BY LUCIA MAURO
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"We
have years to go before 90 percent
of the theatre community across the United States will accept me as an actress." |
For Alexandra Billings–an artist capable of segueing with aplomb from acting to singing to directing to writing–2002 was a banner year. Besides performing in About Face’s Xena Live! and retooling her one-woman show, Before I Disappear, for an off-Broadway run, she made her directorial debut with Vampire Lesbians of Sodom for Broutil & Frothingham Productions at Theatre Building Chicago. Billings even shot an ABC-TV movie, scheduled to air in March, and has a regular cabaret gig every Friday night at Gentry on State.
When I caught up with the ubiquitous Chicago artist during the holidays, she was playing Ruth in her first operetta, Pirates of Penzance, at Light Opera Works. In Billings’ charmingly direct style, she asked if we could do a phone interview on New Year’s Day–the day after Pirates closed. "That way," she quipped, "I could be naked and smoking in my warm little bed."
You can’t get more signature Alex than that.
But during our spirited–and spiritually charged–conversation, Billings shared honest details about breaking into the performing arts as a transgendered person, living with AIDS, assessing her rise to iconic status in Chicago, looking toward the future and, like the title of her CD, basking in "Being Alive." I can’t say for sure whether she was smoking or naked during our interview. But Billings is rarely shy about baring her soul.
So much of her life is encompassed in Before I Disappear, which she wrote and starred in at Bailiwick in 1997 and then took to Boston. Billings updated the script, adding a section on the strong sense of closure she reached upon the recent passing of her parents, and will open the show for a limited engagement in March at Bailiwick. From there, Before I Disappear–produced by Ralph Lampkin of Lampkin Music Group–will move to The Producers Club in New York City. It will then return to Bailiwick for the 15th anniversary of the Pride Series this summer.
"It’s been a challenge to revisit the show," says Billings, 40, of Before I Disappear. "In Boston, one of the reviews basically said transgendered, AIDS, ho-hum–and that hurt. I can’t read other people judging my life like that. But when I went back to the script, I knew I had to make it more 2003-ish.
"Now AIDS and being transgendered are not that big a deal. Yet people are still dying from AIDS, and being transgendered is not universally accepted. Even though I’ve been fortunate to work as long as I have in theatre, we have years to go before 90 percent of the theatre community across the United States will accept me as an actress."
Billings, however, has broken through numerous barriers–and not without her share of frustrations. An actress with unselfconscious star power and the ability to move from campy comedy (like Second City Theatricals’ Hamlet: The Musical) to serious drama (like Court’s Nora and Steppenwolf’s Space) as well as several HealthWorks’ shows, she also teaches "View Points" with director Tina Landau at Steppenwolf. Yet Billings is the first to admit that she rarely gets cast in shows she auditions for.
"What usually happens is that someone in the theatre community thinks I would be right for a show and asks me. People have been good to me that way. It’s interesting how being transgendered is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has worked in my favor. On the other, it’s caused a lot of doors to close in my face. I was cast in a play, to remain unnamed, but the author stepped in and said that she didn’t want me in the role because she thought I wasn’t 'female’ enough."
Alexandra Billings was born Scott Billings in Inglewood, California. Her parents divorced when Billings was seven, and she moved to Schaumburg about two years later with her mother and stepfather. Every summer, Scott would visit his dad–the music director at Harbor College and conductor for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera House–in California.
"That was really my first experience in the theatre," says Billings. "My dad would let me build sets or work in the make-up department. I once gave Karen Carpenter a makeover. Seriously. Then eventually he’d give me small roles in his musicals. I was 'The Child’ in Jesus Christ Superstar and an extra in The King and I (with Yul Bryner), Can-Can and Pippin.
"My Dad and I had truly magical summers. He always said to me: 'Be grateful for any job in theatre. If you’re Spear Carrier Number Three, be the best damn one in the bunch.’ I’ve never forgotten that."
Billings’ relationship with her mother was not as idyllic, and it took several years before she accepted her son’s desire to be a woman. At the age of 16, Billings tried to commit suicide.
"I was sure I would live the rest of my life as Scott," she explains, "and I just couldn’t bear it anymore.
"AND, I was living in Schaumburg at the time. You don’t see too many transsexuals in Schaumburg. I really thought I was insane, and it was the only way out. I took an overdose of Tylenol. Luckily, two of my friends came over and found me in my bedroom slumped over my bed, and they rushed me to the hospital and pumped my stomach. Things really changed between my mother and me after that."
