Chris Saltalamacchio
@seasaltrun amongst his pandemic online shopping orders preparing to be returned.
-Theatre-
Chis is a razzle-dazzle guy in my eyes. He is almost glamorous while simultaneously lifting you up and making you feel like the rock star in the room. No surprises there, though. He is a staple in any Atlanta Golden Age musical while also coaching pageant contestants.
I finally got into his parking deck and he met me at the door. We caught up for a while and then remembered why we were there in the first place. He moved around some online orders getting ready to be returned and shifted over his indoor putting green as we sat to recap what we had already been talking about.
Interviewed 6.2.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Chris: So first and foremost, how are you?
Chris: I'm doing okay now. I think I'm fine in the daylight hours and in the middle of the day. The news at night and in the morning is a little all-consuming. The last four or five days, I've really lived in that world and I should probably find a way to curtail the amount of stuff. But day-to-day, compared to a couple of weeks ago, I'm doing all right.
I have a lot to accomplish today because I'm going back to this job at Serenbe tomorrow. As far as I know, it's like 99% confirmed. So I feel like today there's a lot to do. And we're actually having the first in-person, socially-distanced outdoor meeting of my LGBT Bible study group tonight on somebody’s back porch. We've been doing it virtually for weeks and weeks and weeks and they took a poll and we all said "yes" to it. So to have that to look forward to this evening is great.
Casey: So it sounds like things are starting to pick up a little bit?
Chris: A little bit. Yeah. I have a couple of rehearsals this week with Robert Ray, as well, because I'm doing a live show Saturday from his living room — Truman Griffin, who's another Atlanta artist, and Robert and I. It's like three guys singing some Broadway stuff. We had one in-person rehearsal last week and we have two this week — again, from a distance. He's very careful, as are we. Even though it's a rehearsal for a show that will be online, we're still singing live with each other. So it was weird and nice to go back to that last week.
Casey: You said you feel safe? Because singing, they say...
Chris: Yeah, we're very careful. And we've all been very open about the fact that we don't think we've been exposed to anything. We've all been very, very careful. I will certainly say that I've started to step out in life a little bit more. I pretty much feel safe all the time outdoors. I'm taking tons of precautions when I'm indoors. I have no rush to go to a bar or anything, but I've taken a little bit more risk and I've also visited some places that were a lot lower risk, and I think being there has helped mitigate my fear a little bit. I had dinner indoors at a large high-ceiling restaurant in St. Louis yesterday morning before I left. It was their first day open. We were probably the first people to sit at that table. And I've been really impressed with how businesses are working to keep us safe. It makes me want to work to keep us safe as well.
Casey: Do you think that that kind of safety precaution will be permanent?
Chris: Do I think waiters and servers and bartenders are going to wear masks forever? No, I don't. There are some places where they are a lot more into it than others, probably depending on where they are. I appreciate it for now and I hope that it lasts for a while.
I think, just like any other pandemic, once there is a working vaccine, once numbers have gone way down and it's a much smaller population that it's affecting, I think that is when we will go back to whatever normal is. I think some things will be changed forever, but I think restaurants and bars will eventually go back to normal because that's what they want to be.
Casey: What do you think will change permanently?
Chris: I think that there will be colleges and universities that will realize that there's really no reason for 300 people to sit in a Sociology 101 lecture hall ever again. And in an odd way, I think that will help people stay more accountable for their own learning. I'm not doing any sort of online learning, but I certainly was not the best college student in big classes. So I think there's stuff like that. I also think there are major corporations that pay thousands of dollars for people to fly roundtrip somewhere for a one-hour meeting. I've never understood that. We see all those memes going around: "Oh, we found out about that meeting that could have been an e-mail,” or a Zoom meeting. Why fly four hours for a two-hour meeting, fly four hours back? … I think, on the greater scale, we've been wasting a lot of time and money on things that are unnecessary.
In general, I hope that people spend more time outside. And look, we live in the South. It's hot. I don't usually play golf in the summer. I sit by the pool. But I've been walking almost every day, save for a couple. And, yeah, I bring my phone with me, I listen to music, I'm on the phone, but it's been nice to spend more time outside. And I live in Grant Park so I have Grant Park a few blocks away. I have the Oakland Cemetery on the other side. I have a lot of beautiful things to walk around, and I'm grateful that I do because it's been really helpful. So I hope people spend more time outside.
Casey: Are you hoping to spend more time outside?
