Day 124…
And just like that, It’s Monday again.
I stopped writing on Sundays primarily to break up the endless progression of days. I didn’t fully realize that when I started posting pictures at the end of each week, that there would also be an endless progression of weeks of doing THAT.
A friend of mine worked on the same Broadway show for decades. DECADES. Eight performances a week with two weeks of vacation a year. I don’t think that I could have done that.
Two years is about my limit working on the same show. Most shows don’t last two years let alone longer than that. I’m trying to think of the shows that I have actually left while they were still running.
I was on the last Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters for about two years. After putting in Susan Lucci and then Cheryl Ladd, I left as Reba McIntyre was coming in. I left to do… something?
After two years on the road with The Phantom of the Opera, I was somewhat losing my mind and needed to get home. At least on Phantom, we were in different cities which broke up the repetition. After a while, though, moving to a different city became its own kind of repetition.
Phantom was a very cushy tour. We played in each city for eight to twelve weeks which any roadie will tell you is not a tour - it’s more like a series of sit-down productions. Phantom was at its peak and EVERYONE wanted to see it.
We would get to a new city and while we were loading in the show, we would figure out the places to eat. We’d locate the nearest office supply place. We would have done research during the city before on where we were going to get the inserts printed that go into the program when an understudy is on. We’d find a good after-the-show bar.
I traveled the whole time I was on the road with my cat, Wart. He was an amazing cat. In the time that I was out there, we always had a full day, sometimes two, to get from city to city, so I’d drive.
One of the guys on the crew drove a small truck which I then drove between cities while he was loading out and loading in the show. It was usually an eight to twelve-hour drive. The truck had a very wide dash and Wart would curl up there and sleep most of the time in the sun. The longest drive we had was from Houston, Texas to Costa Mesa, California which took about twenty-three hours. The first day, we barely got out of Texas and spent the night in a roadside motel in New Mexico.
In the previous city, I would have figured out where we were going to stay. We’d get to wherever that was, and Wart would immediately go to wherever there was tile. He’d wait patiently, there, for me to give him some soft food. He knew the routine. His food went on the tile so that it wouldn’t stain the carpeting causing me to lose my security deposit.
While I was loading the rest of the stuff in, he’d finish eating and then explore the rest of the place. He’d jump up on tables and dressers, check out under the bed and look for other dark places, then choose one and go to sleep. Once he was set, I’d head over to the theatre to see how things were going.
We’d live there for a couple of months before moving on to the next place. Like clockwork.
By next month I would have been working on Jersey Boys for sixteen years. We started the show in August of 2004 in La Jolla, California and then opened on Broadway the following fall.
For at least the first year, I was working as the production stage manager, so I was on the eight shows a week, two weeks-vacation cycle. It never hit a routine, though, because we were constantly performing at outside events. When a show is as big a hit as Jersey Boys was, the energy around it is indescribable.
After a year and some change, I took a leave from the show for a few months to help get the first National Tour started in San Francisco. Then, just as I thought I would be going back to New York, we had to put the London and Las Vegas companies together at almost the same time.
It’s been pretty much like that ever since. While I have indeed worked on the same show for sixteen years, it has never been the same work.
Sometimes I am sitting in auditions. Sometimes in rehearsals. Sometimes watching the show and taking notes. Sometimes in the producer’s office working on scheduling or future plans.
And always traveling. From show to show, city to city, country to country.
The only routine I have experienced on Jersey Boys has been the complete lack of routine.
Then like everyone else all around the world, everything stopped. My days became more or less indistinguishable from each other.
I have created a whole new routine.
Every day, I sit here on the couch and surf between news channels as I write.
Every day, I watch as the case numbers rise in states that have opened too soon. I watch the news on Fox that is rosy and then the news everywhere else where it is dire.
Over the weekend, as Disney World reopened, Florida broke New York’s record for new cases of the coronavirus in one day - over 15,000. If Florida was a country, it would be forth on the list of countries with the most cases, following the US, Brazil and India.
A 30-year-old man who went to a COVID party - the point of which is to see who the first person will be who contracts the virus that they consider to be a hoax - just died in Texas. Of complications from COVID-19.
I watch as the President ignores and discredits experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and, instead, retweets a conspiracy theory from Chuck Woolery, a retired gameshow host.
I watch as the President commutes the sentence of a criminal named Roger Stone. Roger Stone was convicted for lying to Congress seven times about his contacts with the President’s campaign in regard to the release of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by the Russians. He also threatened a radio talk show host, Randy Credico, with death, unless he, too lied to Congress.
Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican representing Utah, summed up the problem quite nicely in a tweet, "Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president."
I watch as Betsy DeVos, the United States Secretary of Education, is interviewed about her pushing schools to reopen and, yet, cannot put forward a single guideline on how they are meant to do that safely. Schools that do not comply and refuse to open will face cuts to their funding.
There is nothing new about any of this. All of this is just today’s news. It’s much the same as yesterday’s news and will likely be much the same as tomorrow’s news. More people will die from the virus and the President and his Administration and his supporters will do less to try and stop that from happening. The White House will try and divert our attention from activities it does not want us to look at by enlisting the help of other Chuck Wooleries. (I know that isn’t the correct way to pluralize that idiot, but it made me chuckle, so I’m keeping it.)
Last night, Michael and I took a walk down to Times Square. We had never taken a pandemic walk after dark together. We were trying to break our routine.
Our iPhone weather app assured us that it wasn’t going to rain until possibly 3am, so of course, when we got down to about 56th Streets the heavens opened up. We rode it out under some scaffolding and twenty minutes later it was done.
Look at how many times in a movie, the ground is wet. That isn’t an accident. Crews often spray the street before shooting starts. Water on the ground creates a mirror. Times Square, when there’s water on the ground, doubles. You get all of those lights and LED screens above and then the exact same thing below, reflected up from the wet street. It’s breathtaking.
We left Times Square and walked down 45th Street towards 8th Avenue.
We were horrified to see that most of the lights on the theatre marquees were out. The street was dark. The only marquee still on was the Ain’t Too Proud LED on the Imperial Theatre. The endless loop of the cast silently singing and dancing brightly on an otherwise dark street was unnerving and inexpressibly sad.
For weeks now, I have had a craving for a frozen margarita so we headed over to 9th Avenue to see if we could find one. Most of the restaurants there were completely overcrowded with people jammed in together not wearing masks. Restaurant Row on 46th Street has been blocked off to traffic and many of the places there have created outdoor areas. Most of them were packed in together as well. No social distancing, no masks.
We headed up 9th and, of all places, a Mexican restaurant named Arriba Arriba had outdoor space that was nicely separated. I was surprised because it is usually the most crowded place on the street.
There’s a new rule that you must order food when you order a drink, so we split some tacos, and each had an amazing frozen margarita - mine was mango and Michael’s was blood orange. It was worth the wait.
We need to break this routine. I wish I had some idea of how that can happen.
We seem to be locked in a cycle where the top health experts in the country are being undermined by the politicians in the country. Their warnings are ignored or discredited. The conflicting information that we are being deluged with is impossible to sort out without really taking the time to read and watch everything. Nobody is doing that, and can you blame them - it’s almost impossible to face. People are taking whatever information they happen to catch and running with it.
Because we have managed to flatten our curve so much here in New York, at this very moment in time the possibility of catching the virus from somebody else is lower here than it would be anywhere else. All it needs, however, is one infected person coming back from a visit to Disney World in Florida to join the party. That one person could infect the entire street. They may not even look sick - there’s mounting evidence that the time BEFORE the symptoms occur could be the most optimal time to spread the virus. The people on the street could then return to their homes and infect everyone there.
Looking at this all unfold day in, and day out is not something I would recommend. I just turned off the TV.
Michael’s about to cook breakfast. I’ll do the dishes afterwards. Then I have to go to the post office and then to the bank. Then I’ll go for a walk or a ride. It’s not supposed to rain at all for the next few days according to the app so I’m guessing we will end up with a hurricane later this afternoon.
After that, Michael will cook dinner and I’ll do the dishes again. We will watch some TV (we are working through The Politician now), I’ll read my book (a Connie Willis novel called Cross Talk) and then we’ll go to bed.
As routines go, it’s not a bad one. I’m grateful for that. Lord knows, it could certainly be far, far worse. But it could also be far better, too.
Eight performances a week seems like bliss right about now. I’d love to be able to give the company a half hour warning to start the show.
We’ll get there. I just wish that we’d get there sooner than it appears we will.
love it...Chuck Wooleries / Pullin the wool over our eyes....
I sometimes feel when reading your posts you are stage managing the COVID crisis everynight / rehearsing it in every city all over the world
💕
Opening Night is sold out as is the entire run
We know exactly what to do when and how
All truth, facts
and under the brightest Light
someday 💕