Billings moved out at 18 and pursued a theatre career–working for a time at the Baton and enduring an especially abusive relationship (all of which is chronicled in Before I Disappear). But the light at the end of the tunnel for her has always been her best friend–and now wife of five years–director Chrisanne Blankenship.
They met in drama class at Schaumburg High School and were cast as the twins in Twelfth Night. They remained inextricably close over the years, moved in together in 1992 and were married in a ceremony at Bailiwick in 1997. "I’m so lucky," shares an emotional Billings, "I’m married to the person I’ve loved my whole life."
When asked if she prefers to be called transgendered, Billings laughs and tells me, "Honey, when I was 12 years old, the only trans I knew was Trans Am. About eight years ago, I met someone at a library who was doing research on the transgender community. I still didn’t know what that was.
"But what I’m hearing from the kids is that transgender is the umbrella that encompasses transvestites, pre- and post-operative transsexuals, etc. I use transgender and transsexual interchangeably, but I really don’t care for labels of any kind."
The transgender issue, however, kick-started her television debut. Last year, Billings decided not to try out for TV or film anymore–a medium for which she had been auditioning, with no success, since 1987. Then Claire Simon called her and urged her to audition for a transsexual character in a new Disney TV movie.
"A role of a transsexual," recalls Billings. "I said no; I thought I’d be typecast for the rest of my life. Then I read the script, and I liked the character. She’s not a finger-snapping drag queen; she’s just a funny person who happens to be transgendered."
She prepared intensely for the audition, focusing on toning down her larger-than-life persona and injecting her own improvised witticisms into the scenes. Within 48 hours, Disney hired her and flew her to Hollywood this past fall for three weeks of shooting. The movie is called Romy and Michelle: Behind the Velvet Rope, a prequel to the film, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (which starred Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino). This version, with two unknown young actors in the title leads, follows their quest to be back-up dancers for Paula Abdul (who is in the movie) after high school in the 1980s.
Billings’ character, Donna, is their surrogate guardian and catalyst for their adventures. They stay at Donna’s apartment when the character goes to London for sex-reassignment surgery. Donna then has, what Billings calls, a "coming off party."
She points out that getting used to a film set was one of her biggest challenges. She constantly fretted about not underplaying enough for the camera: "I really thought I was gonna end up looking like Red Skelton!" Billings jokes.
She continues, "In theatre, there’s space between you and the audience. In film, you’re not on a big set; you have three cameras in your face and 15 people standing around you. You have to really focus on the scene."
What was her least favorite film experience?
"Having to get up at five in the morning," she groans. "Everyone on the set was half my age and all chirpy in the morning. My eyelids were hanging down to my chin; my hips were spreading out to the size of China; and I had to have coffee pumped into my veins like an IV."
Nevertheless, Billings insists, "I had the time of my life. I would do it again in a heartbeat."
Billings is on contract with Disney until June–when the production company decides if "Romy and Michelle" will become a TV series (with Billings continuing on as Donna). So, right now, things are up in the air–except for Before I Disappear and Gentry on State. One of her fondest film memories is when the president of ABC shook her hand and told her how proud he was that Billings would be making television history: She is the first real transgendered person to portray a transgendered character on screen.
She’s been making history of another kind. Over 10 years ago, Billings was diagnosed with AIDS. She remembers the doctor telling her that they would try to make her as comfortable as possible for the time she had left. Billings keeps defying the odds. She’s on a strict medicine regimen, and shares how she spent two years in constant pain from the high toxicity levels of the medicine. But she’s learned to live with the disease.
"Chrisanne believes that I’ve stayed alive because I’m happy and doing what I love," stresses Billings. "I need to keep things in order. If my spouse, my friends and my career are first, then the AIDS gets pushed down farther. I take away its power.
"At the same time, because I look good, people forget I have this disease. I want to remind people that AIDS is still here and my time is limited. Part of my job on this earth is to tell people to have safe sex."
Billings also craves the life-affirming energy of an audience–a fact that hit home when she recorded her CD.
"If there are no people, I have no one to give anything to," she insists and adds, "Oh, I’m such a ham. I have to be the center of attention, or I’m not coming to the party."
Then Billings gets serious: "This is gonna sound really melodramatic. But if I don’t have those people in front of me, my soul gets weary. If I go two months without that energy, I get ill and sort of fade away. For me, the audience is oxygen. I can only go so long without it."