Five were slated to make their Broadway debuts. Now? They’re bunking with family, grappling with unemployment and fighting injustice.
Credit…Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times
Back in February, Hiram Delgado quit his wait staff job at Dock Asian Eatery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “Hey,” he told his boss, “I’m not going to be able to work here anymore because I’m going to be on Broadway.”
For Delgado, who has a degree from New York University’s graduate acting program, the big break had finally come — a role in Second Stage’s starry revival of Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play “Take Me Out,” which was set to begin previews at Broadway’s Hayes Theater on April 2.
A drama about a biracial baseball star who comes out as gay, “Take Me Out” began rehearsals with several days of batting and fielding drills at The Baseball Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The cast then moved into Second Stage’s rehearsal space, roughing out blocking and refining the play’s rhythms. “In a very short period of time we built a bond,” said Patrick J. Adams, another Broadway first-timer.
But slowly, with forearm bumps and hygiene directives and updates about disinfection protocols, then all at once, the break broke. A few days after the Broadway League announced the closing of its theaters through April 12, a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, the producers of “Take Me Out” put the production on pause. The 11 actors scattered.
Five of them, Delgado included, would have made their Broadway debuts. Now that coming out party has been postponed, indefinitely.
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Credit…Catherine Wessel
“I was looking forward to this more than anything else in my acting career ever,” said Jesse Williams, who stars as Darren, the gay player.
Depending who you are and where you are in your career and what your bank balance looks like, a Broadway debut can mean a lot of things. For some, like Delgado, it means a steady paycheck and guaranteed health insurance and maybe the first time in your life that your art has paid a true living wage. An actor on an Off Broadway contract might make less than $700 per week, minus taxes, union dues and agents’ fees. On Broadway, the minimum rises to over $2,000 per week.
For others, like Adams and Williams, both coming off lengthy TV stints, it serves a more symbolic function — a validation of genius or know-how or hustle or knack. If you have had formal training, Broadway invites an opportunity to put that training to use. Actors who have worked mostly in film and on television have a chance to prove that they can act without benefit of retakes or editing. The coronavirus put all of that on hold.
When rehearsals ended, Williams, a regular on “Grey’s Anatomy” since 2009, flew home to Los Angeles, as did Adams, best known for the legal drama “Suits.”
Delgado went to the apartment in Astoria, Queens, where he lives with his girlfriend and her mother. Eduardo Ramos, another Broadway newcomer, returned to his apartment in West New York, N.J.
Carl Lundstedt, the fifth “Take Me Out” debutant, stayed in the city for a while. Then he and wife, the actress Denée Benton, drove 12 hours nonstop to Libertyville, Ill., to stay with his parents.
A rehearsal room creates an apparent equality. Some actors have more lines and some have fewer, but everyone works together in the same small space, drinking the same awful coffee. With the cast scattered, differences have emerged more starkly.
Delgado spent the early weeks of quarantine making up to 50 calls a day, trying to access his unemployment benefits. He looked into volunteering, but was concerned about exposing his girlfriend’s mother to the virus. He cooks; he skateboards; he talks to his family in Puerto Rico; and does scenes, via Zoom, with a local theater company. “I haven’t been spending a lot,” he said. “No luxuries, just like what I need.”
Williams, who has shared custody of his two young children, spent the early spring supervising their schooling, and more. “I’ve taught them how to ride their bikes, how to skateboard, how to roller skate,” he said in May. “Now we’re playing baseball.”
Though he declined a follow-up call to discuss it, Williams, a longtime activist who gave a forceful speech on racism and police brutality when accepting a 2016 BET award, has also occupied himself with social justice work, co-hosting a national town hall for Breonna Taylor.
Adams, who has a 20-month-old daughter with the actress Troian Bellisario, spends early mornings hiking and running his lines, “just to keep the play alive for me,” he said. Ramos, who began receiving unemployment benefits in May, spends most days working out in his apartment, then caring for his 3-year-old daughter. “That’s been pretty much the saving grace,” he said, “just living in her imaginative world and being away from my Twitter feed.”
In Libertyville, where he grew up, Lundstedt works out and tries to eat well, though he makes an exception for his mother’s cookies. He just finished reading “War and Peace.”
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Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Even in this off-season, they try to feel like a team. They share a lively text chain. They watch the same baseball documentaries. Adams, Williams and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, another “Take Me Out” actor, sent food baskets to the other cast members. (Because “Take Me Out” has a famous nude scene, Adams joked that sending everyone high-carb food was a way to make himself look better by contrast.) Cast members take turns taking over Second Stage’s Instagram page. Twice they have run lines over Zoom.
On what would have been opening night, Second Stage hosted an online party. Carole Rothman, the artistic director, read a made-up New York Times rave. Scott Ellis, the play’s director, gave a speech about what might have been — how the play had come together in the third week of rehearsal, the applause that greeted the first preview.
It’s a funny/not-funny paradox that baseball, which doesn’t need a live audience, will come back more quickly than a play about baseball, which does. (Lundstedt said you could never livestream “Take Me Out,” “unless all of us feel comfortable with having our nudity on the internet forever.” So that’s a no.)
But the dream of making a Broadway debut — in three months, or six months or a year or whenever — remains. “It’s a beautiful feeling,” Delgado said. “Like it’s always stayed with me. The pandemic hasn’t taken that away.”
Second Stage remains committed. And the actors, so far, have all agreed to return. “I’m going to do this play,” Williams said. “I’ve made that clear.”
That play may not be the same “Take Me Out” that began rehearsals in March. The story of a biracial man trying to meet the world on its own terms will resonate differently. The world has changed. The actors have changed in the many months of waiting and wanting and hoping to play together again.
“I really do believe it will happen when it’s supposed to,” Lundstedt said. “People are being forced to make incredibly difficult sacrifices right now. Postponing a Broadway debut feels incredibly doable in comparison.”