Master Class with Liza

During my second year in grad school, it was announced to us by the head of our voice department, with great aplomb and pomposity, that we would be having a “master class with Liza Minelli”. The department-head was her personal voice coach, and basically had an “in” with Liza.

I just want to get one thing straight before I launch into my tale of woe and cruelty (because I am probably going to say some cruel things about Liza):

In her day, in her prime, Liza Minelli was a genius. But along with her obvious gift, came a host of evils. Narcissism, alcoholism, self-destructive tendencies – all of which have basically resulted in Liza losing her voice. She can’t sing anymore.

I know it’s very easy to make fun of her now – she is kind of ridiculous now – yes. And her pop album (Liza with a Z) was ALWAYS mockery-worthy. If you ever need a good laugh, and if you get off on someone else doing something really reaaaaallly embarrasing, I highly suggest you find it, and listen to it with a raucous group of friends. My friend Mitchell and I used to BLAST it, during college, listening, singing along, and making fun of it riotously, all at the same time. What I am trying to say is is that it’s not like she’s on the level of, say, Siegfried and Roy, or something. The woman truly had a gift. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but I don’t really feel like debating it, because it’s completely subjective – what I am saying is is that you can’t argue with her accomplishments, and that she once had great acclaim.

Mitchell said about her once, “She commits – and FULLY – to the craziest things onstage. Like – someone with a normal ego would say – ‘Uh. No. I’m not going to do that.’ But Liza DOES.”

Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she flopped. That’s what happens when you take risks.

HOWEVER. My encounter with her, on the day of the Master Class, is worthy of a Tennessee Williams one-act.

How far the great have to fall.

It was only funny AFTERWARDS. While it was happening, I was a writhing mess of embarrassment and agony. My friend Jen, who was also in the Master Class, actually started to weep at one point. It was a truly traumatic experience. Which is hysterical. In retrospect.

So. Big fanfare. “Liza’s coming! Liza’s coming! Liza’s coming!”

Normally, we had class in little classroom with a piano, but for Liza, we moved into Tishman, at the New School – a huge echoey auditorium, with a grand piano. A bit more welcoming and appropriate for LIZA. A couple of students were chosen to be guinea pigs. Ahem. A couple of students were going to sing, and Liza was going to work with them on their songs.

The class gathered in Tishman. There was a bit of ghoulish curiosity in all of us. To see Liza, in the flesh. What would she be like? What did the next hour hold for us?

I sat with one of my best friends in school, Wade, a crazy cynical Texan. Wade is one of the greatest and funniest men I have ever known. Sitting next to him was a mistake because there were a couple of times when I almost started guffawing like a lunatic during the Master Class, because of some caustic thing Wade whispered to me. Or, he didn’t even need to whisper to me. He and I would just glance at each other, and I would be DONE.

Class was supposed to begin at 4 pm, so we all gathered in the auditorium at five of 4.

4 p.m. came and went. There were no “authority figures” around. None of our teachers had showed up. There was no Liza. It was just us. We were waiting.

Waiting for Liza.

Finally, at about 4:25 – (and yes, we did wait that long. All of our anticipation and ghoulish curiosity completely disappeared in the wait. It was like we were in grade school, and the teacher stepped out for a minute. Complete mayhem ensued. We leapt up onto the cavernous stage and did imitations of our teachers, we did imitations of each other, we did hostile imitations of the dean of the school, we shouted, we hooted, we hollered, we were completely out of control - and we were all ADULTS.) Anyway -

4:25 arrives, and all discipline has disappeared, and this is when Liza and the head of the voice department decided to show up.

The door at the back of the aisle opened suddenly. A couple of my classmates were engaged in some hostile improvisational skit up on the stage, involving imitations of a couple of our teachers – and so we were so busted. We bustled back into our seats, staring up the aisle in ghoulish curiosity at Liza. Our teacher for the day.

Liza was surrounded by the entire voice department. All 4 teachers were huddled around her.

She needed the support of 4 people to walk down the looooong aisle to the stage.

At times, she seemed about ready to collapse into a quivery mess, her knees kept buckling under her, and she would wildly stagger about, her legs going this-a-way, that-a-way … and our whole voice department would stagger about after her, waiting to catch her if she fell.

Our mood of slap-happy ghoulishness disappeared at the sight of Liza. Who was obviously a wreck.

We sat quietly. Staring back at her, as she staggeringly approached us.

Now, for her outfit:

She was wearing a big triangular-shaped BRIGHT RED woolen coat – literally, it came out from her neck into a triangle, and it stopped just above her knees. Then, coming out from beneath the triangle, were two absolute stick-figure legs, encased in black spandex. Stick legs emerging from the massive red triangle.

Later, when I was describing the debacle to Mitchell, I said, choosing my words carefully, “In her outfit, Liza looked like … she looked like … I guess she looked like a bloated tick.”

We expected Liza Minelli to come teach our Master Class, and instead we were faced with a bloated tick.

