Focus on Health & Beauty: Once More, With Healing

Making it in showbiz is tough enough?the competition, the dry spells, the instability?nobody can fault those whose choose to give it up and pursue another career path. Perhaps there's something to the idea that you have to be slightly insane to work in this business. But aside from questionable mental health, there can also be unexpected physical obstacles that can strike anyone, in any career. Back Stage West recently spoke with four performers who triumphed over physical setbacks and returned to their dreams.



Just Say 'Ha'

A few years ago, Julia Sweeney would have been best known from her several seasons on Saturday Night Live?specifically as the androgynous character, Pat, whose vague answers to questions about his/her sexuality kept audiences guessing for years. Sweeney has since carved out an entirely new niche for herself, writing and performing in solo shows about her life. Her first one-woman show, God Said 'Ha!', was a surprisingly funny piece about the tragedy that befell her family when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly after her brother had also been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The show started small, playing at clubs in L.A., but eventually made its way to Broadway, and a film version was produced by her good friend Quentin Tarantino. It was a career path she never would have anticipated. "I remember when Quentin said to me, 'Jules, first you were Pat, then you became Cancer Woman," she recalled with a laugh. "And I was so depressed; he was totally right. Luckily, I think only people in bigger cities know me as Cancer Woman. In Middle America, I'm still Pat."

God Said 'Ha!' was so rewarding for Sweeney personally and professionally that she was recently performing two more solo shows simultaneously. She just wrapped a production of In the Family Way at the Groundlings Theatre, which she described as "all about becoming 38 and suddenly realizing you want a family more than anything and having no boyfriend and no uterus." The other show, whose title keeps changing, is currently called Letting Go of God and may open in January after being workshopped at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood. "That one is about my journey from being a practicing Catholic to being a deeply committed non-believer," she quipped. "I'm looking to add another tier after Pat and Cancer Woman, and maybe it will be Atheist Woman."

One niche she never expected to fill was that of solo performer. "I only recently embraced it because when I did God Said 'Ha!' I thought it was a one-off," she said. "There was something very crass and narcissistic about being someone who made a living explaining their life to other people on a stage, and it seemed really like my worst-case scenario." But after performing her storytelling in clubs around town, she realized two things: she was enjoying herself, and she had a knack for it. "I started realizing that other things in show business I might be good at, but I'm uniquely suited for this."

Still, she had to overcome several obstacles on her path to the show, including her own doubts. "The biggest thing I had to overcome was my own self," she admitted. "I had some funny stories about my cancer and my brother, and I never thought it would be anything in and of itself. I just thought, Here's some funny stories and I'll do a showcase of me. I'd never done standup, and my friends who did seemed to be getting a lot of exposure to casting people and had an ongoing forum to expose people to their work. I was really just trying to get a sitcom job. At the end of it, people said to forget about the sitcom, this is what I should be doing. And I became convinced. It was really me who was the big hurdle."

Asked if the experience was healing for her, she confessed to mixed emotions. "I was diagnosed in 1995, and a year later I was on Broadway talking about it," she said with amazement. "When I look back on it now, I think that was way too fast, not for the material but emotionally. At first it was healing, but after doing it for nine months, I noticed I was moving past it yet still performing it. And in some ways it's the most hellish nightmare you can imagine, because you're kind of forcing yourself to go through something over and over again that you could probably be done with if you weren't performing it. On the other hand, you get to watch the evolution of a healing process, because by the time I finished doing God Said 'Ha!' I actually had completely different feelings about everything I was talking about."

Still, it's a journey Sweeney is glad she took. "The part that's embarrassing is that you're blabbering on about your personal life to people," she said. "But the part that I like is that it's real. And the people I've met who've also had cancer and gone through it, that was the payback. Meeting so many people who had gone through the same thing and having this rapport with them was great. I really connected with people, and that was wonderful."

God Said 'Ha!' went on to become one of her biggest professional successes, and it might seem strange that such a triumph sprung from what was a terrible tragedy. "I would never have planned it that way, obviously," Sweeney said. "But it doesn't seem weird. It just seems like the way it went."



Body Eclectic

Like Sweeney, Jonna Tamases was able to turn her battle with cancer into entertainment, although her journey moved at a very different pace. Tamases was attending Columbia University in New York when she was diagnosed at age 19 with cancerous tumors in her chest. She underwent one summer of radiation and one summer of chemotherapy, and eventually graduated from Stanford with a degree in communications/filmmaking. She had planned to pursue a career as a film editor, but she found herself performing sketch comedy and improv. "I had to choose, and I chose acting," she said. "I just loved it so much."

She began to try her hand at open mics, playing with monologues and writing her own material. Initially she was wary of dramatizing her experience with cancer. "I didn't think I wanted to go that route. I was afraid it would be too schmaltzy or treacly," she confessed. "So I started writing about my fixation with boys or funny experiences with yeast infections. I sort of had to ramp up to writing about cancer."

