Wonderful Broadway Dad
Wonderful Town star Gregg Edelman was Tony-nominated for his performances in Into The Woods, 1776, Anna Karenina and City of Angels and has numerous other stage credits, but here he lets us in on a little secret: raising two little ones--with wife, actress Carolee Carmello--might be his toughest and most rewarding gig yet. Happy Father's Day, Gregg!
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In honor of the annual celebration of surviving another year of male parenting, Broadway.com has asked me to ruminate on parenting in the theater. Well, even though I don't do this sort of thing for a living I figure, what the heck. I've been reviewed by John Simon. You can't scare me. I'm game.
Before going any further, you need to know that I do not hate my children. I love being a father. Well, I love being a father 96% of the time. I state this because parenting stories are a lot like stories of visits to the motor vehicle facility. The worse they sound, the more impressive the feat that you walked out of the facility with your new license in hand without losing your mind. Therefore, when I tell you that one of my children was solely responsible for the big blackout of 2003, I may be slightly exaggerating. After all, changing all those diapers has to earn you something in this world.
Hands down, the hardest thing about being a parent who works in the theater is the lack of sleep. Now, I know all parents are sleep-deprived but when you get five hours of sleep interrupted five or six times by bad dreams, tummy aches, and nose bleeds and then find yourself center stage in a Broadway musical singing the 11 o'clock number, believe me, you'd sell your soul for another hour of rest. Heck, you'd sell your wife's soul for a 45-minute nap. But hold on, I get ahead of myself.
My wife, Carolee Carmello and I live with our two beautiful children, Zoe, eight, and Ethan, three, in a 95-year-old house that, conservatively speaking, needs a lot of work. To give you an idea of how much work, we have poured every available dollar into renovations and we still call it "the haunted house." Anyway, our day begins at 7:15am. My wife and I set off a couple of fire crackers to wake up our daughter and proceed with the morning ritual of getting Zoe off to school: making a snack, making a lunch, checking homework, cooking breakfast, combing and braiding her hair, cooking her second breakfast, making play dates, canceling play dates, filling out strange forms from the school, and finally, walking her to school. After you've done each and every thing you think you need to do, there's always something you've forgotten. That's OK, though. There is a certain comfort in knowing that no matter how hard you try, you will always forget something.
Now that one child is off to school, Carolee and I can turn our focus to our careers, the 95-year-old house, at least one car in need of costly repairs and of course, our youngest, Ethan. Rather than risk sending myself into an anxiety attack, I will cut short the never-ending "to do" list by saying every single thing I have and have not mentioned requires my wife and I to use our voices...or rather, what's left of our voices. Remember, we only got five hours of sleep last night and yesterday was a two-show day.
In a nutshell, talking all day and no sleep equals no voice. Drink all the herbal tea and eat all the Ricolas you want. If you don't have enough sleep, you will be piecing together scraps of your head and chest voices to get through the ever-approaching evening performance.
Ah, but theater fans, take heart. Just when you think that Gregg won't make it to Wonderful Town tonight, the miracle of a child's love comes to the rescue. Being the son or daughter of an actor is to know the meaning of the phrase "vocal rest." Now for those of you who don't know, "vocal rest" is when you consciously don't speak for a day or longer so that your vocal chords get a chance to heal. Short of steroid use, it's the only thing that works. One of the great things about my kids is that they know what "vocal rest" is, can empathize with Mommy and Daddy's plight, and can use the phrase in a sentence. I've heard my little Ethan say, "That's all right, Daddy. I'm on vocal rest, too." Pretty powerful medicine.
Complain all you want but when a little fellow that you've fed and bathed comforts you, there is a seismic shift in your life. The emotional return on your parental investment is exponential. The vocal and physical fatigue, the mental exhaustion doesn't go away, but they do seem to ease a bit. During those life-changing moments, I have a very predictable response. I do some serious tearing up.
I've always been a bit of a softy. Long before the kids came along, Carolee had caught me too many times misty-eyed at TV commercials and nicknamed me "crybaby." The funny thing is that I didn't really mind it. Not because I had reached some supreme level of maturity but because I was in love with Carolee, and I kind of liked the new ability to let down my hair with her. Well, 10 years later, I now have Zoe and Ethan and feel the same way about them. The three of them surround me with a love and a friendship that I treasure more than anything else. That support is the fuel that keeps me going even when my crazy life as actor and father and owner of a 95-year-old house threaten to send me to my therapist which I can't afford anymore because I am an actor and a father and I own a 95-year-old house.
So, it's hard to sleep five hours a night, parent all day and perform on Broadway at night, but as I said to Ethan just the other day, "Ethan, you give me perspective!" He looked at me for a second, burst into a big belly laugh and said, "Daddy, you give me deplective!!!" I'm not sure what my family has planned for Father's Day but as far as I'm concerned, I have my present already. I've got deplective.