Post 156 - August 14, 2020

Day 156…

This whole new reality of going to sleep when you are tired and waking up when you’re not, is… interesting.

Before everything shut down in March, I was seriously trying to figure out how to slow down the amount of work that I was doing.

I was always extremely busy. There were some days that I would wake up in the morning with so many things on my schedule for the day that it seemed impossible that I was going to be able to accomplish them all. Between auditions, rehearsals, meetings, theatre-going and social engagements there was often no blank space on my calendar at all.

Much to the horror of some of my younger more tech-oriented colleagues, I kept my entire schedule on a 12-page hand-written yearly calendar. Somehow, for me, the act of actually picking up a pencil and writing into the calendar what I needed to do got that information into my brain. I used to joke that if there was a bank space anywhere on my calendar in the coming three months that that would end up being the busiest part of the year. And for years, I was never wrong.

The beginning of this year was very busy as usual, but the last thing that I had actually written into my calendar was the week-long casting trip that I took to London just before we shut down. I had scattered things written in for a couple of weeks in June and two in August but, for the first time in years, I was coming up to a blank space with nothing in it. I was actually looking forward to it.

It turns out that all of the things that I spent years thinking, “If I only had the time” could all be accomplished in about two weeks.

The little things that needed repairing in the apartment? Done.

The stuff that needed sorting and clearing out? Done.

Filing? Done.

I haven’t done everything that was on the vague list in my brain, but the things that I haven’t done, for the most part, I genuinely, now, don’t care about.

In the past, when a show I was working on closed, there was always a part of me that was excited for the change. If those of us who work in live theatre know one thing it’s that whatever begins also ends.

My father could never understand how I could stand being unemployed all the time. At some point when my sister and I were kids, my Dad lost his job at a company that he had worked at for at least 20 years. I remember it being a big deal at the time and there being a lot of tension around it. He ultimately found another job. One, I think, that he actually preferred. I don’t remember at all how long he was without a job, but I don’t think it was more than a few months. Still, it was traumatic.

When I was working on a show that was closing, there was always a part of me that was looking forward to the break. It was a stressful break because I rarely knew what my next job was going to be. I always had faith, though, that I would eventually get another show. There were always corporate events to do as filler. I worked on things like the Drama Desk Awards show several times.

In 1997 I stage managed a David Mamet play called The Old Neighborhood on Broadway. On it, I met Patti LuPone and for the next ten years I stage managed her concert appearances all over the country. 

When somebody like Patti is in a show that closes, that’s one of the things they can do to earn a living until the next one. They tour their own concert.

We would usually do a couple of them a month. Sometimes there would be a longer gap while she was filming something or in a show, but for the most part over the years they were pretty constant. Even if I was working on a show, myself, I could usually take a day or two off and fly to wherever it was for a one-night appearance. Sometimes we could clump a couple of concerts in different places into a single week so when that happened I would just schedule a vacation from whatever show I was on.

I kept up with Patti until Jersey Boys really got going and I couldn’t take time off anymore. Last year, with the Jersey Boys schedule easing up a bit, I started back touring with her again. I also started doing the same thing with Mandy Patinkin.

I am trying to remember the last time that I had to take a job completely outside of theatre and I think that it was in 1987. It was at an IT company on Park Avenue South. They didn’t actually call it an IT company because it was 33 years ago and that didn’t really exist yet. They did something like setting up computers in offices, but this was before we all had computers ourselves. Anyway, I worked as a receptionist for them.

It was a tedious place to work. The guys who worked there were pompous and dismissive. They were all incredibly impressed with their positions and enjoyed hanging out at the front desk and teasing me for being in the “arts”.  

This may be hard to believe but this was before cell phones. We had answering services. People would call into the service and leave a message and then we had to call in to check them. Manning the phones at the front desk of this company was the perfect job in terms of being able to call in and check my messages - something I did about every ten minutes.

On a particularly annoying day I got a message from a friend who wanted to know how soon I could get to Hamilton, Canada to join up with a tour of West Side Story starring soap star Jack Wagner. I assumed that by soon my friend meant in a week or two, but he asked me if I could go to the office right away to sign a contract and then fly out that afternoon.

