Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (2 page)

Act One

Usher:
Let’s get this one out of the way first. As the name suggests, ushers read tickets and escort patrons to their seats. They also prepare Playbills for distribution, secure theater exits at intermission and the end of the show, try to ensure that the local fire codes are met, answer questions, troubleshoot problems, try to calm down irate customers, locate lost children or their parents, assist disabled patrons and keep an eye on safety concerns around the theater. In shows where actors come into the auditorium, ushers may be directly responsible for their well-being by keeping the aisles clear, keeping guests away from them, or guarding their entrance or exit paths.

Broadway ushers are not volunteers; they’re paid employees and members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union.

Chief:
Also called the head usher, she or he is charge of the ushering staff. She or he calls the shots, assigns aisles and stations and takes care of relevant clerical duties, such as submitting the ushers’ payroll to the house manager. The chief often works directly with the house managers to solve problems. As far as I know, all head ushers start out as rank-and-file and work their way up.

Director:
There may be one or several, depending on the size of the theater. The directors are the chief’s first mates, so to speak. They direct patrons to the right sections, deal with problems, and sometimes act as substitute chiefs. They’re often in charge during the show. The house manager and/or chief usually choose the directors.

Regular/permanent usher:
An usher who is on permanent staff at the theater. She or he doesn’t have to call in for work every week; as long as the theater is open, the job is there. Some regulars work at the same theater for decades; others bounce around. When their theaters are closed and they have to work at other venues, regular ushers tend to become regular subs.

Regular subs:
Substitute ushers that stay in one place for a while, filling an empty spot in the regular roster or covering for a permanent usher who is sick, on vacation, or otherwise on a leave of absence. They usually get a lot of respect and tend to step into regular spots when they become available.

Subs:
The vagabonds who travel around Broadway and work performances for regular ushers who are out for a night or two. Some do it by choice; some do it because there’s no work; some do it because they haven’t climbed the ladder high enough to get a permanent house. Subs have to call the theater owners every week to get work. Sometimes they’re lucky enough to get eight performances at the same place; sometimes they bounce around to numerous theaters in a single week, and sometimes work is slow and they only pick up a show here and there.

There are a lot of unrealistic stereotypes about those who work service jobs. At the top of the list, there’s the pervasive misconception that service professionals lack intelligence or education. On one occasion, a patron told me that I was “really stupid,” and that I’d probably “never been out of Hoboken.” The irony of these statements was that I’d recently returned from a year-long stay in South Africa but I’d actually never been to Hoboken. As for the crack about intelligence, since I was a card-carrying member of Mensa as well as a university graduate, I doubt I was the stupid one in our conversational pair.

Most of the other ushers I knew were university graduates. Some had master’s degrees or were in the process of earning them. Many juggled ushering with school, as I had, or with other employment. I knew ushers who were editors at major publishing houses, mid-level employees at well-known non-profit organizations, and teachers. As one might expect, there were also plenty of aspiring actors, musicians and writers, some of whom booked steady work. I remember one lovely woman in her sixties who did a lot of commercials and print ads, usually playing a kindly grandmother. Another usher hosted a children’s show for a major TV network. Some ushers were retirees who wanted to stay active, and they had truly intriguing life stories. At one theater there was a retired Playboy Bunny; at another there was a former Roxyette. For some ushering was a family affair, and their mothers, uncles, sisters and cousins all worked around Broadway. You had to be very careful about what you said about other ushers; you never knew if you were talking to someone’s relative, partner or best friend.

Words to the wise, then: the usher you push aside or insult today might be onstage tomorrow. They might also be mixing your medication, defending you in court or writing a book you enjoy (hopefully).

Patron:
Do you have an elevator to the balcony?

Denise:
No, I’m sorry.

Patron:
What’s that behind you? Isn’t that an elevator?

Denise:
Um…no. Of course not.

(Elevator doors open)

Broadway theaters are architectural marvels. If you look closely, you can find intriguing details in every house. There are the Tiffany lights on the ceiling in the Belasco. There’s the Art Nouveau styling of the New Amsterdam. There are murals and chandeliers that glisten with thousands of crystals; there are secret passages and hidden levels and doors to unknown regions backstage.

The only things the designers forgot were the elevators. Back in 1905 or 1915, apparently they weren’t in demand.

In the early 1980s a number of beloved historic Broadway theaters were demolished; most of the remaining houses are now landmarked, as a result. However, landmark designation also comes with strict limitations on renovating or changing the structure, which means that installing elevators is, for all intents and purposes, out of the question. Every bit of space in a theater is used, so in most cases, there just isn’t any place to build an elevator anyway.

As a further complication, in several of the very old theaters, there are small elevators that don’t go to the seating areas. In the Belasco Theatre, there used to be an elevator up to David Belasco’s private apartment, for instance.

