tenderlytwoagainstthree

[tenderlytwoagainstthree]

like a fine skylark: chapter two

eddie roundtree x oc, this chapter ~1.5k

the in-between, the start of the tour, and a whirling reunion.

because who among us hasn’t seen the ep 8 more than a feelin montage and thought “god i wish that were me”

1998

ISABELLA: The days, weeks, months to follow that night were…not quite as magical, for the most part. I’m glad that I’m able to say I was resilient, that I did what I could with what I had, that-through a lot of lonely and disillusioning “starving artist” years-I never lost my passion for my work or my hope for a better life.

After a while, though, the skill of making it through, of finding pockets of joy where you can and fighting tooth-and-nail to create your own opportunities, becomes a skill that you wish you didn’t have to use so often.

It got to the point where I nearly started to wonder whether that party was a mirage. I figured it was likely they’d forgotten me; most of us there were drunk, some high on drugs and some on fatigue, and glowing in a whirl that reminds you you’re alive in a way that gets pretty damn romanticized when you’re months away from it and writing lyrics in a tiny apartment at eleven fifty-four at night with only a very stubborn fly for company. Everyone there was going through a thousand different messes, but at least we were going through them all at the same time, in the same place, intertwining, creating an energy with a campfire’s crackle that…

I thought about it a lot, is what I’m saying. And now, as the Six was rising, each of them got to sing out their problems every night, live on stage, for the whole world to see.

I was quite struck by what Daisy said to you, that it eventually became hell for her to reopen those wounds so often. I’ve definitely felt that too-there is such a fine line we all try to walk, to be earnest in our art without letting it get to an unhealthy place. And yet, at the same time, it can also feel like what Billy said-that a stretch of performances is like hitting the pause button, like everything else just disappears. As that early-twenties girl, I logically knew that all of that drama must have been hell to go through, but I was so young and so desperate for life experience that I longed for the catharsis of it.

Cathy was content to let that party be a memory; she’d had her night with a rockstar, her moment of an LA fantasy, and then had enough life around her to not need anything more. She’s always been blonde, beautiful, brilliant; of course she was getting booked, as she should have been-and still is, if you’ve seen Playbill’s latest news. We’re also doing a concert in New York in a few months-I’ll send you tickets. I adore that woman.

And I wasn’t completely a lost cause. I mean, if I had been, I wouldn’t be here now. Whenever I wasn’t in something, part of me thought I needed a show, but part of me thought I wasn’t supposed to need a show; I was quite frustrated with the idea everyone talked about, that things would come to you when you least expect it or that you had to be at a certain level of mental wellness before the universe deigned to grant you favor. I heard my mother’s voice in my head: that people can tell if you’re anxious, if you want something too badly, and they don’t want to be around that kind of person. At the same time, I was seeing people around me being handed success despite far more harmful issues; it all felt incredibly unfair. I wondered, how could I gain opportunities to do the art I love without losing sight and voice regarding how far we still have to go as an industry?

…And then, during the time when all of this was whirring through my mind at every second of every day, Cathy got us tickets to Daisy Jones and the Six’s world tour. I jumped at the chance to step away from it all, spend time with an old friend, and just be a fangirl for a while.

That was what the Six meant to me at the beginning. See, so many people in the world turn to music, film, TV, theatre, books-all of it-as an escape. But when your career is within that, it doesn’t really function as an escape anymore; of course, consuming art can still be very therapeutic, but it’s often different. That was certainly the case when I was younger and still trying to make a name for myself. But this kind of music just…unlocked something in me, and whenever I was with these people-and those stories are to come-they treated me as an equal and a friend. In those concert venues, no matter how big or small, everyone had one unpretentious and collective goal: to live in the music we loved.

There was a comfort to putting on my favorite crochet top and knowing that I’d blend in near-entirely with all the other girls. There was a comfort to getting caught up in the frenzy and screaming along with everyone when the tour buses pulled into view, high-pitched and free without a panel of directors wondering whether I’d crack. And, of course, there was a comfort to Cathy’s sunny smile and our hand-drawn sign-“LET THE RHYTHM TAKE THE LEAD”-that we couldn’t wait to hold proudly through every song.