I hung up the phone and walked right out of the office without telling anyone I was leaving. I never picked up my last paycheck and never again talked to anyone there. I think that I called an out-of-work actor friend and told them that I thought there would be a job opening, but that was it. It was utterly and totally satisfying empowering moment.

The West Side Story tour only lasted a few weeks before it folded, and I cannot remember what I did after that. I am fairly certain, though, that I never had to take another job that wasn’t somehow connected to performance in some way.

2005, the year that we opened Jersey Boys on Broadway, was the first year in my entire professional life that I didn’t have to claim for even one week of unemployment. That held true until this past March 16.

Yesterday, the United States Senate disbanded and left Washington D.C. for a month-long break. They are not expected back until September 14.

Really?

We are in the middle of an international crisis, the likes of which none of us have ever experienced. 1,499 people in our country died of COVID-19 died yesterday.  A record daily high. The CDC is saying that if things continue as they are that another 22,000 Americans could lose their lives by Labor Day.

Two weeks ago, the aid payments from the government stopped.

The Democratic House has passed a proposal for them to continue but the Republican-led Senate refuses to even consider it.

Yesterday a friend and I were talking about meeting for a cocktail somewhere. Eventually I realized that we simply couldn’t afford to do it. The law in New York these days is that you can’t order a drink without also ordering food. If Michael and I went out to eat last night at the restaurant we were talking about, it would have cost us about 20% of our COMBINED unemployment checks this week.

I truly still believe that the Senate is going to HAVE to pass an extension of the benefits. Every gain that we have seen in the economy has been because we, the consumers, have had some money to spend. After two weeks without it, we are already making decisions NOT to spend. By the time the Senators finally return from their paid breaks another four weeks without the rest of us having funds will have passed.

Last week, for the first time since March, new unemployment claims fell below a million new people. 960,000 people filed for new claims. That this is the first week since March that that number has been under a million is mind-numbing when you think that before this the largest single week record for new claims was during the recession in 1982 when 695,000 new people filed.

As we all start reconsidering going out to dinner, or buying that new shirt, those businesses are going to suffer. More people will be laid off. The more people get laid off the less money will be circulating in our economy.

What do all of those Senators think is going to happen while they take their salaried break?

There were definitely a couple of weeks in there that I was enjoying not having anything on the calendar. In the fifteen years prior to the shutdown I often worked weeks on end without a day off. Even when I had a day off, I was available 24/7 - necessary because we had companies in different time zones all over the world.

Honestly, I don’t need to go back to that. I do need, however, to get back to work. Like most everybody I know, I would gladly trade in all of this free time for the ability to do the work that I am trained to do.

This election cannot come soon enough. It is not, however, going to be easy.

The President has admitted that he is trying to undercut the United States Postal Service in order to thwart mail-in balloting.

The Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is restructuring the Post Office in such a way as to ensure that there will be slowdowns. It was just announced that for cost-cutting reasons they will be removing high-speed mail sorting machines from many offices.

DeJoy has raised millions of dollars for the President and the Republican Party. He has a multi-million-dollar stake in a company called XPO Logistics that is a USPS contractor.

To say that he has a conflict of interest is perhaps the understatement of the year.

The President continues to claim widespread mail-in-voting fraud without offering a single shred of evidence to back that up. He and his wife just applied for mail-in ballots from Florida themselves.

“Do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

S.V. Date, a reporter from the Huffington Post, asked the President yesterday.

“Three-and-a-half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

“All the what?”

“All the lying. All the dishonesty.”

“And who’s that?”

“YOU have done. Tens of thousands of them.”

“Uhhh…”

I realize that I am mistaken about feeling that I don’t have a job. We all have one. It is incumbent upon all of us to do everything that we can to ensure that as many people as possible be able to vote.

The path before us is clear. Even clearer are the obstacles being placed on it by this President and his Administration. Where they should be doing everything in their power to help, they are doing the exact opposite.

Four weeks is a long time for all of those Senators to chill out in their comfortable homes or kick back at the beach.

Let’s get busy while they’re gone and give them something truly solid to come back to.

Loyal opposition.