DREAMING OF BRANDO AMID MORTAR AND BRICKS A STANLEY SEEKS STELLA

Newspaper July 5, 1995| Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

Gene Foschini is perched on a scaffold at 11th and Ritner, slapping down some wet cement. But in his imagination, he’s on stage, starring as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.

“Remember what Huey Long said – ‘every man is uh king,’ ” the South Philly bricklayer says in his best Louisiana accent. “And I am the king around heah, so don’t fuh-get it!”

Foschini’s buddies on the scaffold nod their approval. But it’s a hot summer day, and two stories up, the cement is drying fast.

“Brick,” Foschini yells.

There are about 3,000 bricklayers in the city. This story is about the one who moonlights as Stanley Kowalski.

It takes some imagination. Gene Foschini doesn’t look like a young Marlon Brando. He’s 41, about 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds, with long, dark curly hair and glasses. He looks more like an Italian version of Dustin Hoffman – if Hoffman wore old clothes and cement-spattered work boots and didn’t bother shaving.

Foschini, of 17th and Ritner, didn’t start his acting career until about four years ago, when he was a divorced father, missing his two children. He had time on his hands, and acting filled in some of the gaps.

“I just love to go out and entertain people,” he says.

He took an acting class at the Wilma Theater, and a few parts came his way. His debut was as a walk-on at the Wilma, carrying a drunk in When She Danced, a biography of Isadora Duncan. He played Dr. Spivy, the psychiatrist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, at the New Seasons Theater Group in Haddonfield, giving the doc a Southern accent. He was an extra in The Age of Innocence, a movie shot in part at the Academy of Music.

And he kept his day job.

Foschini learned how to lay bricks when he was 19. “Look, you’re gonna learn this,” he says his father told him. “And maybe you’ll even like it.”

He works side by side with his brother, Jerry, 40, of 19th and Ritner, who, everybody says, looks just like actor John Goodman.

Foschini digs his trowel into a mortar pan of fresh cement. There’s a scraping sound and then some clanging as he trims the cement on his trowel and, finally, a soft plop, plop, plop as he drops it neatly in a row.

“Brick.”

An assistant hands him one. Foschini butters one end and plops it down even with a string that serves as a guide. He taps down the brick with the trowel.

“It takes four years to get the speed and skills,” he says. “Once you get it down, you become like a machine. A good bricklayer should be able to do 500 squares a day.”

Acting, Foschini says, is “a lot like bricklaying.”

“You start as a void, mentally, and you build on your character – from learning the lines, prior experiences, you add the feelings,” Foschini says. ” . . . You constantly have to make these choices as you’re acting. It all builds.”

Foschini has a dream.

“I want to make the acting my career and the bricklaying a hobby,” he says.

*

Foschini is traveling south on the Blue Route, on his way to an audition. He’s wearing a faded black T-shirt, black jeans and cowboy boots. He is clean- shaven, his hair slicked back.

“Don’t f- with me, Stella,” he bellows. He’s battling the ghost of Brando.

“I got this Brando thing in my head, and it’s not good,” he says.

Foschini has one other problem. He’s lost.

He’s looking for the Footlighters Theater, in Berwyn, but somehow he overshoots it and ends up in Paoli.

“That’s why I hate to go out of the city,” he says. “It gets complicated.”

Foschini walks into the theater five minutes late. The room is filled with aspiring Blanches and Stellas. And five other Stanley Kowalskis.

A thin, bearded Stanley with dark hair. A tall, blond, heavyset Stanley with a mustache. A thin, blond Stanley. A slender, boyish Stanley with dark hair. And a short, muscular Stanley with dark hair.

The five Stanleys take turns going through Scene 8, in which Blanche is stood up by her date and comforted by her sister, Stella. For most of the

Stanleys, it’s their third audition.

They seem too old or too boyish or just plain too nice.

The man in cowboy boots strides on stage, his South Philly swagger suddenly appropriate. In no time at all, Stella sets him off.

“Mr. Kowalski’s too busy making a pig of himself,” Stella says. “Your face and fingers are disgustingly greasy. Go and wash up and help me clear the table.”

Foschini breaks an imaginary plate with an imaginary chop and tosses an extra script off the table.

“That’s how I clear the table,” he yells. “Don’t ever talk that way to me. ‘Pig, Pole-lock, disgusting, vulgar, greasy!’ . . . What do you two think you are? A pair of queens?”

The director has her finger over her mouth. Maybe she isn’t prepared for a South Philly Italian doing a Polish American with a Southern accent. But she looks intrigued.

She sends the five other Stanleys home for the night.

Only Foschini remains with a trio of Stellas and a trio of Blanches.

“Let’s go to Page 20,” she says. “Gene, would you like to read Stanley?”

“Hiya, sweetheart,” Stanley says.

“Oh, Stanley,” Stella swoons.

They run through the scene three times, each time with a new Stella and Blanche.

Foschini is growing into the role. He looks more menacing each time, his gestures and voice more confident.

“Listen, did you ever hear of the Napoleonic code,” Foschini says. “Let me enlighten you on a point or two.”

Only Foschini stumbles on Napoleonic, pronouncing it Nape-pole-eonic.

The director stops the scene and corrects him.

“Napoleonic. He was a king or something?” Foschini asks jokingly.

The scene resumes.

“It looks to me like you been swindled, baby, and when you get swindled, under the code, I get swindled, too,” he says, getting it right this time. ”And I don’t like to be swindled.”

“Gene, thank you very much. I appreciate it,” the director says. She gives him directions home on the Blue Route, but no clues about whether the role will be his.

“Thank you, it was fun,” he says as he leaves.

Now he’s waiting for the phone to ring.