In fact, there was so much comfort, allowing me to feel so normal, so human, that I wound up doing something very normal, very human, and very, very stupid.

1976

“Do you think Warren’s gonna remember?” Isabella asked with a teasing nudge to her friend’s shoulder.

“Oh, I hope not,” Cathy laughed. “He’s such a sweetheart, but I don’t think we’d work out well for real. If anyone remembers us, you know it’s gotta be-”

And then the bus started to slow, the fans around them neared a fever pitch of screams, and the redhead started to feel her heart beating out of her ears.

“God, this is so silly,” she could barely get out through her smile as the friends clasped each other’s hands. “We’re grown women, their age, similar fields of career, it was literally just one night, and still I feel-”

“Let it happen! Get out of your head for once, LET YOURSELF FEEL IT!” Cathy exclaimed before holding up their sign with a whoop as the doors opened.

I will, came a thought so clear that it outshone every decibel of chaos around her. I will.

Of the bus that the two girls wound up right by the door to, it was Rod who came out first, saying something that was quite thoroughly drowned out by ecstatic screams.

And then it was Eddie.

The light hit his sunglasses in some miraculous way, allowing her to see his eyes as close to clearly as humanly possible-allowing her to see an immediate and astonished double take.

That same incredibly real smile, nowhere to be seen in the Aurora album photoshoot or in any press release, lit up Eddie’s face as he came down the stairs.

“Holy shit, it’s you.”

“Hello, Eddie Roundtree,” she glowingly repeated for the first time in nearly a year.

“I’d started to think I made that whole conversation up-”

“I did too, some weird fabrication of smoke and loneliness-”

“But of course it was real, you-you’re here, you’re actually-”

“I am,” and by now she was holding his jacket with both hands-

“I just can’t believe-”

“I’ll prove it,” she said, and kissed him.

Her first fleeting thought was that this was very, very stupid, what were you thinking, you weren’t, not at all, this would be a horrid thing to do and completely out of character in any other circumstand then Eddie deepened the kiss, and everything else was gone.

By the time he’d brought a hand to her waist and started to pull her closer, by the time her arms were wrapped around his neck, she suddenly felt the stumble of him being pulled away by something-a something eventually revealed as Warren, who was grinning ear to ear behind sunglasses and a cigarette. With a point and a friendly “hey!” to the girls, the drummer pushed his friend through the rest of the crowd, the latter glancing back with an almost cartoonish bewilderment.

As Graham and Billy passed through the continuing Red Sea of swarming fans and Daisy and Karen could be seen coming from the other bus, the paths eventually closed over, and it became harder and harder to catch a glimpse. With Cathy’s hand on her shoulder and “omigod oh my God, you actually did that” echoing in her ear, Isabella raised her considerable height onto her tiptoes, still in quite a daze. The signs held by those now in front prevented them from getting any further sight of the band, so she let out a disbelieving laugh, turned to her friend, and allowed the moment to sink in as her heartbeat hammered in her throat.

“So…”

“Yeah,” Cathy singsonged, clearly delighted.

Taking her first unshared deep breath in what felt like ages but what was truly seconds ago, Isabella glanced around a bit, bit her lip, then squeezed her friend’s hands and joined in the youthful chorus of high-flying screams.

[tenderlytwoagainstthree]

like a fine skylark: chapter one

eddie roundtree x oc, this chapter ~3.1k

isabella gives her backstory, along with that of her fateful first night meeting the band at camila’s candlelit party.

god, the things i’d give to live in that ep 4 singalong scene

AUTHOR: Tell me about your first encounter with the Six.

ISABELLA: I saw the television broadcast of the Diamond Head Festival. They were…good, God, of course they were great, but what really caught me was the interview afterwards; there was something going on there, something behind the scenes that they evidently weren’t great at keeping behind the scenes. There was a rerun of it later that showed bits of their performance again, and I was hooked, knowing that the energy sizzling on that stage wasn’t manufactured but channeled.

