The Crazy Lady

 There are not too many groupies waiting outside the stage door for the level and type of Theatre that I have worked on over the years.

On the Rock Concerts that I have worked there was usually a crowd waiting eagerly at the stage door, but even on the professional Theatre Productions I have done the crowds have been small and well behaved.

This does not mean that we do not have regular patrons, who attend our productions, but most times it is just friends and family who wait in the lobby for the actors after a play lets out.

There are some exceptions.

It was about the time that I was working on My Fair Lady that I became aware of who we would come to call “The Crazy Lady”.

After one of the performances I was running around backstage checking on those things that I check on when I saw this woman “playing” with props on the table we had in the cross over hall.

She was handling the 50 cent pieces that we had painted gold for use in the play.

I said something intelligent and forceful like: “ Can I help you? Please leave the props alone”.

She said that she was not stealing them rather she was looking for dates on the coins that she did not have in her collection.

I asked her nicely to leave.

The next time I noticed her she was sitting in her car in the parking lot with her window down listening to the actors talking and having a few beers after the play one night.

She just sat there off to the side in the shadows, listening and living vicariously through what was said.

I would see her again and again over the years and learn a bit more about her, not really knowing what was true.

Evidently “Mrs. T” had worked at the college and was now retired and liked to come to all the events at the college and especially enjoyed opening night receptions and her bag was always a bit larger going home then when she arrived.

I cannot complain too much as I survived college at times on the cheese I got from a few receptions.

Over time she got to know me and everyone who worked in the Theatre and would like to talk and tell us about her daughter and then her granddaughter.

I was told by someone that at one time the college president had an assistant whose job it was to keep her away from him at receptions.

Once she knew who you were she loved to talk and talk and talk.

After years of listening to her stories I finally figured out the easiest way to deal with her.

When I would see her I would go up to her first, say hello and ask her how she was doing and after just a little small talk I would excuse myself and tell I was needed elsewhere.

She has been a loyal patron over the years and saying hello is not too much of a price to pay.

She must be in her eighties by now and not in great health but she still shows up from time to time.

It took me a while but I finally realized that she was harmless and just a very lonely person.

I saw her car one day and it was packed solid with an odd mixture of junk and it looked like it belonged to someone on “Hoarders”.

 I can only imagine what her house must look like.

My running joke lately that when she goes to the “great reception in the sky” she is going to leave the college millions and we will get a new Theatre.

We do have a few regular patrons, former college employees and other locals, who come to our production and I always try to thank them when I see them in the lobby before or after a production.

One couple’s daughter worked for me one summer about twenty years ago and over the years I got to hear stories about her life as she went to college, got a job and eventually married.

I must admit there are people who come and talk with me; ask how I am doing, about my wife and even our granddaughter but I have no idea who they are, but I am happy to see them and still glad they came.

Back during my first few summer productions at Brockport there would be a bar in the lobby and the second act of the plays always went better.

Unfortunately with the changing drinking laws have a bar in the lobby of a college theatre would become a thing of the past.

We never had problems with drunken patrons but did have several occasions have groups of loud drunk students pass through the lobby on their way to or from the bars in town.





*

My Fair Lady

I felt confident and good going into my second Summer Arts Festival at Brockport.

Having gone through two school years and a summer I knew what was in store and I had built up a good working relationship with the students who were staying to work on the two plays.

We did have a few non-students who worked on the production but most were theatre and other students who stayed in town for the summer.

Some students would get course credit for working while most would get a small paycheck for lots of hard work.

Although the rehearsals and set construction would begin in June the planning of the production would begin months earlier when the production team was put together, sets and costumes designs prepared and auditions were often done as early as March.

The department faculty designers did not always stay for the summer plays and for My Fair Lady an outside set designer was hired.

The production was a true “Town and Gown” production with a mixture of students, college faculty and staff and a variety of local actors appearing in the play.

The audience looked forward to the productions each summer and some of the local actors became crowd favorites over the years.

The Scenic Designer they hired worked at Geva Theatre, the local Professional Theatre in Rochester.

I guess because of that connection I had been hired to do some freelance set construction work over spring break in March and for about a week I helped build the set for a production of Born Yesterday, working mostly on a large curved staircase.

I enjoyed working there and always wished I had more time to work there and do more outside jobs, but my job my job at Brockport requires me to work on or supervise all of the Theatre and Music events at the college and it has always been hard to find the time to in fit outside work into my schedule.

My Fair Lady was going to be a large traditional set with many scenes and a number of painted backdrops.

Five or six brand new backdrops were ordered ahead of time so that they would be ready to paint as soon as we began working in June.

One of the first things we did when the crew came to work was to clear everything out of our Black-Box Theatre and stretch out and staple down two of the new backdrops to the floor so that they would be ready for the designer to paint.

As soon as the first two backdrops were painted we would take them up, hang them in the Mainstage Theatre and place two fresh ones down.

Unfortunately the backdrops sat unpainted on the Theatre floor for weeks.

We were busy building the many flats, stair units and other set pieces required for use in the set.

