my destination 6 hours and 20 minutes later than scheduled on the day before the biggest audition in my life thus far, but they lost my luggage in the process. I called my Dad and told them, and we went into the luggage office together, had them scan my baggage claim ticket, and they said it should have been on this flight, but that’s okay, they probably removed it at the last minute due to weight issues, and surely they just threw it onto the next flight.
“When will the next flight be coming in?” My Dad asked
“Oh, just in a little bit, at 4am, if you want to stick around,”
I almost laughed, and shook my head, choking back tears, not knowing what to do. Literally everything…toothbrush, soap, shampoo, pajamas, movement clothes I need for tomorrow was in that bag.
“I’ll bring you to your hotel, and come back ad get it and bring it to you in the morning.”
“Are you kidding?” I said to him, almost angry.
“No, let’s go.”
We got into my Dad’s car at 3am, and I called up Juilliard and left a message, attempting to sound as cheerful as possible, letting them know I made it in, but my luggage was MIA, so I unfortunately was not prepared with the proper clothing for the following day. I spent the ride crying and screaming at my father about the whole day. It was like a bad movie where literally everything that could have possibly gone wrong (save the plane crashing) did. I was angry-at my miserable production manager, at the airline, at the cab driver for showing up forty minutes late, at the cashier at the fast food place, at the people who got on earlier flights than me, at the airline, at the baggage claim people. I was angry at my tour, because if I had been at home in New York, this never would have happened. But I said to my Dad , “I can’t imagine going through all of this just to not get in on my last chance. That just doesn’t seem right.” I bit my lip, and when I climbed into my hotel bed at 3:45am, I tried my best to go to sleep enjoying the challenge instead of wallowing in the setback.
To Be Continued.