I grew up in a really small town that had very few kids, fewer kids that tolerated being around the red-ringleted girl who cried too much, and fewer still who cared at all about music. My journey with performing seemed to make it both an escape and something to escape from-the industry, that is, for the latter. I started piano lessons at five and voice lessons at ten, all classical-which I still love-but it became all I was known for in my hometown; I didn’t get to truly be a child or a teenager.

Once I got to university, I wasn’t really taken seriously; they thought I was too eager, too passionate in the wrong directions, too naive for thinking of the arts as a calling first and a job second, too anxious to be chosen. In some ways, indeed I was, but that should not lead to shutting a person out of chances to be cast and mature through the work they love. It was as if, the second a professor could tell that a young person unashamedly loved and wanted something, it became their one goal not to let them get it. Most of my peers in the program were so…so frustratingly nonchalant, combined with the same oh-so-subtle playgroundish bullying of my hometown, and the student theatre groups on campus were just about the only people who truly saw me-as a friend, as an artist, as both. Because I was not accepted in the program itself no matter what I did, I had a bit of a crisis of, was I the problem, big fish moves from the small pond to the ocean, was I actually not good enough?

[She bit her lip for a moment, then her tongue.]

Generally, I don’t talk much about those times to reporters, because what you’re supposed to say is, I’m grateful for the education and training that I received through my professors at this storied institution, grateful to have worked with such an illustrious group of classmates, grateful that it all got me where I am today. Anything but excessive gratefulness and humility, and you’re labeled another petty diva who places blame and tears others down. So I tend to focus on what I’m doing now, and all that I’ve accomplished since then; thankfully, although the big fish from the small pond wasn’t recognized in the…medium-sized crook…the ocean treated her far better.

[She smiled.]

Which cannot be said for the other, more popular, fish. The ones who lived in the crook.

…I’ve always thought it an odd metaphor anyway.

Right. Then, “thus goes everyone to the world”.

My time in college-hell, most everything up to then-felt like I was beyond my years in some ways and behind them in others; I graduated having played symphonies and spoken Shakespeare, but had never once been kissed. I was lonely, restless, longing for opportunity; I wanted to be seen, to be plucked out of obscurity by the powers that be, to be good and right and important, but a part of me also wanted nothing more on earth than to let it all go: to have experiences worth writing songs about. So to find out about the Six-a radiant and messy community of people my age, like the one I’d always yearned for-it was something for sure. I went to buy their first record the very next day.

Oh, and it wasn’t just the tension between Daisy and your-and Billy that I noticed in that TV interview. There was a beginning to the clip that I didn’t see mentioned in what the rest of them said; at first, before those two stepped forward, the guy from the station was asking a few questions to the band as a group. Eddie spoke up once, said something offbeat and really insightful about how life on the road affected their music. Then, right smack in the middle of a sentence, Billy shouldered past him-past them all-to the front and center. Just interrupted him with some flippant thing, clearly trying to get the interview over as quickly as possible-he was still pissed at Daisy, who then stepped up next to him, and that’s where the part that you know began. I was curious about what was happening between the two of them, but I also found myself watching Eddie’s face in the back of the group; the TV screen was grainy, sure, but as that early-twenties girl, I’d have sworn to you that I could read every simmering and exhausted thought behind his eyes.

[Here she stopped for a moment, pensive, leaning to one side of her armchair with a hand to her lip.]

I mean, you know-you were-you were there. I saw the documentary. A couple of decades and long-held bitterness made them weary, but those eyes are still…just fucking remarkable.

I had considered making a bet with myself, how long I could stand not bringing him up.

As it turns out, not long.

Did…I mean, was…

AUTHOR: Yes, he mentioned you. Quite a bit, actually.

ISABELLA: Hm.

[Another beat.]

Well, I just about wore out that record. The first time I actually met them was a while later-I was visiting Cathy in LA, one of my few true college friends, who it turns out was a friend of a friend of Camila. So, one night I wound up at hers and Billy’s house, and the band was there.

