FRESH YARN presents: To See and be Scene... By Beth Lapides

FRESH YARN presents:

To See and be Scene
By Beth Lapides

I'm in heaven: the wardrobe room of Sex and the City. Racks and racks of exuberant clothes reaching all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. Leather and lace, Chanel and chiffon, garters and Gaultier. There are racks that say "archive" and racks that say "auction." Racks for each of the girls. Racks for each of the girls' racks. And then there's the fitting rack. And on the fitting rack… drawstring pants and button down shirts?

"That's your costume," says Tracy, the wardrobe assistant. I'd been told this is what I'd be wearing, and I'm game, but somehow seeing it in the context of a warehouse full of the most fantastic clothes ever assembled for one television show, I feel a little bit like I'm Cinderella and the clock just struck twelve.

I put on one of the shirts. Tracy insists it fits too well and he swaps out the small for the medium which deems appropriately sackish. I am still in the wardrobe room of Sex and the City but it is no longer in heaven. There are actually two sets of drawstring pants and button down shirts, one for each scene I'm doing. One set is orange, which I dub pumpkin. The other one is green, which I'm calling moss. A kind of posy mid-century palette. Ever the optimist, I say: the colors are fantastic!

We Polaroid both outfits. I start warming up to the green one, which I think makes me look like an angry elf, but in a cute way.

Michael Patrick King, the executive producer, comes to welcome me. He takes one look at the wardrobe and says: "absolutely not!"

Finally, the voice of reason. I knew it was a cruel joke and I turn expectantly upwards, towards the bustiers and ball gowns floating above me like angels. But no. What Michael wants are these exact costumes, drawstring pants and button down shirts, minus the fabulous colors. He wants this, but in black and in white.

Tracy is sad because it is 7 PM and he will have to put this wardrobe together before tomorrow morning and I am sad because I will have to wear them. I am, of course, thrilled that I am going to be on Sex and the City and I've been telling everyone.

"Oh that's great," they say. "Maybe you'll get to keep your wardrobe!" Have I mentioned that both the button down shirt and the drawstring pants were a hundred percent polyester?

Michael takes me on a tour, first stop Carrie's apartment. I have an odd kind of vertigo: being inside something I've seen so frequently from the outside. I guess that's why guys want to sleep with centerfolds. Then he shows me the set of the Coffee Shop. Out the window, there's a backdrop: the storefront window of a bridal gown store in which are hanging four wedding gowns that, Michael points out, are never really seen in the show, but just kind of hover, luminescent in the background. They strike me as ghostly. In a hopeful way.

At the elevator we run into the script supervisor and Michael introduces us. "I guess we won't be working too closely together," I laugh. Did I mention that I have no lines?

"Patty Duke rocketed to fame after Helen Keller," Michael points out. True but she wasn't wearing drawstring pants!

It's not that I really blame them about my costume. It's perfect for my part. I'm playing a performance artist who lives in a gallery for ten days, fasting and looking out at the audience from up on a platform. In the first scene of the script Carrie and Charlotte come to see me. Her. And that's where Carrie meets Baryshnikov. Oh did I forget to mention that this is the first Baryshnikov episode?

By now you probably know that Baryshnikov is playing Carrie's final love interest. What you might not know is that years ago, I had a dream about Baryshnikov. We are in an underground parking lot and we are dancing. And I feel totally light, almost weightless and bright, not unlike those phantom wedding dresses that Michael showed me. It was one of the best dreams I've ever had. Although I do not remember what I was wearing I am pretty sure it was not drawstring pants.

When Michael told me that Baryshnikov was going to be on the show I told him this dream then, when he called to tell me I got the part he said, "You had the dream, you should be in the show." Now there's a sentence I'd like to hear more often.

My first day of shooting I put on my white outfit. I get up on my platform. When they get a look at me they notice one problem with my costume. You can see my fabulous frilly pink bra through the shirt. They rush off to get me something else and before you can say "I see Paris I see France," I have taken off my Felina bra and underpants set and put on the kind of utilitarian bra and underpants that I would wear if I was a Russian immigrant.

