A Chorus Line No. 13 - Trish Garland
- Lauryn Johnson
- Jul 9
- 2 min read
“A new Trish Garland returned to the second workshop. She was nervous but determined to assert herself. ‘I’ll never forget. We had to talk about our holiday. […] Finally they call my name and I get up and I just start talking and everybody started laughing. Nobody laughed in the first workshop, mind you. There was no humor anywhere. Everybody laughed and I looked at Michael and he had this huge smile on his face, and from that moment on, everything completely changed for me.’
“Michael was smiling because a dancer had broken through her natural reserve to express the unique individual he had known was there. Introverted Trish had been the last one to come forward with a character. In the first workshop Michael had reduced her part. Now he began to build it. ‘I got all the lines that didn't work. That's why my part is so non sequitur. 'Oh, it doesn't work? Give it to Trish-she'll make it work.' I had changed what we call in Buddhism 'poison' into medicine. I could have left the show. My innate nature would've led me to leave, to say 'Fuck you. I don't want to do this. I can't deal with it.' Then I would've slit my wrists later, but my good fortune—and I thank Nicholas and Michon [fellow Buddhists]—is that I didn't give up.’”
—What They Did for Love by Denny Martin Flinn
Trish: “To make history in the American musical theatre is something that you hope for or dream about or can’t even dream about. you have this aspiration to be a dancer, and suddenly you get this huge offering and accept it and then find out that it’s even larger than it is. It’s a treasure that allowed me to do many things in my life that I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do, like directing and choreographing. That wouldn’t have happened without Michael. Women weren’t getting the work. I’m forever grateful.”
—The Longest Line by Gary Stevens and Alan George
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