Actually, I spent most of that night with Karen. I was so intimidated at first-we all know she’s always been cool, ridiculously cool, and I was decidedly not.

But, the piano was there, so I was playing it.

1975

Partway through a flourish of half-untuned keys, Isabella started to sense that she was being watched.

Once the piece was done, that sense was proven right when she turned towards the sofa and came face to face with a face found on her record sleeve.

“You’re really fucking good.”

“...Oh, my God, hi. And thank you. And-you too. And hi.”

Don’t be starstruck, don’t be starstruck.

But the blonde woman only smiled, stood up from the sofa, and offered her a joint.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Isabella Dimant.”

“Shit, that already sounds famous.”

“So I’ve been told,” she smiled as they went across the room. “I’d like to be. Not ridiculously famous, but…solidly recognized.”

“For music, too?”

“Music. Acting. The in-between. Making people feel shit, doing something for the world with what I’ve got.”

By now, Isabella figured it had definitely been noticed that she didn’t have a clue what to do with the joint in her hand, so she just rolled her shoulders back and made eye contact again.

“Like you.”

Karen studied her for a moment, twirling her cigarette between her fingers as if considering the most important question of the universe before settling on her answer.

“Can I call you Isa?”

“Absolutely.”

1998

ISABELLA: That night was every simple, mundane, perfect, magical thing everyone always looked at me strange for wanting. I’d never had something like that before, a beautiful little house party filled with music and candles and people who wanted you there, something that I was convinced the rest of the world was experiencing in spades. Out of nowhere, and without an ounce of fanfare, it was finally happening. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I talked with Karen about the frustrations of being a woman in the industry and piano teacher horror stories and where she found that perfect burgundy vest. I tried the concoction of sangria and three flavors of Kool-Aid that Warren had come up with, which truly had no right to be as delicious as it was. The friend of the friend of my friend introduced us to Camila, and I was so struck by how…whole she was; through everything I’d heard she’d weathered, her eyes were subtly tired, but filled with this rock-solid conviction that everyone in a fifty-mile radius could feel. She was warm and kind and knew how to make everyone feel like she wanted them at her party. She was…

[Here Ms. Dimant broke out of her memory a bit, looked to the author with a sympathetic breath, and received a nod in return.]

She really was wonderful. I believe the words in the head of my twentysome self were “so perfect that it almost made me mad”. And then we all grew, and I came to know her more truly, and…

You know, every version of every person that knew your mother felt the effects of how remarkable a person…

I’m sure you’ve heard so much of this throughout these interviews, I’m sorry.

AUTHOR: No, it’s been…it’s actually felt really good to hear everyone’s memories of her. To learn of all the complexities, the little moments, her effect on everyone, all of it. She passed partway through the time of the interviews, so the rest of them kind of became a huge part of my grieving process.

ISABELLA: I can imagine.

AUTHOR: You gave an interview once-I think it was after your second Tony win-talking about why we tell stories in the first place, and I found myself agreeing with every word.

This is why.

ISABELLA: This is why.

[A moment.]

AUTHOR: So, what else happened that night?

ISABELLA: Like the others said, Karen eventually went to the piano herself. “Ooh La La”, that was it. I was tipsy, holding a candle with one hand, the other arm slung around Cathy as we sang together; the air in the house was warm and a little sticky, with the windows open to let in the dying scent of summer rain.

Oh, how did it…who am I kidding, I haven’t forgotten for a second.

“I wish that I knew what I know now…”

1975

“...when I was younger.”

A crackling warmth started to take over the room as her eyes darted around it, realizing that the band was coming together for a spontaneous singalong of sorts. She became aware that, being just beside the sofa, she was also just beside the vaguely Eddie-shaped blob sitting on it. Blinking, she tried to unfog her mind as best she could-this singalong would be a moment, one she wanted to be present in-and managed to identify the blob as Eddie indeed. He was gazing-gazing had to be the word-at the guitar that stood between them, and she grinned near-wickedly as he picked it up, winding the strap over his shoulders with a sense of what could only be called relief.

