Post 455 - April 16, 2022

April 16, 2022 (Day 766)

About a week ago as I was crossing 57th Street without paying attention, I stepped into a hole next to a manhole cover and rolled my ankle what felt like halfway up my leg. The pain was excruciating and blinding. I got to the other side of the street and stumbled into a subway entrance and sat down on the ground for a few minutes to catch my breath.

I was meant to be meeting Michael and a friend of ours for lunch in what used to be the Edison Coffee Shop which was about 10 blocks down from where I found myself sitting. After the major wave of pain and nausea had passed and I felt slightly more back in my body, I stood up to go. I could put weight on the foot which convinced me that it wasn’t broken, it just hurt to bend it.

Taking my time, I limped down 8th avenue towards the restaurant. I was truly amazed by the reactions of the people I passed. They recoiled from me. As if my sprained ankle was contagious, my fellow pedestrians skirted around me often with looks of, well I would have to say, revulsion, on their faces. Minutes before I was anonymous and invisible, now with my exaggerated limp, I was an obstacle to be avoided at any cost.

I got to the restaurant and Michael got me a Tylenol from a nearby newsstand. After lunch, we took a cab home and I moved onto the couch for a day or two. My ankle swelled to twice its normal size. We iced it and I waited for it to get better. On Friday, two days after this happened, I decided to go to a reading in midtown of a new show that friends of mine were involved in. I tried to find a cab, but none were around, so I limped to the subway station only to realize that I would never make it before curtain. At the last minute, a taxi appeared, and we sped downtown. I got to the space just in time for it to start and hobbled into my seat. The people sitting in my row were annoyed that I couldn’t just get to my seat naturally but needed to hold onto the backs of the chairs.

Afterward, I made my way to the subway and headed home determined to not have to pay for yet another expensive car ride. Again, I was given an impossibly wide berth by my fellow pedestrians until I got on the train. There nobody moved out of the way at all or even so much as considered giving me a seat.

This past Saturday, Michael and I started our two-day drive to St. Louis to begin work on The Karate Kid musical. Since both of us would be working on it for some months, we decided to bring the cat with us. Given everything that we were dragging along with us, driving seemed easier than flying, so we made a road trip of it. We spent the first night in a Hyatt Place somewhere near Columbus and then arrived the second afternoon into the town we are working in on the outskirts of St. Louis. Thankfully, over the course of his life, the cat has been on almost every mode of transportation there is, and he is a good traveler. We left his carry case open inside the car, but except for one foray out at a truck stop, he never left it.

St. Louis and Missouri have no mask mandates at all. Our union, however, still has masking and testing protocols in place, so we will be following them for a while. Unlike many of our friends, Michael and I have both gotten more and more comfortable going maskless. Sometimes, I still do it out of habit, but I find that I am starting to forget to do it. When we got to the rehearsal studios and offices, everyone masked up for our arrival, but as our pre-production day wore on, more and more of them came off.

We had all tested negative so as we were working around the table, we started taking off our masks to sip coffee and then forgetting to put them back on. Notably, our director and associate producer, both of whom are Japanese with a long history of mask-wearing, kept their masks on the entire time.

The actors will join us in a few days and then, because of union guidelines we will all stay masked for at least the next two weeks at which point it appears that they will become optional depending on the national recommendations.

My ankle got to about 85% of its former self over about three days but the last 15% is taking longer. With each day, it gets a bit better, and I can now more-or-less walk without a limp. I’ll forget about it and then be suddenly reminded when I try and move it in a way that it doesn’t want to go yet.  The swelling is down but there is a rainbow of stormy bruises around it. I have gotten used to the slight stiffness and ache. It’s strangely not all that unpleasant. Someday, I am guessing that it will suddenly dawn on me that it is now fine and has been fine and I won’t be able to remember the exact point at which that change happened.

There is still active thought happening around the pandemic, but I think that the same thing will suddenly occur to us one day - Oh, it’s over. We are probably about 85% through it but there is still that lingering, nagging 15% that continues to occupy our daily lives. Masking notices, testing places, and general signage have become so ubiquitous that it is hard to notice them anymore. A few months ago, coming to a state without any mandates at all might have worried me, now I am far more concerned about the fact that we are here in tornado season. Nobody here seems overly concerned about the fact that a big storm is coming so I am sure I will gradually get used to that idea too.

COVID-19 seems to be lingering longer than our ability to get excited about it has. Half of Broadway is shut down. Both Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker have it, so Plaza Suite is down until one of them is better. The new musical Paradise Square is down for a week - something that I am sure that they can’t afford. We are starting rehearsals here in St. Louis on a show with 27 cast members and 4 stage managers. We have just so many days that we can rehearse. If we need to shut down because people get infected, we can’t make that time up. I am far more concerned that I will catch it and be forced to stay away from the work than I am about what that might mean health-wise. I got my second booster shot just moments before I blew out my ankle. Missouri and St. Louis, however, have no mask or distancing mandates at all. As far as anyone here is concerned, we are on our own.

Like the cold I got two weeks ago, all of this is going to peter out so much slower than any of us wants it to. We will mostly recover quite quickly, but those last few percentage points until we reach full health will take forever. At least it is going to seem that way.

I am choosing not to worry about it. I am grateful to be limping into rehearsal, even with a slight residual cough, and stuck in a mask all day. Eventually, I will be able to leap into the room with carefree abandon, but for now, I’ll just muscle through. I’ve got things to do and people to see.

Wow, does it feel good to be back in a rehearsal room with great people, working on something new and potentially wonderful. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Of course, I am now trying to picture exactly what damage I could do to my body by leaping into a room with carefree abandon. Hmm.

Standing by, everyone. Here we go.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Read-Excerpts-from-Stage-Manager-Richard-Hesters-HOLD-PLEASE-STAGE-MANAGING-A-PANDEMIC-20220416