Post 52 - May 2, 2020
Day 52…
Wow am I ready to get back to work.
Working in the theatre, we get thrown together with new groups of people all the time.
In what we would call civilian life, you probably encounter much the same group every day.
On a big musical, though, we encounter the same group of about 60 people every day, but just for a while.
Rehearsing a show and getting it up and running is an intense emotional experience that bonds us all much faster than other jobs usually do.
When the show closes, though, despite those bonds, we move on to a new gig and we suddenly find ourselves with a whole new group of 60 people.
Sometimes there is somebody in the new group that you’ve encountered in a previous group. If you are lucky enough to work in the same theatre building again, you already have a connection to the people running the theatre, but sometimes it is just a whole new cast of characters to get to know and quickly trust.
My job on JERSEY BOYS puts me in the room with a group for a shorter concentrated time than it would be working on a new show. I then move on to the next.
Then the next.
Then back to the first and so on.
Each group is different. Each has its own vibe. Over the time that I’ve been with the show, people from one cast have often ended up in other casts. Crew members and band members have also migrated across companies.
Throughout the many years of JERSEY BOYS, some people have remained a constant part of my job and some of those people are among my closest friends.
With JERSEY BOYS as with all of the other shows I’ve worked on, some of those groups work well together and some of them don’t as much.
Sometimes when a show closes, you say goodbye and that’s it. You never see anybody again.
You’ve had this intense experience together, bonded, worked as a team, then you disperse.
Even with the shows that work well together, at the end, relationships often dwindle.
Some continue via social media, often quite satisfyingly.
Occasionally, some work relationships develop and deepen into real friendships.
Last night Michael and I were part of a zoom session with a company from nearly 20 years ago that REALLY worked. We have remained connected as a group forever and, despite the fact that we have scattered, that connection has endured. We had fun and we really missed the people in the group who weren’t there.
As great as seeing those guys on zoom was, though, it left me with a real ache to get back into a rehearsal room WITH people.
We are getting used to seeing tiny little avatars of our friends and family on our computer screens (and thank heavens for the technology that allows us to do that) but it’s not the real thing.
I’ve run into friends out on the street, but we can’t get anywhere near each other.
We can’t touch each other.
We are used to shaking hands.
We hug.
With closer friends, we kiss.
Now, when we run into people, we have to resist impulses to do any of that and end up kind of just lurching towards each other and raising our elbows.
It’s awkward at best.
These days, it also takes a while to simply recognize each other because we are all wearing masks.
You catch someone’s eye and think there’s something about them that looks familiar.
Bill?
Even my iPhone doesn’t recognize me in a mask.
How do Muslim women in a burka recognize each other?
We take social and conversational signals from each other through our facial expressions.
Yes, there are some signals that we can give and receive through the eyes, but without what’s going on in the lower part of the face, there is more than the usual amount of guesswork involved to try and figure out the nuance of the conversation.
Conversations on the street nowadays, as a result, end up being more surface and banal.
They aren’t all that satisfying.
For everybody who is paranoid about being tracked by the government, there must be some comfort in what all of this mask wearing is doing to thwart all of the facial recognition software that is out there.
Companies are already hard at work improving their existing facial recognition algorithms.
By the time we are past this, our iPhones will be able to recognize us even with our masks on - mark my words.
Will we get better at communicating with each other just seeing the top half of each other’s faces?
I think we are going to have to because I don’t think that mask-wearing is going to end anytime soon.
Even as things start to open back up, mask-wearing is going to be a major safety component towards making that possible.
Will actors wear masks onstage?
As ready as I am to get back to work, and I am TRULY ready, I fear that we are going to be among the last businesses to reopen.
Broadway officials are not among those on the task force that the Governor of NY is putting together to explore how businesses will reopen.
That seems to be a major oversight given how much Broadway contributes to the local economy.
I think that there is a fear that if Broadway opens too soon that people from outside the city will start coming in.
We aren’t ready for visitors yet.
As we get our numbers under control, we don’t want to encourage people from other places who don’t have a handle on their numbers from coming to the city.
Beaches reopening in Florida means that people from elsewhere are going to travel there to play in the sand and water and sunshine.
And bring the virus with them.
Broadway can’t be responsible for doing the same thing.
We still need to be in on the planning.
I don’t understand why we aren’t.
I think that most of us are more than ready to get back to our lives.
I don’t know when that is going to happen.
I fear it won’t be all that soon.
So, we will zoom and learn to look deeply into each other’s eyes.
They are the window into the soul, after all.
I miss you guys.
A lot.