OH, IT WILL HAPPEN SOMEDAY! by Diana Rissetto

Diana Rissetto is a native New Yorker currently in the midst of her quarterlife crisis. She has been published in Teen People magazine, was featured on Access Hollywood as “the Teen Who Touched Frank Sinatra’s Heart” and has naturally curly hair. She hopes to write for the stage and screen…someday…and would like to sing and dance on Broadway as well, but she can’t sing and dance. Her two current goals are to meet Prince William (just so he can shake her hand and go, “Ah, yes … that is an easy name for me to remember.”) and to do something that will get her famous enough so she can be a star on Dancing with the Stars.

When I was 21, I got my first New York City job. Nothing in the world made me feel more proud than to be able to say that! In fact, even just going on the interview was enough of a thrill for me…it all could have ended there and I would have been happy enough.

I was working as an intern for a Broadway public relations firm. Broadway had become a very sacred part of my life, and most weekends, I’d hop the train from New Jersey and get off at Penn Station and enter the magical world of the New York City theatre district. I lived for student rush tickets and for meeting my idols at the stage door after the show. Bernadette Peters had given me hope that a small, pale, curly-haired girl like myself could become a huge sensation. 

For the summer before my senior year of college, I worked part-time at Barnes and Noble and worked at the office four days a week. I barely slept, and my mother became concerned that I looked too thin from running around and not eating enough, but I was thrilled as I lived the life of a typical intern … I was getting paid $5 a day (that was actually for transportation, but considering I was coming in from NJ, my transportation was $18 a day. And it didn't even count for college credits. So, that internship actually cost me! (I think it's probably considered slave labor somewhere.)  I fetched coffee, looked for a nanny for my boss’s child, and, in one afternoon, made dozens of calls to bakeries trying to find out just who had the best brownies in New York City. We were trying to lure a certain actress to come to a party we were throwing, and word got out that this actress simply adored brownies! (Yes, I am sure she did nothing but sit around and eat brownies and watch the Lifetime Movie Channel.)

My fellow intern and I made phone call after phone call. The exchange went something like this:

Us: Hello, are your brownies especially spectacular?
Bakery: They’re … good …
Us: No! They have to be more than good! They have to be spectacular!

Our boss stood there and coached us on what to say, telling us that if we were going to be publicists, we NEEDED to learn how to ask things like that.

The next day, I rode in a cab to the Upper East Side to deliver especially spectacular brownies to one of Primetime television’s biggest stars. I handed the package to her doorman and caught a glimpse of how the other half lived.
           
She didn’t come to the party … but I’m sure she loved the brownies. “Brownie Delivery Girl to the Stars.” That would look nice on my resume, I thought. This was part of playing the game, I told myself. This was just a pit stop! Today, I am calling bakeries asking them how they’re brownies are…tomorrow, I am running the world!

Thursday in the city in the summertime (at lunchtime in midtown) is a magical thing. From 12:30 to 2:00, the casts of all the different Broadway shows perform, and our story takes place on such a Thursday. That entire summer, I kept dreaming about the afternoon that the show my office (a little show called Chicago) represented performed, and how I would get to stand under the tent with the stars of four of Broadway’s biggest shows. I would attend these concerts every year, and sit on the grass sweating with the other folks on their lunch breaks. This year would be different. This year, I was on the other end!

On that magical Thursday, I helped carry feathers over to the park (for Billy Flynn to sing "All I Care About is Love" with, obviously) and tried to suppress my giddiness. I knew my constant enthusiasm and fascination for Broadway grated on my boss' nerves, and I honestly couldn't blame them ... I was pretty obsessed.

This is why I had slaved and suffered all summer long…to stand under an air-conditioned tent… an air-conditioned tent!!! AN AIR-CONDITIONED TENT!!!!! …  with the stars of four of Broadway’s biggest shows. When my boss told me to take some Vitamin Water from the bin (it was roughly 300 degrees that day) I looked up at him in awe and wondered if I really could just take this sacred Vitamin Water from the same bin that the Broadway stars were reaching into. To this day, red Vitamin Water will always be special to me, even though I have long-traded it for sugar-free green tea.

