Day 725…
I’m not sure who needs to know this or whether it matters to anyone, but I am not being reached by theatrical advertising. Yesterday, I walked through the theatre district for the first time in a couple of weeks and there were marquees up for shows that, up until I saw them, I wasn’t aware were happening. Of the shows that I am aware of, I can’t be sure that they are still running.
When I was in high school, I knew everything that was happening on Broadway. The inside page of the theatre section of the New York Times on Friday was full of news of what was coming or going all surrounding a new Hirschfeld caricature of a Broadway notable. I knew how shows were doing so I knew that if I wanted to see something that I either had time or I should get there quickly because their days were numbered. Now, I simply have no idea. The League doesn’t publish the grosses the way they used to and, honestly, if they did, I wouldn’t know where to find them. In high school, I didn’t need to find them, they found me.
We aren’t reading the hard copy of the New York Times and haven’t for years. I occasionally will buy one if I’m getting on a plane, but I’m not getting on a plane very much these days. Online advertising is far easier to skip over. It does seem to be everywhere on various sites, but I don’t think we perceive it in the same way that we do print advertising. The algorithms online cater the ads to individuals, as a result, we get much the same thing over again on ad infinitum, so it is easy to tune it out. In a printed newspaper, like the New York Times, it’s the same ads for everybody regardless of what your personal consumer history might be. I might get struck by something completely out of the norm in terms of my past purchasing history and be intrigued by it. Online, that doesn’t happen - I am merely barraged with the same things that are exactly like the things that I have already bought or done.
We don’t watch TV. We stream. Now that we aren’t trapped at home, I get my news from apps rather than broadcasts. Television advertising is lost on us. We don’t commute so we aren’t seeing billboards. I’m trying to think if I have seen any theatrical advertising in the subway. The fact that I can’t remember, I guess is my answer. If it’s there, it doesn’t seem to be reaching me either.
In Times Square, Jersey Boys has long been on the side of garbage cans. I always thought that that was kind of a stroke of genius. People search out garbage cans. Of course, you need to be in Times Square to see them, but if you are in Times Square at all, it is probably because you are a tourist of some sort visiting New York and what do tourists like to do? See a show. MJ, the new musical about Michael Jackson has taken over some of those spots. They are using the same colors as the Jersey Boys ads, though, so it took me a while to realize the difference. I am aware of MJ having opened because I have a lot of friends involved in it. I am connected to them on social media. I searched out the reviews out of curiosity and they were terrible - not for the quality of the artistry involved, which is considerable, but mainly against the subject matter itself. Are those reviews influencing ticket sales? Are people going? Is it a hit? Is it still running? Sitting here on the couch, I don’t know. I would have to look it up. In the past, I would know. I wouldn’t have been able to avoid the information if I’d tried.
My father’s sister Helen passed away in Lynchburg, Virginia this past Saturday. Despite some short-term memory loss, was alert and cognizant to the very end. On Saturday morning, she simply and calmly told one of the attendants of the nursing home where she was living that she should go to the hospital as she wasn’t feeling well and that she had been told that she was going to die. They took her over and an hour later, she did. Peacefully.
The day before, I got a birthday card from her in the mail. While she always sent a Christmas card, she didn’t often remember our birthdays. That day, when we were already down there, my sister, whose birthday is a week before mine, heard from her husband that she’d received one at home too. Last week, Helen had her hair done and had gone to a celebration on her floor for somebody’s birthday or some such event. She hadn’t ventured out of her room much in recent weeks, so everybody remarked on it. She put everything in order and enjoyed herself one last time and then moved on.
My aunt is the last living member of my father’s side of the family besides my sister and me. She never married so Sue and I are the genetic end of this branch of the family. Sue has kids, but since she took her husband’s name, I am the last living, Hester. My mother is a Hester by marriage. Helen has a multitude of first cousins that she grew up with who all reside out west. My grandmother had a sister named Martha who seems to have been a bit of a surprise given that she was born twenty some odd years after her and her brother, my great Uncle Scott. Martha was similar in age to my father and aunt, and, at times, they all grew up together almost like siblings. Martha’s kids, who are Helen’s first cousins range in age from near my age on up. I believe that makes them my second cousins because we share the same great-grandparents.
I cannot tell you how many hours of my childhood were spent in my grandparents’ living room in Lynchburg fighting with my sister over who got to sit in the rocking chair, listening to discussions just like this. All my relatives and all their neighbors with their slow melodic southern drawls got involved in the discussion. Every. Single. Time. we were there. The people they would talk about had wonderful names like Ormond and Minerva and even, Hamlet. My grandmother’s name was Eunice, and my grandfather was Morris. At some point during the conversation, my aunt would laugh. She had a great laugh - a high cascade of notes that was incredibly satisfying to trigger. When my family and their friends gathered like that, they sang a deeply moving song about our history.
