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.
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