Warren produced a pair of bongos from seemingly nowhere, Daisy took center and sang the second verse with Billy eventually joining in harmony, people swayed and lifted their candles, Isabella soon heard her own voice floating above and along with the rest, and yet she couldn’t take her gaze from Eddie for more than a moment. The quiet resentment that had made more and more sense to her with every new piece of media was melting off of him in waves of smoke; he held the acoustic guitar as if it were family, seeming with every chord to say “this is it, this is right.”

Toward the end of the song, she caught his eye-he’d been looking around the room too, trying to savor the moment just as much as she was.

Despite a cigarette being in real danger of falling from his lips, Eddie smiled at her, and she smiled back with a nod that she hoped would seem knowing.

A nod to say, hell yeah, man.

A nod to say, I’ve been there too, and, yeah, those little glimmers of doing what you’re actually meant to do are fucking everything.

A nod to say, well. God. Between the glares of interviews and smirks of performances, I don’t think the world has seen what your true smile looks like, and I suddenly feel like the luckiest person in the world to see it now.

The song ended, there were free and starlit cheers that she cherished far more deeply than the polite ones of college donors years ago, and the party wound on. Karen and Graham stumbled into a hallway, Camila put her daughter back to bed, Cathy had started flirting with Warren, and Isabella soon found herself-“sangria surprise” in hand, inhibition be damned-on a direct path back to the owner of that smile.

“That’s your main instrument, isn’t it?”

No fannish introduction, no opening line, just curious certainty.

Eddie blinked, caught off guard, but a bit of understanding and tentative hope started to spark up in his eyes.

“It is. You could tell?”

“You looked…I don’t know, so much happier. You seemed you.”

1998

ISABELLA: What with everyone being young and a little bit crossed and believing ourselves poets, “you seemed you” became the most profound thing in the world.

1975

“Yeah, I…” Eddie started to reply, then glanced around and leaned in to confide. “I never wanted bass. Billy forced me to it when the first guy left, that’s not a secret. Frankly, none of it is, I just…”

It occurred to her then that he was not the type to care who heard his grievances.

Yet, here they were, heads bowed and interlocked, whispering as if not a single other soul could know.

She wasn’t about to complain anytime soon.

“You just?”

“The whole time, it’s been like this,” he continued. “All these opportunities he’s got, all these times he’s been ‘the one’, and he just keeps-I mean, all the gossip is out there, and most of it is true. The rest of our opinions-as a band, as individuals, whatever-are treated like nothing, mine especially. And we’re on the rise, I’m supposed to be having the time of my life-”

“-But the promise of fame and fortune doesn’t mean shit in the face of artistic unfulfillment and never once being chosen?”

“Exactly!” he near-slurred in an excitedly shouted whisper, holding onto her shoulder.

“For the want of a nail, the war was lost, man!”

“Ex-fuckin-xactly.”

Each of those fragments was punctuated with a clap; the pair was louder now, a small spark of solidarity growing to a blaze.

“Oh, believe me, I’m going through that too-”

“In what?”

“Kinda similar-music, same as you. Performing arts school was utterly fucking exhausting. I feel like they handed me enough material for a thousand heartbreaking albums and a phenomenal stand-up comedy routine along with that degree.”

Eddie laughed at this, a boyish sputter that soon unleashed with his head thrown back, and Isabella relished in the feeling of finally saying that to someone after thinking it for four straight years.

“No, no, you’re exactly right,” he said. “It’s like the people who get to do all that incredible shit in the spotlight don’t care half as much about it as the people who aren’t given a second glance.”

“YES. All these musicals and operas at school-”

“Operas?!”

“Operas.”

“Damn, that’s different.”

“Half those plots are ‘sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll’ personified, Eddie, I promise,” and he grinned, and she took another swig from her glass to keep from swooning. “But, yeah, those kids, those favorites of the program-they were always saying how badly they wanted the shows to be over already, making stupid jokes about their characters that showed they never thought deeply about it at all, being soooooo subtly mean to those who weren’t their chosen few-”

“And the ones in power never fucking cared!”