It wasn't until she hit upon the idea for the device of the show that she felt completely comfortable moving forward. In her one-woman show Jonna's Body, Please Hold, Tamases dramatizes a central switchboard fielding incoming calls from various parts of her body. There's the breasts, complaining about being confined in a tight bra, or the little toe moaning about the uncomfortable shoe she's wearing. Then there's a mystery caller, who simply says they will be seeing her soon. The concept was so original and lent itself so naturally to comedy, she knew she could build a show around it. "Once I devised a way of theatricalizing it, it freed me up. As a comedic actress, my primary goal in everything I do is to be entertaining," she emphasized. "You know how doctors have the oath: First do no harm? Mine is: First be entertaining."

She has been working on the show for nine years, watching it go through many changes. She praised an early director, Hubert de la Bouillerie, who helped her make the show very spare and minimalist and forced her to write new material that exposed her vulnerability. "I was so focused on being entertaining that I didn't really address the heartfelt stuff," she said. "I was afraid of boring my audience or seeming too sad or too precious, but he assured me there was room for it."

She needn't have worried; she recently wrapped a run of Jonna's Body at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles that was a success with critics and audiences alike. BSW's glowing review noted that her performance avoided the pitfalls of "the typically bland L.A. solo showcase" and that "the quieter moments pack the biggest punch."

Even though her health battles are far behind her, she still finds performing the show to have a healing effect. "It's very healing because you can take control of it in a way," she said. "You can take this horrible experience and use it to express yourself creatively. And that's what you want to do as an artist." And, of course, entertain. Which is why she offered the following advice: "For people who are looking to turn their own crises into theatrical pieces, it's important to make it theatrical, not just therapeutic."

Audiences have responded generously to the show, despite the tricky subject matter. "It's definitely a challenge because when people hear the word 'cancer' they assume it's going to be heavy or intense," she said. "The funny thing is, when people see it, they just flip out and are so happy they came. Someone said to me after seeing it, 'Well you won me over.' I said, 'Why, did you hate me beforehand?'"



Extended Runs

For John Siciliano, the acting bug bit in seventh grade, when the athletic student appeared in his first play. From that moment on, he was, by his own admission, "a weird mix of jock and drama guy." Ten years ago he was majoring in theatre at Pointe Park College in his native Pittsburgh when he and some friends went out to eat. He was in the passenger side of a jeep when an oncoming driver ran a red light and the cars collided. "I woke up two days later wearing hand restraints, a neck brace, and with a trachea pipe," he recalled. "On the third day, the pipe came out, and the doctor came over to tell me they had to amputate my right leg 4 inches above the knee." Siciliano was 22.

He was understandably devastated. "I had an outline of my life structured in my head and didn't think I could do it anymore," he said. "I always had great friends and family around, but when I was completely alone at the rehabilitation center, I went into my ugly duckling phase. You have to go through that state. It's only normal."

A turning point occurred when he saw a brochure on prosthetic technology that featured photos of other amputees running track. "At the time, I didn't have medical insurance, so the prosthetic leg I had on and the one I saw in that brochure didn't look anything alike," he recalled with a laugh. He called the company and eventually drove to Long Island to meet the man in the brochure. "I watched him run, and I was so inspired and blown away. I realized, if he could do it, why couldn't I?" Siciliano became actively involved with company's running clinics, meeting people who helped him get expert therapy and a good prosthesis. He even began training to run in the Paralympics.

Initially he had put his acting career on the back burner. "First it was about adjusting to a new world on one leg in college," he said. "For me, getting back to theatre was so far away from the necessities of getting back to a normal life, just learning how to walk. It was so far out of my thought process. I thought it was over. I didn't even have the self-confidence to think about it yet." Thanks to what he called the "warm and open arms" of his college and the confidence he was gaining for his return to athletics, he eventually was able to follow his heart. "It took time, but I realized it could be worse and I had to stay positive. Sports were basically physical therapy for me. I had to get good on this prosthetic leg before I could get up there and go for parts. But it gave me the confidence I needed."

Siciliano can still remember the first play he auditioned for in college: an adaptation of Charlotte's Web. "I was nervous as could be, but I jumped in and auditioned for the lead, Wilbur the Pig. The next day I didn't make callbacks and was all upset. But when the final cast sheet went up, I learned the director had cast me just off my audition without needing a callback. I was, like, Yes! I am back!"

From that point, Siciliano returned to balancing his acting career with athletics. In 1996 he competed in the Paralympics trials, where he won the gold and broke the 200-meter record. At the games, his leg came off during the race, costing him the win. "At least I finished the race," he noted.

