OP ED: If I Had Booked Annie as a Kid Maybe I Wouldn’t Have to Do This

PC: Goldstar.com

The time has come for me to get this off my chest. Many in my family and among my friends and lovers have asked me, why Cassandra? Why have chosen this itinerant life as an actor? Who hurt you? The truth, dear reader, is darker than you know. There is an all-consuming rage that fueled me these many years. Through theater school, early morning open calls and many a humiliating day job. Let me take you back, dear reader, to a simpler time. The year was 2006. The place? Waterville Middle School. Ms. Temperly had just announced that Spring Play that year would be the seminal classic Annie: The Musical, a hero’s journey featuring a scrappy little belting orphan and her canine sidekick. I knew in that moment, I was destined to lead the cast to greatness. I had been singing “Tomorrow” since before I could talk.

When auditions came around, tragedy struck. The only boy signed up to try out was little Lucas Popkin. With his angelic voice and his brother Jeremy’s command performance as Snoopy at the forefront of everyone’s mind that year, we all knew he was the shoe in for Daddy Warbucks. But when we were paire at callbacks, I towered over him in my jazz shoes. I cursed my tall mother and father as the image of a curly red wig floated away from me in my mind’s eye.

Sure enough, when the cast list was posted the following day, Lucas’s name was there at the top next to “Daddy Warbucks” while mine was halfway down the page with the sad moniker “Pepper + Chorus”

Although my hopes were dashed, the fire was kindled. Out of the ashes I rose, stronger than before, but visibly changed, hardened, yet cleareyed in my goal. Like Marius after the barricade, I would go on. But unlike Marius, I was not motivated by the love of Cosette, but by the hatred of everything that Pepper represents. From now on, I would be second to no one. And no scrawny pre-pubescent boy would ever get in my way again.

I guess, all this is to say, Ms. Temperly, this is for you. If you’d cast me as Annie, maybe I’d be a doctor by now.