“And they NEVER. FUCKING. CARED. Every tiny chance I got, I was fantastic-I always hoped that that would change things, but it never did.”

“Fuck, yeah, that’s the thing. Those almosts. Like you know the art would be safer in your hands if they’d just fully trust you for once.”

“I’m tired, man. I care, I’m good, and I want to be seen. And I noticed that in you too, in the background of all those performances and TV clips.”

“You saw it?”

“I did. Look, Eddie, I’m sure you haven’t gotten a ton of ego boosts lately, so I’ll say it-you are a much better singer than he is.”

“Thank you, oh my God!”

“Shh, shh,” she giggled, pressing their foreheads together again. Their half-intoxicated outbursts were drawing a few eyerolls, but thankfully went unnoticed by the rest of the band, who were probably off experiencing their own crises.

“Wait, you were the first one at the piano tonight, right?”

“I was.”

“Oh, you were so-I wondered, that voice-shit, your school never let you do anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Fuck, you deserve better.”

“You deserve better!”

“You-”

“You deserve better-”

“Hey, man,” came a voice to interrupt their increasingly slurred repetition as someone clamped a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“Okay, Warren, Warren,” Eddie began, straightening himself back up. “Please tell me I’m not hallucinating and there’s actually a beautiful girl standing there with freckles and long legs who’s telling me I deserve better.”

Isabella laughed and turned to the drummer, who she hadn’t formally met yet, and her friend who stood next to him with a glitter in her eye; Warren’s easy smile grew, and he turned back to his bandmate.

“She’s real, dude.”

“I am,” she hummed, stepping back and giving a half-comic twirl to prove it. Her bell sleeves billowed, she caught a whirled view of the rest of the room, and then came the warm and bubbling thought:

Yeah, I am.

“You are, I am, you guys are, and we oh-so-sadly need to go,” Cathy said, taking her friend’s hand and starting to lead her out.

“Whaaaaaat-?”

“We’re seeing Alex’s matinee tomorrow-well, today now, remember?”

“Right, of course,” and she followed, but then turned back and heard-

“Wait, shit-I don’t know your name!”

The wide-eyed pair locked their gaze again, halfway to a disbelieving laugh.

“Isa. Isabella Dimant.”

“Eddie Roundtree,” he said with an entirely teenage grin as if she didn’t already know.

“Hello, Eddie Roundtree.”

She then felt Cathy weave her arm with hers and give it a tug, in the same way they’d walked across campus a thousand times.

“And goodbye, Eddie Roundtree,” she smiled.

“And we’re going,” Cathy said.

“We’re going, we’re going…”

The air was warm and windy, the night sky was far more visible than most L.A. nights, and the two young women giggled arm-in-arm as they wound their way through the starlit streets.

[tenderlytwoagainstthree]

like a fine skylark: prologue

djats x oc, this prologue ~1k

in a universe somewhere between the show and the novel (a universe in which nine kept running on the west end), julia knocks on the door of one more piece of the six’s story.

soooooo here we go!! i fell completely in love with the six this summer; i’m always a sucker for stories with no concrete omniscient narrative, found family, life and art blurring together in messy and human ways, and music music music. hope yall enjoy my oc!!

1998

It only took a moment after opening the door for Isabella Dimant’s heart to skip a beat.

Many hazel eyes in the world, like her own, were olive green with a circle of amber around the pupil: “some kind of perfect meadow with a big pile of fuckin’...leaves…”, as depicted by a thoroughly crossed Warren years ago when he’d decided to jokingly describe each of his friends as poetically as possible. The ones she was faced with now, though, were inverted-central heterochromia or just very competitive genes?-and the familiarity of the colors after so much time was what struck her to the bone.

This girl had eyes with a center that echoed her father’s disarming green, surrounded by the same warm and certain brown of her mother’s gaze. Two people who had been constants in a major part of Isabella’s life for years, who had suddenly disappeared, who had bounced around her mind for two decades since, were now looking her in the face again.