Chris: Yeah. I've been playing golf, which has been great. And I plan to go do as much as I can, safely, that involves being nearer to the beach. My family lives near the beach in New York. I have friends with a place at the beach in Florida. That is my very happy place. And I find when I'm sitting on a beach or by a pool — because my pool deck did just open with a lot of restrictions — or on a golf course, those things feel normal in the summer. It's when I come back to my apartment and I'm like, "Oh, I'll just be here the rest of the night," that things feel weird. But those things help me feel normal. I think they've been doing a lot for other people as well. I think we need to be smart about it. I don't want to sit on a lounge chair next to somebody else right now. If it's busy, I'm not going to go. But if it's safe, I think that it's really good from a mental-health perspective for a lot of people.
Casey: How is your family doing?
Chris: My family is OK. I'm an only child, so I just have my parents who are in their late 60s. In a really weird way, I'm really grateful that my grandparents are not living anymore. My last grandmother died five years ago, and I think I would be such a nervous wreck about them because I already worry about my parents being in their late 60s. We got really lucky that two years ago they built a second home in Florida. I'm from Long Island, New York. They would have been in the middle of everything. The second week in January, they went down to their Florida place before we were even talking about this. I'm grateful they were there. They were bored, but they were there.
They're doing well. I was worried about my dad not taking this seriously, and my mom has a few more health concerns than he does, but he's been really good. He's a golfer like I am, so he would come back and strip down, shower, the whole deal. And she was really careful. Have they been perfect? No. Have any of us? No. Whenever my mom calls me from the car I'm like, "Where are you going? Why are you in the car? Again?" But, in general, I'm grateful they're healthy.
Casey: So talk to me a little bit about what you have been doing? Obviously, we talked about golf.
Chris: And my plastic putting green that now occupies the floor of my apartment, which was my smartest quarantine purchase.
Casey: What else?
Chris: Walking a lot. Upfront, like we all did, I was inundated with a ton of social media calls, a lot of Zoom calls. I've talked to friends that are good friends. I've talked to friends that have not been in my life for a while. I've cut back a lot on that because my work was so virtual for a while that it just got exhausting to sit there day after day, in front the computer so much.
I coach Miss America contestants and other pageant contestants nationwide. In the middle of March, I went virtual for the foreseeable future. At that point, things were being postponed but not canceled, so I worked steadily into the first week in May at a really great pace — as much as I would have worked last year. So I spent a lot of my time doing that. Miss Georgia paperwork was due and all sorts of stuff, and I had a lot of new business. I stopped traveling … but I was working, virtually, all the time. So that took up most of my time.
As so many of us have been asked to sing or perform in a virtual cabaret, whether it was submit a recording or do a live one, I did a bunch of those. And then I started saying "no" for a bit. I did a bunch upfront and then I just got tired. I have not been that motivated to sing or perform. I submitted for a bunch of the theaters that were due last week, and it was such a chore just to put that together because the motivation has been low. And I think it's also hard because who knows when any of them are next going to do a show. I don't want them to forget about me, so I submitted. And was it my best work ever? No. But I put stuff out there that I enjoyed and hopefully stuff they would enjoy hearing and seeing.
Casey: Do you have any habits or new rituals that you've developed during this time that you want to continue to do on the other side of this?
Chris: I love to walk and I have realized how close I am in proximity to a lot of different things I hadn't realized. I live across the street from Oakland Cemetery and it's just so beautiful and so historical. I love walking through there. I want to continue to do that forever. There's so many different parts of it. There's so much history, and I'll be honest, I haven't really dived into the history too much yet, but it's a goal to learn more about it.
I never realized that I could walk to Zoo Atlanta. I walked all the way down there and it was really kind of sad because for a while it was closed. There was construction. I was hoping maybe I could hear animals, but I had never been inside the zoo and I couldn't hear any. And I thought, "Well, they've got to be in there, but this just feels sad." So a few weeks ago, I was walking down there and the construction barriers were gone and it looked a little more active. So I Googled it, and sure enough it had opened a day or two before. I was walking in the evening so it was already closed, but I was like, "OK, I'm gonna go." So Ally Duncan and I went last weekend, and it was so wonderful. The animals have no idea what's going on. They were just living their best lives. It's a beautiful facility. They did an incredible job keeping us safe. So I'd really love to support them, whether that means I become a member or make a donation when I can or just go there more often, I would love to do that.