Years later, I had completely blocked out the whole Master Class, because it was way too disturbing. Yet for Mitchell (who wasn’t even there) it remained a vivid memory. He said to me once, “Oh, member when Liza Minelli showed up and she was a bloated tick…”

I BURST out laughing and said, “Bloated tick??? That is so HOSTILE! And hilarious!!”

There was a pause, and then Mitchell said flatly, “Sheila, I’m quoting you.”

Liza’s hair was short (of course) – and she had a terrible case of bed head. Her hair was all squashed off to one side, and then the back was COMPLETELY flat. As though someone had held a plate onto the back of her head.

And the woman could not walk.

Unfortunately, none of you are with me in person right now – because I do a hell of an imitation of Liza Minelli’s stagger-walk down the aisle.

Imagine this: you set your right foot out to take a step, but instead of putting it down directly in front of you, you scoop it waaaaaaaay out to the side, and – without putting your foot down, you then scoop it waaaaaay back in, across your other leg – and then you finally put your foot down on the ground. A wild perverse dance-step. If you try to walk like that, you will lose your balance. You will look very wobbly.

And when I saw her bedhead, coupled with the fact that she was half an hour late, coupled with the crazy woman walk comin’ at me, I realized that she probably had slept the entire day away, and the entire voice department, alarmed, had raced to her apartment, woken her up out of her drugged-out sleep, slapped some clothes on her which happened to make her look like a bloated tick, didn’t even run a comb through her hair, carried her into a cab, took her downtown, and then presented her to us, like: TA-DA, as though everything was normal.

It was SICK. It would be like taking a tour of some famine-struck country, and you’re in a limo, and your tour guide keeps babbling about how happy the people are, and how great everything is, and yet – out the window you see stark misery.

Like: this woman needs to be in a HOSPITAL. Not teaching a Master Class!

The head of our voice department had a placid (and panicked) beam of pride on his face, as he held onto the staggering bloated tick.

He announced, “Class! I give to you: Miss … Liza Minelli!”

Her eyelids were drooping down over her eyeballs compulsively, and her knees kept bobbling, and she swooped her head around to the class, smiling at us in a profoundly intimate and intensely disturbing way.

She had no idea where she was.

Just the FACT that I was sitting next to Wade meant that I was in trouble. In terms of laughing inappropriately.

Liza was helped into a seat in the front row. She said nothing to us. I don’t think she COULD speak at that point. She was obviously on some kind of drugs. From my vantage point, now that I was sitting behind her, all I could see was the flat-back of her bed-head, and the red triangle of her coat ballooning out into the seats next to her.

She did not lead the Master Class. The head of our voice department said, “Matt … let’s start with you.”

I cannot begin to describe to you the vibe in that auditorium. Nobody could even BREATHE. Liza was this bobble-headed bloated tick in the front row. It was so disturbing.

Matt goes up onto the stage, Les D. (our accompanist) took his place at the grand. Matt, politely addressing Liza (who could not have cared less), said, “I’ll be singing blah blah blah today.”

Then he sang.

When he finished, silence descended on all of us, as we waited for Liza to take over. Nobody said a word. Nobody moved. Wade reached out and gripped my hand. I couldn’t look at him. Someone needed to take the reins, and quickly … I looked at Liza, in the front row, and – during Matt’s song – her head had literally fallen back onto the back of her chair – nose up to the air – and she was FAST asleep. Her mouth was open, people. She was conked out, the entire time of Matt’s song. And not just dozing in boredom, trying to hide it. This woman was openly FAST ASLEEP.

At this point, I started to get angry.

Not at Liza. But at the powers-that-be. They should have just canceled the damn class. This was ridiculous. This was so embarrassing. I thought I would die of embarrassment.

Matt, standing up onstage, glanced down at Liza. He obviously saw that she had just entered a deep REM cycle, so he just stood there like an orphan … wondering what he should do, wondering who would save him … should he bark out: “Hey! SLEEPY! You with me??” He just stood up there, arms hanging awkwardly, with this odd look of polite embarrassment on his face.

I was gripping Wade’s hand. “This is awful,” I whispered.

Wade was starting to get hysterical. I could feel it.

Department-head nudged Liza awake.

I am not exaggerating when I say she snorted as she woke up.

She had missed the entire song.

In this completely dazed drugged-out voice (and yet so completely recognizable as Liza’s), she said up to him, “I’m sorry, darling. Darling, I’m so sorry. Could you run that by me one more time?”

It was at this point that Wade silently and unobtrusively got up and left the auditorium. He couldn’t take it anymore.

So Matt politely ran through his song one more time.

During the song, the entire class nervously kept our eyes on the black head in the front row. Nobody paid attention to Matt. I saw Liza fall in and out of sleep about 10 times. It was like that guy on the bus you sometimes see, head flopping to one side, jerking himself awake, head flopping off to one side again, then jerking himself awake – over and over and over and over again. Sometimes she jerked herself awake with more violence than other times, jumping up in her chair, other times was more subtle. But this woman was obviously slipping into a perpetual coma all through Matt’s song.