“Hi, you must be Julia,” she said, leaving her reverie to shake the younger woman’s hand. “My apologies, I just-”

“I’ve gotten that stare nearly every time someone’s opened the door for one of these interviews,” Julia said with a smile. “No worries.”

“Please, come in.”

*IN PROGRESS*

From Stage to Stage: Inside a Broadway and West End Star’s Unlikely Entanglement with a Legendary Rock Band

by Julia Dunne Rodriguez

The old London house that Isabella Dimant has made her own is open, inviting, and decorated such that you can’t quite tell what decade or century you’re in. She made us both a cup of tea, adding to her own-in her words-“ungodly amounts of honey”, then led me to a sitting area near a wall that seemed entirely made of window.

I hadn’t spoken to Ms. Dimant during the first interviews because I did not find anything about her in my initial research of the Six, and she was never brought up in the stories of those years that I heard within my own family. However, on further reflection about the interviews, the occasional mention of an “Isa” by a few of the band members-only fully explained as Isabella Dimant by some-turned out to be more than occasional, particularly in the case of Eddie Roundtree. I reached out to Ms. Dimant, who offered to fly me to London, where she is currently playing Claudia Nardi in Nine at the Donmar Warehouse following its many extensions.

I saw the show that night after our interview. It called to mind a lot of the themes present both in our talk earlier that day and the stories I’d heard before; needless to say, this is not the only tall redheaded woman I’ve spoken with who pours her life into her art. Claudia is herself an actress, and her song, “Unusual Way”, is about reflecting on the fulfillment and pain that came from a relationship as you leave it. From the front row, I saw Ms. Dimant’s eyes glisten in the same way they did as she told me of her time with the band, and I found myself breathing with her as she sang.

It was something I have never experienced before in a theater, something I can imagine my father’s audiences must have felt a thousand times: in that moment, I as an audience member could tell precisely what the performer was thinking about. And by the way she looked at me during her bow, I believe that this is something she knows.

This author has not yet decided whether to publish this interview transcript, as Ms. Dimant did not hold back as much as I know some of the others did. There is a-

Screw it. For a very rough draft of something I don’t even know whether I’m sending out, I might as well write like a human being.

She trusted me somehow. I’m not sure why. But this woman who’s aged beautifully into becoming a self-actualized diva of the stage is also remarkably human in person. There’s a grace to her occasional awkwardness, an eloquence to her occasional nostalgic tie of the tongue; she will display on even keel a stunning intellect one second and a near-childish earnestness the next, with neither canceling the other out. She glimmers and sparks with passions and mistakes remembered, but a steady inner glow and emotional intelligence remains always within it all. It’s very clear that she found success as an actress for a reason-through this older storyteller, I saw every vulnerable shade of the whirlingly ambitious, hopelessly romantic, occasionally bitter, deeply idealistic dreamer that she was.

I could tell exactly why she was so often disliked during that time-and exactly why she was so loved by the people that mattered.

So, here’s the interview, unedited. She said she’d like to visit me the next time she comes back to America; we’ll figure it out then.

Maybe it’s because she’s a writer as well that she seemed to feel right from the start that her soul clicked with mine. Maybe she was glad for someone to finally ask her about what she clearly viewed as one of the most exciting times of her life. Maybe what they say about theatre people is true and she was just thrilled by a chance to talk about herself. Whatever combination of factors it was, Isabella Dimant showed me her world when I asked, and I knew from the beginning that she wanted to make me feel at home in it.

AUTHOR: Tell me about your first encounter with the Six.

[tenderlytwoagainstthree]

like a fine skylark: the interview of isa dimant

eddie roundtree x oc, in some strange amalgam of the book and show universes

work in progress!

when julia looks back over her findings later on, she realizes that the occasionally-mentioned isa of the six’s stories is tony winner isabella dimant, who’s got quite the story of her own.

prologue

chapter i

chapter ii