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A classic low-cost New York City residency for aspiring actresses – which once housed the likes of Diane Keaton and Kim Cattrall – has reopened, and hopeful residents need to audition to get a spot.
The Rehearsal Club, which first opened in 1913 but closed in 1979, has found a new home in a Manhattan apartment complex after a team of former residents banded together to revive the organization.
Residents at the new club pay $1,000 a month to cohabitate with likeminded ladies, but to get a bed in the shared bunk rooms they need to submit an audition tape that demonstrates their talent, commitment, and passion for making it in the arts.
Formerly in a pair of brownstones on West 53rd Street, the club has made its new home in a wing of the Webster Apartments on West 34th Street, which provides housing for young female students and interns.
The Webster Apartments on West 34th Street where the new Rehearsal Club is based
Diane Keaton lived in the Rehearsal House when she first arrived in New York City
The original Rehearsal Club was home to generations of young women who moved to New York City and went on to become stalwart faces on the stage, and in the movies and television.
Prominent former residents besides Keaton and Cattrall include Carol Burnett, Blythe Danner, Shirley Booth, Sandy Duncan, and Cynthia Darlow – who played the lovable secretary Mrs. Moskowitz in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
The halls of the old Rehearsal Club were filled with female voices singing scales alongside the pounding of pianos, ladies dancing up and down the hallways ahead of auditions, and a sense of sisterhood between residents.
‘Here we were, all these young hopefuls,’ Gale Patron, 77, a former resident and now the club’s president, told The New York Times. ‘We would trade dresses for particular auditions. We were so supportive of one another because we were all fighting the same fight. We became a family.’
Residents at the old Rehearsal Club on West 34th Street. The old club combined two brownstones
Carol Burnett as a young woman in 1963. She lived in the Rehearsal Club when she first moved to New York City
Actresses like Ginger Rogers (left) and Blythe Danner (right) both lived in the Rehearsal Club
Kim Catrall in 1979. She lived at the Rehearsal Club when she was an aspiring actress
The old Rehearsal Club slept about 40 women who would bunk up in shared rooms, in alcoves, and sometimes even on cots set up in the hallways.
Living there in the 1950s cost about $18 a week – daily meals included – according to Carole Burnett, 89, who moved to NYC in 1954.
‘The Rehearsal Club saved my life,’ she told The Times. ‘I had no idea where I was going to stay. I was so naïve. A girl who had graduated from UCLA ahead of me gave me her number and told me to get in touch with her if I ever got to the city.’
Carol Burnett lived in the Rehearsal club in 1954 when she first moved to New York City
Cynthia Darlow – who played the lovable secretary Mrs. Moskowitz in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – lived at the Rehearsal Club when she was young
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Burnett shared her room with four other ladies during her stay at the club.
‘There was Joyce, who’d been around the block a few times. She was kind of hardened,’ she said. ‘And then there was the Stanislavski actress who never bathed, and an English girl who was bright and cute and funny and was into Spanish dancing.’ She also shacked up with Yvonne Craig, who played Bat Girl on the 1960s Batman series.
‘There were always hose and underwear hanging from the shower rack. But it was wonderful. I made friends. I learned the ropes about how to go out and pound the pavement and get an agent.’
After losing its tax-exempt status in 1979, the club was closed and the old building where it resided was eventually closed down.
A bedroom inside the new Rehearsal Club at the Webster Apartments in NYC
A library and study room inside the Rehearsal Club’s home at the Webster Apartments
A lounge inside the Webster Apartments, where the Rehearsal Club is now based
More than two decades later in 2005, former Rehearsal Club resident Kathleen Conry, now 75, reached out to other alums while she while looking for cast and crew for a play she was staging.
Around a dozen women got together, and had such a great time remembering their days at the club that they continued meeting up and growing the community of alums. They even staged a centennial gala in 2013.
‘I had no idea where any of this would go,’ Conry told The Times. ‘The goal was simply to reconnect, but we all thought it would be great to have another Rehearsal Club residence.’
During those meetings, a few of the women got the idea to bring the club back to life. As word began spreading about the possible project, the Webster Apartments director reached out to the women spearheading the project to say they could be open to having them set up shop in their building.
Then three years ago the women set up a fundraiser and collected $225,000 and opened the new club.
A patio overlooking the city at the Webster Apartments where the Rehearsal Club is based
The cafeteria at the Webster Apartments where the Rehearsal Club is based
A lawn outside the Webster Apartments where the Rehearsal Club is based
The new $1000 per month rent includes free laundry, WiFi, 24-hour security, access to classes and workshops, along with two meals a day and a rehearsal space.
To get a room, hopefuls need to submit to an audition based on their craft – actresses, singers, and dancers submit tapes, while the likes of writers and set designers would submit portfolios.
Those applications are reviewed by the club’s audition panel, and candidates are interviewed by Zoom.
‘We’re always looking for talent and it’s very exciting when you see it,’ said audition panel member Andrea Frierson. She told The Times about 50 applications were reviewed last year.
She said that even if a candidate’s talent isn’t quite at the top of the pile, passion and dedication factor in consideration.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