A similar apartment exists in the Lyceum Theatre, built in 1903. Daniel Frohman once lived there. He and his brother Charles ran the Lyceum until Charles died in the
Lusitania
sinking of 1915. According to Louis Botto’s
At This Theatre,
Daniel remained in show business, but lost his money and his theaters during the Great Depression. The Lyceum’s new owners allowed him to remain in his apartment for $1 a year in rent.

The next time you’re in the Lyceum, turn your back to the stage and look up. You’ll see what looks like a window in the ceiling on the left-hand side. It’s part of the apartment. Daniel Frohman watched performances from that vantage point. His wife was an actress, and, as legend has it, if she happened to be over-acting, Daniel would wave a handkerchief through the window to let her know.

Daniel Frohman’s apartment is now occupied by the Shubert Archives, an amazing repository of delicious and fascinating theatrical memorabilia and documentation. The elevator to the apartment is still used by the Archives employees. Unfortunately, like the other old lifts, it won’t help a patron in any way. It doesn’t go to the seating areas and there’s no way to configure it so that it does.

It’s hard to convince people that there isn’t an elevator in the theater when there’s one right behind you. It’s doubly hard when the elevator doors actually open and people saunter out. Such was the conundrum I faced at the Lyceum. The elevator doors weren’t hidden, and patrons saw them as they walked upstairs. On most days of the week, I could usually placate audience members who wanted to use the elevator by claiming that it was simply a relic that was no longer in service. On Wednesday matinees, when the Shubert Archives staff came and went, it was much harder to make that fib stick. Why didn’t I just tell them that the elevator went to the Archives? People tend to get annoyed when you say, “Well, yes, it works, just not for you.”

The elevator was located at the junction between the mezzanine and the balcony. The Lyceum was one of those very old theaters where the two levels split off; there was no way for a patron to get from one section to the other, and they each had their own facilities. When patrons entered the theater they walked up a short flight of stairs, had their tickets checked by a director, and then either veered to the left to access the mezzanine or to the right to head up to the balcony.

The balcony was about a million flights up in the Lyceum. It was one of the steepest balconies on Broadway, and if I’m completely honest, it always made me queasy. I’m not afraid of heights, so that’s saying something. I was relieved that I didn’t get assigned there very often. Whenever I worked as a director on the stairs and I had to send a patron to the balcony, I almost wanted to apologize to them.

Needless to say, a lot of balcony patrons took one look at the endless flights of stairs, balked, and came straight back to me. “Isn’t there an elevator?” they would ask, desperately.

“No, I’m sorry, there isn’t,” I would say apologetically.

Ten to one, just as I finished telling the patron that the elevator didn’t exist, the doors behind me would slide open and a Shubert Archives staff member would sheepishly walk out.

“What is that, then?!” the patrons would scream. It did look, for all the world, as if I’d been lying to them.

“It doesn’t go to this building,” I’d try to explain. “It can’t take you anywhere near the seating area. I’m sorry about that.” My poor balcony patrons always looked annoyed, but they’d sigh, strap on their hiking boots and oxygen, and start the long trek up to the Heavens.

I’ve never seen raw Broadway marketing data, but I can still give you a very clear cross-section of theater demographics. After you’ve been working a while you notice who’s showing up at your theater.

A lot of patrons are tourists or business travelers who are more or less ambivalent about the specific show they see. They’re only staying in the city for a short period of time, they aren’t really attached to any particular play or musical, and they just want to see something,
anything,
as long as it’s on Broadway, to round out their New York experience.

There are patrons who don’t want to be there at all, but have been dragged along by a partner or friend. Those people are easy to spot: they tend to be rude and angry, and they sometimes wander out into the lobby and text on their phones instead of watching the show.

There are always school groups that are completely indifferent. They’re on a class trip, and their night on Broadway is just one of many stops on the tour itinerary for them, like the Statue of Liberty or the Museum of Natural History. At the other end of the spectrum are really enthusiastic kids. They’re often aspiring actors; they know the lyrics to every Stephen Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber song ever composed, appear in local community theater shows, and play Javert in the school version of
Les Misérables.
They come to New York on Drama Club trips or with their families, they are very particular with the shows they see, and they are sometimes so overwhelmed and happy to be there that they actually weep with joy.

Do New Yorkers go to Broadway shows? Maybe, maybe not. Given the high costs of Broadway tickets, a lot of locals just can’t afford them. I only saw one Broadway show when I was a child because the tickets were far too expensive. My mother took me to see
Annie
just before it closed on Broadway. Buying affordable tickets to the show required my family to wait on line for hours in freezing temperatures at TKTS, the half-price ticket booth in Times Square. Even a half-price discount doesn’t help much anymore, though, since the average price of a Broadway ticket is now more than $100 and hit shows charge almost $500 for some seats.

