Li-Po Backstory Document: Gloria

Little Gloria Von Gouten was born in scandal. Her mother, the famous opera star Estrella Von Gouten, had the child out of wedlock, and kept the identity of the father a secret. Estrella was famous for her strong-headedness and independence, and she seemed unphased by the flood of puritan judgment that was heaped on her by the conservative opera press of her day. She declared her intentions to raise the child alone, and it seemed the world turned on her. Her popularity faded overnight. Producers stopped calling her, casting her, or even inviting her to parties. The public, it seemed, did not approve. The critics were merciless. Gloria’s sole confidant, her controlling and shifty manager, Loman Kricke, who had pleaded with her not to have the child, pressured her endlessly to put little Gloria up for adoption to save her career. Estrella refused for a very long time, but not forever.

When it looked like her career might actually come to an end, she finally conceded to Loman’s demands. She dropped Gloria off at Hagatha Home School for Girls. A sort of Peking Opera of rigorous—and sometimes brutal—schooling in the performing arts, Hagatha Home was a cross between Juliard and the Gulag. This is where little Gloria spent most of her childhood. Estrella would write Gloria long, loving letters from her world tours, but Mr. Kricke would intercept them. He was afraid the child would write back, and he wanted nothing distracting Estrella from her career.

Estrella was Loman’s meal ticket, but little did she suspect the truth: that he was eating a little more than his share. She trusted him completely, and it took her 12 years to realize that he had been cooking some pretty shady books when it came to her accounting. She finally fired, sued, and wrote a book about her ex-manager, but was only able to relaim a portion of the funds he had embezzled from her.

In the book she dispelled rumors that Loman Kricke was Gloria’s secret father. She would never reveal the true father’s name, but did confess that he was a fellow opera singer, and had seduced her with his angelic voice.

Free from Loman’s spell, Estrella returned to Hagatha Home and rescued her daughter from the confines of her theatrical death camp. She brought her now beautiful, 18-year-old around the world with her on tour, where Gloria enjoyed a most celebrated coming out. She exploded on the social scene with a fanfare. She was famous even before she followed in her mother’s footprints onto the stage.

Her training in theater, although painfully learned, served her well. She could dance; she could sing; she could act. She would star in huge Broadway musicals, full of synchronized dancing and elaborate production numbers like “Sunshine Shenanigans.” She was the happiest she would ever be in her life, and also the most popular. She quickly became ten times the entertainer of anyone else working at the time, including her mother.

And her mother noticed. Her own daughter had shoved her out of the spotlight. Once again, work started slowing down for Estrella. The press, the fans, they only wanted to hear about Gloria. As her fame ran through her fingers like sand, Estrella’s heart became twisted and dark. Another side to her personality emerged, seemingly out of nowhere. She became a cruel and bitter old woman, bent on destroying Gloria’s self image. “They only want you because you’re young, you know. When it fades, you’ll have nothing!” She would tell her. “You know who your father was? He was my gardener! And he couldn’t carry a tune!”

Gloria was destroyed by the cruel words of her mother. She would beg Estrella to stop, but the old woman had snapped. Gloria left for an extended production in Paris, just to get away from her mother, but while she was away, Estrella broke in to her old theater, climbed into the catwalks, and leaped to her death on the boards of the stage far below.

Gloria, already a tortured soul from her harsh childhood, was not prepared for this shock. Guilt pulled at her and unraveled her sanity like a nail pulling on a sweater. She tried to throw herself into her work, but she began to have panic attacks at the thought of taking the stage. Her performances became nervous and agitated. She would fumble her lines and trip during stage numbers. Finally, when a moving cloud platform pulled her up over the stage for her show-stopping solo, she looked down at the stage and became paralyzed. She just froze. She couldn’t say a word. They lowered her down and she ran back to her dressing room and refused to come out–Ever again.

Eventually, they had to have her dragged out by the police. She was thrown into a paddy wagon an in no time she found herself at a new sort of Hagatha Home, this time Thorney Towers Mental Sanctuary. She would ignore the doctors’ attempts to get her involved in some of the plays the inmates put on for each other. She chose instead to spend all her time in the garden, tending roses. She isolated herself in her secret garden so completely, that when they cleared the place out, she was simply overlooked.

And now she still lives in that garden, performing daily to an audience of dead roses and dried up shrubbery. Waving and taking bow after bow to applause that only she can hear.