Gateway, Part 7

I have a few final stories from my summer at Gateway.

The two 16 year old boys, the owner’s son and the local “Wonder Kid”, were soon joined by a dozen or so 15 to 17 year old high school girls who came to take theatre classes and work on the children’s plays.

To the surprise of one of the actresses, she was assigned to be the chaperone to the young girls, living with them in their dorm.

It came as no surprise that the two boys were soon hanging around the girls.

One night the chaperone came to the “Hilton” looking for the two 16 year old boys who were not there.

It seemed that two of her girls were missing, so several of the male techies made a “Posse” and went out looking for the missing girls.

Within a short time the two missing girls and boys were found sitting and talking in a tree in front of the main Theatre.

Coming back from lunch one day noticed that one of the extra stair units seemed to have been moved just outside the window of the girls shower room.

It seems that it was moved a little closer each day until it was under the window but no one noticed.

We had a good laugh and moved it back to the storage area.

One day we had a little free time and the ATD and I decided to go downtown for some pizza.

We talked one of the actresses, a former Miss New York Runner-up, to come with us.

Well she made a big impact on the owner of the pizzeria as free beer and pizza was soon at our table along with the owner drooling over the actress.

After a quick bite and a sip or two the actress was off to some club for a little more up-scale evening, but the ATD and I got our free pizza and beer and a few laughs.

We had a woman from the country of Columbia working with us, and like me, she chose to read a little in her free time but had occasional problems with English from time to time.

One day while reading “Ragtime” by E. L. Doctorow she asked someone for some help with the meaning of a word, but the person asked turned red and told her to she had to ask someone else.

All afternoon she was passed from person to person as no one wanted to explain the word to her.

The word: Fellatio.

Several times that summer we would do performances for special groups who would buy all the tickets for one of the shows.

The producers made several of the actresses to serve as special ushers and I think they even helped give out door prizes at intermission.

At one of these performances there were many in the audience who had too much to drink before the show and who drank even more during the intermission.

At the end of “West Side Story” Tony runs onstage followed by Maria and then Chino with the gun.

It is the biggest and saddest moment of the play, but that night just as Chino shoots the gun at Tony some drunk lady starts to laugh and cackle out loud.

Of course it ruined to end of the play and the actors were very mad after the show.

The final play we worked on was "The Ritz", a comedy in which a mobster hides from killers in a NYC Gay Bathhouse.

I was looking forward to working on the play as my brother and I saw it on Broadway the year before.

The set was large, two stories tall with many doors, all of which I put in.

In addition to learning how to really use a circular saw, the hanging of all doors and putting in the door knobs was an important skill that I learned that summer that I have used many times since.

Because I had to return to school before the end on the plays run I did not work on the run crew and this is the only one of the plays that I watched from the audience.

The Ritz, with some of the doors I made.

A inside joke, not known to the general audience, is that many of the Gay Characters were played by Straight Actors and the Straight Characters were played by Gay Actors.

After a long summer I think the actors needed to have some fun and this was enjoyed by everyone in the show.

The actors also had fun when they entered the Steam Room on the set as they would whip off their towels and “Moon” the audience.

There are many other bits of fun that summer (a few more naked people here and there I am sure) but I think I have given you a good sample of all the things that happened that summer.

Yes there were many problems, but I learned a great deal and gained lots of confidence in myself and wanted to continue working in theatre even more.

I know that many of the people I worked with went on to work in the Theatre, some went on to Broadway and Hollywood and still others went into Education like me.

What happened to those two 16 year old Boys?

Well the owner’s son now runs Gateway and has expanded the size and quality of the shows they do.

The other “Wonder Kid” went on to work Theatre in NYC and runs his own production company.

Over the years I have run across a few of the others from that summer, but there are others I can find no trace of when I search online.

Between working off-Broadway and at Gateway, I had a great summer and was eager to get back to school and see what adventures were to lay ahead.

Updated 12/18/18

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