In terms of in my apartment, I bought a fake putting green and that was really nice in the beginning. It also made my putting better, which was great. …
I've been trying to feel my feelings as I feel them, relax on the couch when I want to, and get fresh air whenever I can. I hope that I'll continue to do those things and learn how to have more balance, because normally this year I wouldn't have any. So I hope that I can take that into the future.
Casey: I think that's brilliant. Do you think you will continue to do your coaching job remotely? Does it make anything easier?
Chris: Because I coach nationwide, I've been doing video coaching for years. I would say it's probably been half-ish of my business. But in Georgia, I work with everybody from Miss Georgia. That's mostly in person, whether it's here or in Statesboro. I don't think — once we're back to whatever normal is — that will change all that much. I've had clients who are preparing for pageants in the fall ask me, "When can we come back to your apartment?" And I don't want anybody in my apartment right now that I don't trust. If you're asking me, it probably means that you've been out doing other things, too, and I just feel like I can better mitigate risk when I go somewhere. So I've offered to drive to some of them.
One of the aspects of pageant competitions is panel-style interviews. It's like a job interview. I had only ever done them in-person for girls in Georgia, and I realized after my first Zoom call with friends, "I could use this for work." So I started doing Zoom panel interviews, and I did two or three people a night, three times a week for like six weeks. It brought in a lot of extra income and it was great because I could involve judges, friends of mine from all over the country, contestants from all over the country. That has slowed now with the cancellation of Miss America, but I will now continue doing that forever, and I’ll still have in-person ones in Georgia while I'm here. But, you know, it was such a great opportunity to bring different types of people together and get girls better feedback from people I trust, and really utilize my resources and my networking. So that's something I wish I had been doing forever. …
I will say I've noticed that some of my friendships have changed. There are people doing stupid things that I didn't think they would do, but they're posting it on their Instagram stories. So there have been some friends I've been avoiding and some friends that I've really been connecting with. I will shout out Ally Duncan, because I love her and she's been so safe. I mean, she moved and bought a house during this. I don't know how she did it, but she's been so safe and so wonderful, and I completely trust her. That's somebody I'm comfortable going over to her house, sitting 10 feet away and we have dinner. Our friendship has grown during this time so much because we've both been so careful and we've been leaning on each other. So new friendships have been great. And, look, we're grown ups. Friendships change, and maybe in a year they'll be back to whatever (they were), but it's been interesting to see the ways that we thought people would act and then they don't.
Casey: What do you think you will take out of this? And what do you think the world will take out of this? How will you look back on this time?
Chris: I think one thing that I'm slowly learning is that when a difficult circumstance comes into play that affects a lot of people, we all handle it in different ways, and we have to be respectful of that. I've had one or two moments where I've screamed at the world on social media about the pandemic. I think the night I found out that my aunts had been diagnosed (with Covid), I was so angry. And they were in a nursing facility. Somebody being stupid in Piedmont Park is not the reason they got the Coronavirus, and I understand that. I have learned to be more respectful, you know? And that's in all ways of life. But in this current environment, I'm kind of like, "I don't want people to judge me." …
We have to do what makes us comfortable and we have to be respectful that other people may not meet us there. I was at the grocery store this morning and I was surprised that like 30% of people weren't wearing masks or were wearing them just over their mouth or on their chin. I was like, "What is the point of this? You look ridiculous." People aren't always gonna meet us there, and we have to tame our own emotions about that because as long as we're doing what we can in a situation like this pandemic to keep ourselves safe, then that's all that we can manage. …
I've learned this idea of balance. I know there's been a lot of actors for whom acting is their full-time gig and (that’s) good for them. It could never be mine because I wouldn't be able to survive it. I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure. I wouldn't be able to. I need some income that I have control over, that is regulated, which gives me the chance to freely perform when I have the time.
Casey: Ditto.
Chris: Exactly. And I think there are a lot of us in that position. That's something Ally and I've talked about. She's like, "I could never do all this if I didn't have my great job," because it gives us a little bit of freedom. And look, I'm 35. In five, six or seven years I'm going to adopt a child, and I may be doing it alone so I need to make sure my life is in a place where I have enough balance.
Balance, respect and rest, if nothing else. I'll probably be sick of those things in another month or two, but for now I'm trying to embrace them when I can. I think I have faith, and we all have to have faith that eventually we will be back on stage. We will be singing together, we will be performing, we will be posing for your pictures on stage, we will be onstage with you. And I think we just have to be really patient. It's been a huge lesson in patience, and we all have to learn it.
Casey: Thank you for this. This was great.
