One Last Callback, Part 1

Published by Liz Lydic at March 21, 2026

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I met Tavi in the summer of 2005. We were in a play together, an avant garde, absurdist piece about a town in Europe where mosquitos take over and the humans conform to become the bugs. The play was centered around Maurice, who is the only man left at the end of the show, the only one who was not bitten by a mosquito. Tavi played this part. Our show was in the Valley.

I had only been in one show out there before, and that had been in the winter. I wasn’t prepared for the heat, the air, and the humidity that summer and what that experience would bring.

The details slowly emerged as I put the pieces of a puzzle together over the next month, but I didn’t know at first that the majority of the people in this play were high school kids — only a year or two younger than me — attending the prestigious performing arts high school, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

It was simply known as LACHSA, pronounced ‘lock-saw’ around the group. Most were headed next year to New York, either NYU or Julliard. One or two were going to Boston. All would pursue their higher education in theatre. As I would discover, they had talent — unlimited talent — and excitement for theatre, and a focused energy unlike other theatre kids I knew.

They were well-rounded too: photographers who chronicled our rehearsals and whose images graced our production program and publicity efforts; singers and songwriters who added original music to the show, and who would serenade the cast in the dressing room before each performance.

They had exotic names like Jonah — our director — Natasha, Celeste, Markus, Vera, and of course, Tavi, short for Tavio, as he told me when he introduced himself.

My role in the show required extensive stage time with little dialogue, leaving me to my own devices to stay in the scene physically and find backstory, a wordless life in the ambiance.

I chose to imbue this particular character — a waitress — with curiosity and awe, crafting a personal history that she had come to Europe from another country, extremely hopeful for the new place and people to open up her world.

I remember Tavi, who I had been interested in at the read-through, because he seemed to already know his part on the first day — the words and the tone, everything sounded just right, and he sat there speaking the play without moving.

He had asked me if I had a lot of performance experience. When I smiled and said yes, I had, he said he thought so, and that he had been watching me and what I had been doing.

I was so taken aback by this statement, by the thought that someone had been watching or assessing me, that I blushed. My face had flushed with red and I got hot because of this kid, who twisted his back toward me in his chair, away from the breaktime banter of our castmates who were nowhere within earshot.

Surprised and flattered, I’d later wish I had thought of something more profound to say to Tavi then, something to tell him about me or to invite him to tell me about him. Instead, I had nodded shyly and looked down at my script.

There would be a few other moments like this, when it seemed as though my character was taking action for me. And by a choice to have my character have a crush on his, I was permitted to hug or touch him, or glance at him in a way that this waitress person would try to let the cynical and pathetic Maurice know that he was someone she wanted to know better.

Before I knew it, our show was in dress rehearsals. During Tech or “Hell Week,” the final push before opening night, the weather reached low 100s in the day and stayed in the 80s–90s in the evening in Sherman Oaks, where our production would go up.

By the end of each night, rehearsing this physical show, stopping and starting endlessly for the designers to build in and perfect their technical cues, we were soaked with sweat, and left the theatre complaining about the humid air and the pungent smells backstage.

In this suffering, I felt a sense that we were building something; that the heat fueled us in one way, and deepened our understanding of the show in another.

I couldn’t help but feel that something happened to us that week: fragmented relationships came together quickly, the typical and predictable magic of theatre also present, but more that we, as a group, became one the more our clothes stuck to our overworking bodies and as our fatigue and dehydration set in.

I tried in vain to separate us out as the individuals in the show and the mosquitos we had become, and either we were a wonderful group of actors, or my mind wanted to believe something more. Maybe both.

Without really recognizing it, I had begun to anticipate going to the show each night in equal parts for my love of performing and my desire to see Tavi. In that hot week before we opened, I had paid him more attention, though it was hard for me to know if it was me or my character doing so.

I was mesmerized by his presence and commitment, which had seemed so subtle at first, but which now I understand as his brilliance. I knew that I had begun to be aware of where he was in the dressing room, or backstage; aware of when he would come and check his props before the show as I’d wait to enter the stage.

I knew when and where he’d go to smoke a cigarette during intermission. And, as we spent much time on stage with him transforming and seducing mosquitos, I began to become very familiar with his performance. I knew that by his long ending monologue, when we would frame him on stage in our mosquito masks, he would be drenched in sweat.

He would speak for so long, and I would watch him deliver his last paragraph and lines with not only artistic admiration, but with lust and desire.

All of this energy made me want to reach out to Tavi, to touch his lean, smooth body; to taste the sweat from his arms and neck and temples, to run my fingers through his shaggy mess of hair. I wanted him to see me as older, wiser, and for him to want me to teach him about me.

For the Saturday night performance before our last, Jonah led us through our nightly warm-up. After forming a circle, we were instructed to look at someone across the room for a focusing exercise. Before I knew it, and with no effort, I found myself looking in Tavi’s eyes and he was returning the gaze, having turned to one another at the same moment.

Jonah guided us through the activity with a hypnotic voice. “Look at the other person and see how far you can see. Look at their face, their hair, their eyes, the shape of their mouth. Look at their cheekbones, how they hold their shoulders. Look again into their eyes. What do you see? Can you find some humor in them? Where does the humor come from?

“Can you see sadness, sorrow, loss? Where does that come from? Is there something you hate about them? What is it? Can you see it in their face? What do you love about them? Where do you see that love? Is there some desire, some deep, needful desire for the other person, to be part of them?”

I was breathing harder then, listening to Jonah’s melodic and hypnotic voice. The rest of the world seemed to have disappeared. There was no heat, no other cast members, no performance in thirty minutes.

Tears came to my eyes as Tavi and I stared at each other with what I felt was hunger. I felt his desire pull toward me — his curiosity, his draw. I felt how we seemed to know each other from before all this, or that it was easy to know each other now, in this moment.

When the exercise was over and I became conscious of our surroundings, and when I heard voices other than Jonah’s, and when I wondered if anyone had seen what happened between me and Tavi, I looked away from him and stared at my feet.

As the group started to taper off to various areas, I was more than tempted to approach Tavi, to see if he felt it — what had just happened — and if he was affected. I would just ask him “was that weird?” so that if he hadn’t felt it, if he was just following directions and doing the warmup, if he was just acting, then I could walk away.

I didn’t ask him at that time. But I knew I needed to. There would be plenty more opportunities to go to him, to be brave and to throw caution to the wind, to see if this connection and my question about it would open the door to us talking, sharing, and maybe even a chance to kiss, and to feel him.

When I found out there was a party at Jonah’s after our last show the next day, and when I heard Drake — a wiry comic relief in braces whose costume and acting gloriously aged him — make sure that Tavi was going, I decided to postpone my pursuit. I didn’t know what to expect from Jonah’s party but I knew it would be pretty liberal.

I hadn’t smoked pot for almost two years and had only done it once in a while before then, but I decided that getting high at the party would be the best thing I could do, for myself and for my move on Tavi.

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