Matt knew it, too, as he sang. He said to me later, “I kept thinking – I don’t know what to do. Should I stop? Should I just stop the whole class?”

Matt finished “running it by Liza one more time”, and then waited. We all waited.

Liza then decided to teach. Which was even more awful than the narcolepsy. She stood up, and promptly fell right back down. 3 voice teachers leapt out of their chairs immediately to help her up. Liza decided she wanted to be up on the stage with Matt. So that she could teach.

I was terrified. I thought I was going to witness something awful. Like – the disintegration of a human being’s personality. I thought she might start to … tell us stories of her life, or start to try to sing for us, or suddenly start to weep like a gibbering chimpanzee … It felt like anything could happen.

Frighteningly, she refused help in getting up the stairs.

It took her 10 minutes to climb the 6 stairs up to the stage. At every moment, she looked like she would collapse. Her teeny black-spandex stick legs were bucking about wildly, emerging from under the enormous red triangle.

Then there she was up onstage, untethered, no stair railing, nothing. Just Liza and Matt.

Matt was staring at her with a look of barely concealed terror.

(Later, as you can imagine, the entire class laughed about our Master Class with such abandon that the humor STILL has not died – and when we run into each other, we still reference it.)

Matt was alone. With the swaying bloated tick coming at him, saying absolutely incomprehensible things in a slurred incomprehensible voice.

It went like this:

“Well, darling, I think you’re just wonderful…I really do, darling … wonderful … just wonderful, darling … who ever taught you how to be so wonderful, darling? … I think you need to flow with it more … you know, darling? … and what I like to do is to put my hand on the piano and just feel the flow, darling, feel the flow … come over here with me .. come to the piano, darling …”

Matt obeyed. I mean, what are you gonna do when Liza tells you to “come to the piano, darling”…

“Let’s feel the music together now, darling…”

Les, our hilarious cynical pianist who always looked annoyed about life in general, began to play some random song, with this look of wounded pissed-off dignity on his face. I loved Les.

Matt was trapped, with his hand beneath Liza’s. Matt was trying to feel the music, in front of the whole class, with Liza 10 inches away from his face, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“I’d like to hear you do it again, darling …” (or, with all the slurring, it sounded like this:
“mmmmIdliket’hearyoudoooitagainnn,darlingallrightdarlingallright
….”)

Then, of course, it took her 10 minutes to stagger her way off the stage before Matt could try it again. And, of course, with such unclear suggestions, he sang the song pretty much the same way as before. And Liza sat in the front row again, dozing off, jerking herself awake, dozing off, jerking herself awake, dozing off…

At one point, Jen, my dear friend and roommate, sitting a couple rows ahead of me, turned around to look at me, and she had tears running down her face.

It truly was abominable. It was shatteringly embarrassing to be in her presence. Which is why Wade left the room. I longed to be with him. I longed to be anywhere but there.

We went through the ENTIRE charade with 2 more students. Nobody intervened. We had to go on with the pretense that we were having a normal Master Class. I wanted to stand up and scream: “This is RIDICULOUS AND A WASTE OF TIME.”

Our routine:
– Student goes up onstage.
– Sings. Liza sleeps through the whole thing.
– Liza is then nudged awake. Murmurs in a slurred voice, “Could you run that by me one more time, darling?”
– Song sang a second time. Liza sleeps through the whole thing, and is nudged awake periodically by head of voice department.
– Then comes a litany of incomprehensible comments.

“darlingyou’resowonderful…truly…. yoursingingiswonderful…”

At one point, she mentioned “mama” – and I do admit I felt a shiver of a thrill. “Mama used to say…”

The last student goes up onstage, now KNOWING what is in store, now DREADING the ordeal before him, cursing the day of his birth, wishing he had never been born, knowing he has to deal with a staggering drugged-out bedheaded Liza as his teacher, and somehow be polite and get through it without falling apart. Same routine.

3rd student sings as Liza takes a nice long SNORING nap.

The whole thing was tragic. And PAINFUL to witness.

I felt completely abused afterwards. Like: I had been subjecting to something I did not want to see. I felt trapped. I felt PISSED.

The class FINALLY ended and I got the hell out of there, and met up with Wade, where we promptly began to find the humor in it, and we ended up laughing so hard that we could no longer speak, and our stomachs hurt the next day. We stood in a subway station, and I did an imitation of her terrifying stagger across the stage at Matt, and I thought Wade was going to jump in front of a train he was laughing so hysterically.

The next week, Liza left a message for our class:

“I am so sorry I let you all down. I had just had back surgery and was out of it from the pain killers. Please let me make it up to you, darlings. I would like to do another class with you all next week.”

The 2nd Master Session with Liza was set up for the following week, but I cut class and went out carousing with Wade instead.

I will be haunted by the image of the bloated tick for the rest of my days. I love hyperbole.