Thoroughly Modern Millie was one of my favorite shows running.  It was bright and fun and happy.  I connected so much with Millie … she was just a simple young girl, but when she started singing and dancing on that stage, all I could think was, “What I wouldn’t give to be her.” I cried every time I saw that show. (Which made no sense, I know, since it was billed as the “feel-good” hit of the year.) And, it also ended with Millie finding out that she really did love Jimmy, even though he didn't have any money...only to learn that Jimmy actually, like, OWNED New York City. What girl doesn't dream of that?

That afternoon, the star (well, actually it was her lovely understudy) of Millie sang “Gimme, Gimme,” the show’s 11o’clock power ballad. (Millie would wear a sparkly red dress when she sang that song, and ended it with her hands thrown into the air. Ah. That’s what life was all about.)

Today, she didn’t wear a sparkly red dress, just a t-shirt with her show’s logo and jeans. Still, I watched in awe, and said out loud to myself (or to anybody who might listen, as I have a habit of often doing), “Every time I see that number performed, I just get so upset because I know I will never be up there!”
           
Because, of course, I couldn’t sing to save my life…or dance…and I wasn’t taking lessons or auditioning in anyway. Yes, it was a pretty safe bet that it really never was going to happen to me, and I had to accept that … sort of … .
           
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a voice say, “Oh, it will happen some day! It will happen!”

I looked up (far far up, as the owner of the voice was over a foot taller than I) to see an impossibly attractive young man with impossibly blue eyes and an incredibly warm smile. (I fought back the urge to laugh in his face and go, "Nope, it really isn't going to happen, but thanks for the encouragement, kind sir!")

He wore Thoroughly Modern Millie t-shirt. He was a chorus boy and an understudy, and that day, he was performing in place of the male lead. We spoke for a few minutes…he really was as kind as his smile implied, and as I walked away that afternoon, I introduced myself and told him it was really nice to talk to him. He said, "It was nice talking to you, too, Diana...I'm Cheyenne! (I did have a brief, "No, really, what's your real name?" thought.)

Thank goodness for Google. Back at the office, I looked up this fellow, who I learned was Cheyenne Jackson (and, yes, Cheyenne really WAS his real name), he was fairly new to the city, and Thoroughly Modern Millie was his Broadway debut. I was able to send him a message through his official website. Within a day, he responded (actually, that was the day of the Blackout of 2003, so it was delayed a bit, because, you know...the city didn't have electricity) and, for some reason that I will never quite understand but am eternally grateful for, that tall good-looking boy in the Thoroughly Modern Millie t-shirt and I struck up a bond via email over the next year.

A year and a half later, I watched and cried (once again, I was crying at a very, very happy show) as he performed the lead in the new musical All Shook Up. It was his first original role, and the audience fell in love with him. His picture was soon on a 30-foot billboard in Times Square and the reviews raved, "A Star is Born!" I couldn't have been prouder of him if he had been my own brother. Just a small-town boy with a dream! I'll always remember that afternoon in Bryant Park and smile.

You just never know who is going to (literally) tap-dance into your life.
When that summer ended, I was terribly sad to leave my internship. (Despite, you know… the tears, the frustration, the lack of salary, and the slavery).  I would no longer be a member of the Broadway community. However, I had something very special to always remind me of this experience … a Playbill from the show Chicagowhich had my name listed next to “Press Intern.” I handed out copies of it to all of my friends and relatives. My name was in a real Broadway Playbill! (I later learned that you cannot eat or pay the rent with a Broadway Playbill with your name listed after “Press Intern.”)

However, I still stare at that page at least once a day and think back to that summer when it wasn’t rare for me to go home in tears some afternoons…but which I would never trade for anything. For three months, I was actually a part of something that I loved as much as the New York City theatre community. That summer, it really felt like anything was possible. I finally felt like I was on my way!