The biggest set was Professor Higgins' house that was made up of many of many walls and a large staircase unit that rolled on and off as needed.

Some of the students asked the designer when he would paint the backdrops and if they could help but he would always put them off and said that the work would begin soon.

One drop was eventually painted and looked very good and it reassured everyone that things would be done on time.

The first painted backdrop was the hallway in Professor Higgins' house that used for the many crossover scenes, but nothing else was done for a long time.

My crew worked hard every day and all of the set pieces were done on time but unfortunately not the backdrops.

Opening night we had only the one painted backdrop and I had to hang just black curtains and one white unpainted backdrop to fill the stage.

For the "Ascot Gavotte" we had nothing but the actors in front of a black drape and for Eliza’s big moment at the “Embassy Waltz" we had a nice double stair unit but just a blank backdrop behind it.

For the romantic scene of “On the Street Where You Live" we had a nice front door and steps of the house but nothing to go around it and were forced to hang some black drapes and pin one up so it would go around the doorway.

One night the stage manager, another crew member and I got stuck behind the unit as the curtains got caught up on the door unit and we could not get off with being seen as the scene went on.

The Stage Manager still had her headset on and called the cues the best should could.

The second weekend of the production the backdrop for this scene was painted and we hung it.

Even with the set problems the show went off well and the audience enjoyed the production.

I liked the Set Designer and he did good work, I know he was going through some person issues but I never found out why he waited so long to get started on the painting until it was too late.

The summer plays were always a lot of work and we always had fun.

We did take time to set off the Fourth of July fireworks as we had done the summer before and I remembered to wear my hearing protection unlike the first year.

After the dress rehearsals and performances the cast and crew always went out for a few drinks and some nights there was even some “Tailgating” as one of the cast members would have a cooler of beers and they would just party in the parking lot.

This was 28 years ago and although drinking and driving was bad then, people did not take as seriously as we do now and that fact that more people did not get into trouble was just luck.

 *

Sky King

By the end of my second year working at Brockport I had fallen into a vacation pattern that I would follow for about the next ten years with little change.

I would visit my family on Long Island three times a year; I would spend a week to ten days at Christmas time, in May right after school ended and before beginning work on the summer shows and also in August after the second show was done and before school would start again in the fall.

During my time back on Long Island I would often make time to go into NYC to see a Broadway play.

As I had done back in college, I would wait at the TKTS booth and buy a ticket for whatever I thought would be the best or most interesting play to me.

My second year had been good and I enjoyed working on the plays and felt more in control than my first year.

I was looking forward to the summer shows, My Fair Lady and Wait Until Dark, but with the Lighting Design teacher not getting tenure I was not sure how he would react and what would happen that summer or the next year.

Because of the way of our Union contract is written, the Lighting Designer had a whole year left to work before he was out of a job and I was hoping it was not going to be a year of hell if he was pissed off and would take it out on the students and everyone around him.

Knowing that people may not get tenure, meaning maybe me, I felt about the same as in grad school when they kicked two of my classmates out of the program, uneasy.

As it turned out it he was cool and continued to work hard that summer and the next year, but I did not know that before hand and was always a bit on edge that third year. 

For some reason, time and/or cheap airfare, I flew home for my vacation and family visit that May.

I had a good time and the night before I was to fly back I went out with my younger brother to have a few drinks.

We had a good time and decided to drop in on one more bar on the way home and of course there was someone there who insisted on buying me a few shots that I did not need.

Not wanting to be rude I had those drinks and would pay for it big time the next day.

I got up with a hangover and all I wanted to do was get on the plane, sleep an hour, get back to my house and sleep.

Well things did not go as I had planned.

First of all the plane from Islip to Rochester was a small single engine model with about 12 seats and the pilot thought he was “Sky King” and I swear he did loops just for fun.

Needless to say my head was really hurting by the time the plane got back to Rochester and I got back to my house.

So finally I lay down on my bed and less than an hour later my phone rang and being a fool I answered it.

“Gary can you help me, I got kicked out of my apartment and need to move”.

I knew before my trip home that my friend Jane had to move and I had offered her the use of my extra room for a few weeks before her new place was ready.

So over the next painful six hours I helped move her shit to some other friend’s barn in the next town.

Somehow I managed to survive that day but I am not sure how.

Although Jane and I had a platonic relationship I am sure there were hopeful desires of a future romance that powered me on that day.

She was a cool girl and I had a lot of fun with her and you can read all about our advetures in my secret memoirs  -  if I ever write them.

I do not want to get too far off topic but Jane was a Theatre minor and did do some work in the Theatre so bringing her up is appropriate to this Blog.

There was this one day when Jane was annoying me and I tied her to one of the columns in Theatre and told the others to leave her there for a while.

Ah, the good old days.

There was a lot of work to do that second summer and lots of fun too as we worked on the two plays and we also got to set off the 4^th of July fireworks works again.

I did learn from the year before and remembered to wear my sound muffs that second time.

Show stories and more to follow.

*