Sometimes when I was ushering, I saw families or couples that obviously didn’t get to go the theater very often. They were typically dressed to the nines and they always smiled ear to ear. Occasionally, they told me straight up that it was their very first Broadway show or a once in a lifetime event. Whenever I met those enthusiastic theatergoers I always felt happy to be a small part of their special night, and I went out of my way to be especially kind and accommodating to them.

There are other New Yorkers who are lucky enough to attend the theater on a regular basis with the help of heavy discounts. Some of them purchase subscriptions to theater companies that regularly produce shows on Broadway, such as the Roundabout or Manhattan Theatre Club. Some individuals who are elderly, disabled or employed in certain professions qualify for inexpensive tickets from TDF, the Theatre Development Fund. Some wait in line all day or throw their names into lotteries for the cheap standing room or standby tickets that many productions offer. In lieu of the shortcuts, some just save their pennies to devote their leisure time and income to Broadway.

And then there are the superfans, who attend the shows they love at any price.

Who are the superfans? They’re the people who harbor intense attachments to specific shows, characters or actors. If they’re locals they might come to the show they love every single week. If they don’t live in New York they frequently make trips to the city in which they see the same production four or five times, back to back. The superfans often have message boards, websites or blogs where they expound on every detail of their Broadway experiences. Some write fan fiction about the characters or actors. They know the show better than anyone else, and they’re immediately aware if a character’s costume has been changed, an actor has dropped a line, or a prop has gone missing. They recognize every single performer at the stage door.

During my years on Broadway I encountered many superfans. It was usually hard for me to remember patrons, given that I interacted with so many every day, but some superfans were hard to forget.

Over at
Cats
at the Winter Garden there was Hector, who attended at least one performance every week. He always had a standing room ticket, but he often ended up sitting down front if the seats were empty. Nobody stopped him; after all those visits he was practically part of the staff. As I recall, he was so well known around the
Cats
company that he was invited to the closing night party and interviewed for at least one TV show. There were numerous other regulars at
Cats,
too. I wasn’t there the night the cosplayers descended upon the Winter Garden in full feline costumes and makeup, but I was told that the ushers had to ask them to remove their wigs so the people sitting behind them could see. They were also asked to refrain from crawling around onstage at intermission. I’m not judging, I’m just reporting.

There was another very nice man who liked to bring new friends to
Cats
on a regular basis. He always gave them a typed synopsis of the plot and a complete list of characters so they’d understand what was going on. When
Cats
was in the last few months of its run, a group of fans even arranged a special party and made custom t-shirts for the cast and crew. I still have mine.

There were regulars at
The Phantom of the Opera
as well. I once met a very wealthy man who got to know his future wife at
Phantom,
proposed to her at
Phantom,
and had a
Phantom
-themed wedding. I think they also offer that option in Las Vegas, right alongside the Elvis and
RMS Titanic
rites.

Fans came to
Phantom
in costume, too. Those outfits were much less extreme than the ones I saw at
Cats
: they usually consisted of simple white masks, fedoras or capes. Once, though, a young girl came in wearing a stunning homemade replica of Christine Daaé’s blue Act II dress. She was only about thirteen years old and she’d managed to sew a Victorian evening gown, down to the bustle. It was incredibly impressive. Someone really should have offered her an apprenticeship or job in Wardrobe on the spot.

I was told that some of the Rentheads down at the Nederlander often showed up dressed like their favorite characters.
Spring Awakening
had a really dedicated band of followers.
Wicked
once did an entire skit about their adolescent fangirls at a BC/EFA benefit show. At
Kat and the Kings,
a small contingent of fans attended so many performances that they developed responses to the dialogue, a la
The Rocky Horror Show.

My mother had a co-worker who saw
Les Misérables
on a regular basis. He was a psychologist, and he used
Les Mis
in his therapy program for wounded veterans. In the show, a group of students and activists revolt against the French government. Only one, a young man named Marius, survives the battle. In the song “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” he laments the loss of his friends and expresses his guilt and disbelief at the fact that he is still alive. This psychologist used the song and the character of Marius as prompts for discussions about survivors’ guilt with his patients, who had seen many of their fellow soldiers die in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Certain performers had active fan clubs. Some of the understudies had devotees who showed up every time they went on. I remember one woman at
Jekyll & Hyde
who came to seemingly all of Robert Evan’s performances. She’d march purposefully down the aisle in her
Jekyll & Hyde
show jacket and go right to her seat in the front row. After a while none of us bothered her; we recognized her and knew that she knew where she was going.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t judge any of this, especially since I’d embarrassed myself crushing on various Broadway performers and hanging out at stage doors in the past (if you’ve ever played Mistoffelees in
Cats
on Broadway, please accept my apologies at this time). If we think about it, we’ve probably all been fans of something or other. Even if we don’t reach the point of obsession, our lives are still enriched by the things we love. Maybe it’s
Doctor Who.
It could be
Harry Potter.
Perhaps it’s a football, hockey or baseball team. My teenage loves were Guns N’ Roses, the novel
The Vampire Lestat
and, later on,
Cats,
which are an unlikely trio. Every now and then I’ll read a story of someone who was saved from suicide or helped through depression by something that resonated with them in a book they read or a song they heard. It’s what art is supposed to do: grab our hearts and hang on. When it comes down to it, healthy doses of mania and passion probably help most of us get through the day.