He found that his amputation didn't have to hurt his career and could even be used in unique ways. When he was cast as Borachio in the school's Much Ado About Nothing, the director suggested incorporating his injury. "He said, 'Listen, John, you're a soldier, you're coming back from war, you're the villain. There's no reason this guy can't have one leg. And there's no reason we even have to talk about it.' So I got an 18th century prosthetic and ended up winning an Irene Ryan Award for my performance. So the confidence was great after that."

Siciliano later attended graduate school in theatre at USC, where he wrote a solo performance piece about his experience. "It was my first writing class; I figured I'd write about what I know," he said. "The teacher helped me put it up at the end of the year. Some people saw it and thought it would be a good idea to make it a play." Titled Siciliano, the play went to New York, where it enjoyed a six-month run.

More recently, Siciliano has been featured as "Crazy Homeless Guy on ER," which sent out a casting breakdown specifically seeking an amputee. But he continues to audition regularly for a wide variety of roles. "I don't always go in as Johnny Amputee,'" he joked. "I don't think it's limited me. It's about playing the balance and realizing it's the hand you were dealt."

He said the balance includes competing in triathlons and appearing at speaking engagements. But it's his passion for acting that continues to drive him. "This is the type of business where you keep going at it every day and invest so much into it, and the reward has to be worth it. And when you score a job in this town and you're working on something that means something, it's a great feeling. That's what keeps you in it," he said. Which is not to say he doesn't recognize the difficulty of his chosen profession. "What's crazy is, at one point I was so depressed and ready to throw in everything, and then I realized, I'm young, there's a lot of life left. Just going into this business, you have got to be pretty crazy and have thick skin. So the accident was basically basic training to coming out here."



Out of the Gait

When told the subject of this article would be performers persevering after health crises, cabaret performer Deborah Downey laughed a little. "Well, I'm perfect then. I just got out of the hospital a week ago, and I'm doing a show on the 16th of October." The show is Here's To Life, a concert performance combined with the release of her first solo CD. The title is somewhat bittersweet; she happens to mention in an upbeat tone that just 15 days earlier she was unable to walk.

Downey began singing and performing at the age of 9 in her native Chicago and was only 15 when she moved to California to pursue voice lessons with well-known vocal instructor Florence Russell. She had worked regularly in theatre and television, appearing in programs as varied as Knots Landing and Scared Straight, Another Story. But around 1989 she noticed she was having difficulty walking. "My gait was off," she recalled. "It hadn't impacted my life much, but occasionally I'd look like I'd had a couple of martinis." Soon the UCLA Medical Center diagnosed it as multiple sclerosis. "They told me to just go live my life," she recalled.

Living her life as normally as possible soon proved harder than she had imagined. Downey was appearing in The Blue Dahlia at the Coronet Theatre, in which she played 11 different characters with countless costume and wig changes. "I found I was becoming less and less stable on my feet, which is where most performers keep their energy, and that was unnerving," she said. Perhaps worst of all, her confidence as a performer was hampered. "When I was officially diagnosed, I stopped auditioning for things. I was 34 years old and already thinking that when you hit 35, there are already a lot fewer roles for women. So the fact that the MS was starting up and the roles were getting further and fewer between, I sort of went into a place where I wasn't thinking about acting so much."

A friend recommended Downey look into the cabaret world, something the longtime singer had never considered. She began taking classes from Karen Benjamin, an established teacher who is also married to frequent cabaret performer Alan Chapman. Through them, she made a valuable contact in Todd Schroeder, her frequent musical director. "He's directed almost all of my shows since I started cabaret three years ago," enthused Downey. "He's taught me everything I need to know."

With cabaret, she soon discovered she had an outlet for performing in which she could define her own rules. During her first year, she did a new show almost every month. "What's wonderful about it is, it blends my acting and my singing and I don't have to run all over the place," she noted. "I tell stories about myself?I tell on myself. That's what's so fabulous about cabaret; you really get to take material and make it your own."

Downey has become such a fan of cabaret that she hopes to encourage other performers. She is taking over the Circle Theatre, which is being renamed the Deborah Downey Theatre, and she will serve as its managing director in addition to performing her own shows. "I'm very much into supporting my fellow actors, singers, and comedians and giving them a place where they can do their thing," she said.

Many of her stories involve her struggle with MS. "I've never been one to hold secrets. My life's an open book," she said, before adding that her show is not strictly about the disease. "I talk about the MS, but my whole thing is to not be defined by my MS?to get over myself. My attitude basically is, You have brown eyes, I have MS, so what did you want to talk about?"

She admitted she wasn't always so positive. "I think, initially, in the first year, I thought I would have to give up performing. I'm human, and I had a couple of blue days, and it was very daunting." But one mantra has kept her going. "My attitude has always been to expect a miracle every day," she said. "I have a five-story house in Marina Del Rey, and everyone says, 'Did you have MS when you built that house?' When I say, 'Yes,' they say I must have been pretty optimistic. But whatever age you are, there's going to be health issues. I just happened to be kind of young when it hit, and you don't have to be defined by it." BSW