We do my shots. I realize immediately that Michael is totally right about the white. It is austere and monkish and deflects all attention. When you look at me all you see is me looking at you looking at me. While they're setting up the next shot, Michael introduces me to 'O Mischa'. We shake hands and I tell him about the dream. Or I try to. What I actually say is something like "We were dancing… it was so… you were so…" At this point I am crowding Baryshnikov's space so badly that I cause the world's greatest dancer to fall over backwards.

Later, Michael asks me if I told Mischa about the dream. "Yes," I say shaking my head sadly, "that was a mistake."

I keep thinking about going over to Baryshnikov to clarify that it wasn't a sex dream but an art dream, a spiritual dream, all about light and grace and something beautiful happening in a place where normally I just worry about my car and pray I don't get raped.

For the rest of the day I sit up on my platform and look out, as Sarah Jessica and Kristen and Baryshnikov and about thirty extras all look up at me. Looking out at them. Well that's not totally accurate. Sarah Jessica and Kristen and all the extras look up at me and Baryshnikov watches Sarah Jessica. I try to reassure myself that he is just doing the scene, and that our meeting hadn't been so awkward that he literally could not even look at me.

Luckily I didn't have too much energy to waste on obsessing because, according to my character's mission statement, which Charlotte reads aloud in the scene, "I hope to change the energy of the room, and by changing the energy of the room change the energy of the world." And that takes a lot of energy. I really look at the people in the room who are really looking up at me. And I don't know what they saw, but I saw hope, confusion, fear, lust, envy, open heartedness and one really bad case of overacting. I tried to help everyone to convert all this energy into love energy. Why not? I was there anyway. But it was really exhausting.

A few days later, we shoot my second scene. I am wearing the black outfit. If the white was austere. This is severe. Now I am a severe silent seer. We're waiting in the gallery, at the video village for the set up and John Melfi, one of the other executive producers, runs in.

"Michael, Beth, come out here," he motions frantically. I'm confused because it seems like an urgent production issue and how could they need me. Me? Yes! Come out here!

And Michael and I go outside and Melfi points up and there is a rainbow. And we stand amid the gaffers, the grips, and the grime of 28th and 10th, and look up over the overpass, at the rainbow. It's so beautiful. The perfect accessory to any outfit, even polyester drawstring pants.

Then we shoot my second scene. No extras. Just me and Sarah Jessica and Baryshnikov. And this time Baryshnikov really looks at me. And I'm looking back at him and his energy and he is looking at me and, I guess, my energy. In a way, a very different way than I ever imagined, an intense and confrontational way, I am dancing with Baryshnikov. And it seems like the rainbow was an omen and dreams really do come true.

Then at the end of the day, Michael tells me that when I was doing my shots, Mischa jumped up from the video village to go see me do my shots live. I told Michael he was lying. He assured me he was not.

Then I was done. When I said good-bye to Baryshnikov he was all smiles and it made me think that Michael wasn't lying and that Baryshnikov had seen something in me. And so I apologized for perving all over him and he seemed confused and I tried to explain, "You know the dream?"

Then there was an awkward physical interaction where I believe I may have stepped on Baryshnikov's toes.

I didn't bother trying to keep my costume but I did take the utilitarian underpants. I know I'll never wear them again. But when I see them in my underwear drawer, this pair of underpants meant not to be seen mixed in with my lace and lycra, all made to be seen, it will remind me. Of my week of trying to see the invisible stuff. The invisible stuff that helps create what it is we do see. The invisible moisture that makes the rainbow possible. The invisible grace that makes awful places beautiful. The invisible hope that makes heartbreak bearable. The unseen ties that bind us. Eye to eye. Heart to heart. Energy lines that change us. As we go through life seeing. And being seen. If we're lucky.