The vast majority of the superfans I met on Broadway were kind, lovely people. A few, however, made me very uneasy, and as a rule I stayed away from them as much as possible. Sometimes the line between affectionate zeal and disturbing obsession was too blurred for comfort. If a superfan set off my Spidey Sense for any reason while I was working, I’d keep an eye on them and ask my colleagues to do the same. If I
really
felt that they were too obsessive or fixated, I’d let the house manager know about it, just to be on the safe side. On one occasion, a fan that had exhibited very bizarre behavior in the past tried to kiss up to a chorus dancer I knew. As soon as I found out about it, I immediately took my friend aside and warned him to be careful.

That wasn’t unusual, for what it’s worth. Broadway staff, both front and back of house, tend to be fiercely protective of the actors. They do whatever they can to keep the performers safe. When I was working, I was frequently grilled about performers’ sexual orientations, places of residence or martial status. Some people asked where the actors went after the show or which routes they took home. My stock answer was to smile, shrug and say “I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”

Even seemingly innocent questions came with ulterior motives, and you had to be very careful when dealing with them. For instance, if I were ever asked if I liked a particular performer, I knew to tread very, very lightly. There were only two appropriate answers, regardless of how I really felt: “Yes, s/he is great,” and “Oh, I haven’t seen him/her perform yet.” Why? For one thing, we obviously couldn’t bash the show for which we worked. For another, we never knew if a friend or family member of the actor in question was trolling us. It actually happened on occasion.

If someone asked me how to meet a performer, I could let them know where the stage door was located. That information was freely shared because fans were expected to congregate there. I always cautioned that the actors might or might not sign autographs or stop to say hello, and that nobody could make any promises about it. If an audience member wanted to know how long a particular actor had been with the show, I could share that, too. If they asked who was playing a specific character at that performance, I was happy to tell them. In general, though, those were the only details I would provide about the actors, regardless of what I actually knew. If it wasn’t listed in the Playbill, it wasn’t for me to disclose. It was that simple. I wasn’t there to gossip about the performers. None of the Powers That Be set down any explicit rules about this, but we all exercised common sense and watched what we said.

Such vigilance might sound extreme, but it was necessary: a handful of superfans turned out to be stalkers. The good news was that security and management at every theater took threats against the cast or crew very seriously. If a performer mentioned that they were uncomfortable, or if a superfan’s behavior became too erratic or persistent, it was scrutinized and responded to accordingly. Everyone took precautions to try to keep the actors safe.

At one production I worked, a woman was obsessed with a musician in the orchestra pit. She was completely deranged, and she wrote several bizarre letters to the man in which she made frightening comments about his wife and child. Consequently, she was banned from the theater and asked to stay away from the musician. I think a formal restraining order might have actually been involved. Her photo was posted in the ushers’ room and we were asked to alert security or management immediately if we saw her. Inevitably, she couldn’t bear to stay away, returned to the theater, and was arrested on the spot.

Most of the time we didn’t see that level of extremism, though. Squabbles did break out in fan groups, but they fought amongst themselves, not with the theater staff. However, some fans seemed to harbor irrational hostility toward performers’ friends and loved ones.

I felt the force of fan Haterade myself one evening when I stopped in at the Palace Theatre to see Hugh Panaro perform in the musical
Lestat.
I’d long been a fan of the first three books of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and I was eager to see how they’d been adapted to the stage. In addition, I liked Hugh Panaro. I’d started working as a regular at
Phantom
during one of his runs as the title character, and I’d had a chance to talk to him at a few cast parties. He was one of the nicest performers I’d ever met, so I stuck around after
Lestat
to say hello to him and offer congratulations on his new show.

There was a fairly large throng of people at the stage door and metal barricades had been set up to give the performers a clear getaway path. When Hugh appeared I stood back and watched as he worked his way down the fence, posed for photos, talked to fans and signed autographs. When he was done, he turned to me and gave me a big hug. We talked for a few moments, he asked about life over at
Phantom,
and we said goodbye with a smile.

As I turned to leave, I noticed that several of the fangirls at the barricade were glaring at me. None of them said anything and none of them approached me, but their demeanor was enough to make me very ill at ease.