Helen majored in Latin and Biology at Randolph-Macon Women’s College and then worked for a giant pharmaceutical company as a Librarian for many years. She lived in Rahway, New Jersey. Rahway would come to play a part in my time spent working at Jersey Boys because that’s where a lot of the characters, themselves, spent time - in the prison. When she retired, she moved down to Lynchburg to take care of my grandparents who lived into their nineties. Helen, herself, had just turned 94 when she passed.
I sent Helen postcards from everywhere I traveled to. And I mean everywhere. When my sister and I cleared out her room this past weekend, we found that she had kept them all in a binder that she titled, “The World through Richard’s Eyes.”
My aunt wasn’t always happy about getting older. When we’d ask how she was, she’d say, “Not getting any younger,” then laugh. That laugh. From the time I was a very small child, I can remember her worrying about ending up at the Westminster-Canterbury Home when she got older and, in fact, she did spend the last ten, fifteen, twenty (?) years of her life there. She started out in assisted living and gradually moved into different ever-smaller rooms when the level of care and attention she needed to be increased. As far as those places go, it is a beautiful, bright, well cared for, and spotlessly clean place. The staff there has always seemed kind and attentive. She was surrounded by furniture and artwork that she cared about. Many of the paintings were done by my grandmother. Two of them are leaning against the furniture in my living room now, the rest are with my sister.
My generation, the Boomers, is the largest percentage of the population here in the United States. While my mother who is younger than my aunt was, has been able to figure out the internet and connect to all of us that way, it was beyond my aunt’s capability and interest. The Boomer generation, however, is going into this last section of their lives fully adapted to the digital world. Potentially, I think that as we get closer to my aunt’s age, we should be able to remain more connected to friends and family than the previous generation has been able to do. The prospect of time in a place like Westminster-Canterbury seems far less terrifying with access to the internet and the ease of communication that it affords. Mind you, I am in no rush to go somewhere like that whatsoever, but I think my aunt lost sleep over worrying about it. I am not going to go down that same path. Whatever the future holds can be dealt with then when it unfolds.
It seems to me that theatrical advertising is going to need to figure out how to reach the Boomers now that the previous generation is becoming elderly. I’m not sure that they’ve cracked that nut yet. There are several theatres in New York that rely on an ever-aging subscriber base. Will the Boomers sign up the same way the last group did? The generation that is coming after us has figured out how to exist in the virtual world of the internet far more than we have. They have created a world of influencers and niche markets that seems to function very well for them. I’m not sure that is going to work for us. Like every generation, the next generation will be as divided from us as we Boomers were from our parents. The overall difference is that there are so. many. more. of us Boomers than there are of them.
My Aunt Helen was born into and lived in another time. When she retired and moved in with her parents, she essentially time traveled back to that earlier era and stayed there. When she moved into Westminster-Canterbury she sealed the deal and lived out her days surrounded by people from that same era. Not having to adjust to the internet kept her from having to move forward in time to a way of living that, for her, was uncomfortable and unknown.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think that people my age are as afraid of venturing into that unknown. I want to know what is going on so my industry better start figuring out how to reach me. The big splashy new shows being dangled in front of us mainly seem to be relying on nostalgia to draw people in. All well and good if there is then a forward-moving reason to revisit those artists or those stories. I’m not ready to step off the moving sidewalk of progress just yet and just live in a time in the past. I don’t need to live in the then when there is so much ahead that seems challenging and difficult and exciting. Theatre should not be a museum of the safe, it should be a place where we are challenged. Yes, we should be entertained, but we don’t need to be soothed.
Helen was often somewhat difficult to talk to because she was rarely able to add something new to the conversation. She went to church which she enjoyed, but in recent years even that started proving to be too difficult. She liked hearing about what my sister and I were doing but I am not sure she fully understood most of it. She always loved hearing from the cousins out west and was grateful to have met and gotten to know my sister’s kids a bit. She remained the full repository of family history and lore and to listen to her tell familiar stories was always entertaining. That family lore did not always line up with historical facts is something that I am starting to discover. It doesn’t make the stories any the less interesting, in fact just the opposite. A good storyteller uses the facts as a solid jumping-off place and then… jumps.
Rest in peace, Helen Wilson Hester. We will make sure that all the stories aren’t forgotten.
Deepest condolences on the loss of your dear Aunt. What a beautiful woman and life she led in spite of her “old fashion ways “, she clearly adored you and your sister. May her memory be a blessing.
❤️The World Through Richard’s Eyes ❤️