Fosse by Sam Wasson Page B

Strasberg sank his students in psychoanalytic mires, Meisner emphasized clear, task-oriented objectives, actions as simple as opening the door, closing the window—in his words, “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” It was simple to understand and difficult to execute. To a performer asked to play a character in fantastic or ridiculous circumstances, like those in musical theater—or, even more ridiculous, like those in musical comedy, with its cotton-candy logic—Meisner’s technique offered a way through: be you. Truth and simplicity were always there, and any performer, regardless of his gifts, could harness them.
    Room 3B at the Neighborhood Playhousewas, like Meisner’s technique, a model of simplicity. In the studio, beneath a window with a courtyard view, were twenty folding chairs for Fosse and his classmates—which included Gloria Vanderbilt, Farley Granger,and James Kirkwood Jr. (future co-author of
A Chorus Line
)—ten in front, ten on a riser behind. Notebooks in hand, they faced a simple stage set: two twin beds and an empty bookcase. Meisner—Sandy, they called him—sat at a hulking gray desk midway between the students and the stage and watched them working.
Working
was what Sandy called rehearsing. “Who wants to work next?” he would ask. As soon as his volunteers began, he’d stop them. If you do something, you really do it!he’d say. He told them a story about Fanny Brice,about how she got nervous when she got onstage, so nervous, he said, her hands would actually shake. And this was at the end of her career, when she was already the biggest comic in the world—Meisner would spread his hands in the air to show how big—and still she thought she was going to die. “So you’re going to be nervous,”Sandy said to the class. “
Be
nervous!” The real show, he encouraged them to see, was what was happening
within.
“You don’t have to play at being the character,” he would say, “it’s right there in your doing it.”
    Artistically, this was a revelation to the burgeoning choreographer. Fosse said, “I think he had some sort of mottoon the wall, as I remember, saying ‘Don’t just say something, stand there.’ And I found out in choreography frequently that less movement, more economical movement, or no movement at all makes a stronger statement than fierce activity.” The concept was a salve to Fosse’s feeling of worthlessness. Knowing he did not have to transform himself was itself a transformative epiphany for him, almost spiritual in its emphasis on innate value and self-respect. For perhaps the first time in his professional life, he saw he could get by without irony, stolen goods, and flash. He was enough. Along with Joan, Meisner saw what few had seen:The good
inside
Bob Fosse. The potential.
    By the spring of 1951, Fosse had become Joan’s creation. When he heard of an upcoming summer-stock production of
Pal Joey,
he went straight to her for counsel. Would taking the part (Joey, of course), if he got it, be a good next step? Or was summer stock, no matter the part, a step back
?
Joey
was one of his favorite shows, and the part was perfect for him; it would be a real chance, his first chance, to sing and dance in
character.
He could use the Meisner technique. Weren’t Joey’s circumstances—smalltime con artist, bound to an older woman, stopping at nothing to push his nightclub career over the top—nearly identical to Fosse’s? McCracken thought yes. Take it, she told him, if you get it.
    He got it (despite Richard Rodgers’s objectionsto Fosse’s small size, small voice, and light complexion). Fosse and Joan were preparing the car to go to Bucks County, the first stop on
Pal Joey
’s ten-week tour, when Fosse got a call from Maurice Lapue. MGM wanted to screen-test him. MGM: The studio of Astaire and Gene Kelly. Apparently, one of Metro’s scouts had seen himin scenes from Saroyan’s
The Time of Your Life
—Fosse played Harry, whom Saroyan