Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (6 page)

The most magical time in a theater, for me, is when nobody’s there. When it’s dark and silent and the ghost light casts shadows on the walls of the auditorium, it’s indescribably beautiful. It’s the sort of enchantment that can never be replicated with pyrotechnics or clever stage effects; you could put the top actors of every era together and they’d never be able to come close to touching it.

When you walk through a darkened theater, you’re immediately aware that it’s brimming with energy. All the emotion felt by the actors and patrons stay within those walls. If it’s just you and the ghost light, you feel it acutely, and it’s enough to send those proverbial chills down your spine. The glow from that solitary lamp changes the entire appearance of the theater, and the bas-relief angels carved into the proscenium seem animated and alive. And perhaps they are.

Between shows, the dark, silent auditorium can also be a refuge for actors and crew members. As you pass through the rows of seats, you often spy dark shapes slumped here and there. They’re not ghosts; they’re show folks who are trying to rest up for the next performance.

Why are they there? On two-performance days — those are Wednesdays and Saturdays at most productions; perhaps also Sundays at shows geared toward family audiences — the split shift is a conundrum for many. After the matinee performance ends, the cast and crew usually don’t have to work for another two or three hours, depending on their department. For ushers that have the early shift there’s even more time; there are a good four or five hours of freedom.

Some show folks who live in Hell’s Kitchen or somewhere else on the West Side are fortunate enough to be able to go home between performances. That’s not the case for most, however. Most people don’t live close enough. When I lived up in the Bronx, for instance, I had to leave two hours for the express bus to get to the Theater District. There would have been no way for me to go home on long matinee days. On short days, assuming I caught a bus at three, I’d get home around five…and then immediately need to get back on the bus to go back to work for the evening performance. It was a waste. When I lived in Manhattan I was able to get home on short shift days, but it still wasn’t feasible on long afternoons, when I was getting out at 4:30 most of the time.

As many theater folks, I was stuck in midtown between shows, and I became adept at finding things to do. When I was a sub, I used the time on Wednesdays to make my rounds to other theaters to pick up my checks from the previous week of work. Sometimes I’d been assigned to five or six different theaters over the course of the week, so I had many stops to make. I did my banking between shows, too.

On short matinee days, when I had about five hours to kill, I was often more ambitious. Sometimes I visited museums and other attractions. I wandered over to the main library branch on 42nd, where they had rotating free exhibits on the first floor. I tried to do as many errands as possible, scheduled eye appointments and picked up prescriptions. The city became my playground, and I wandered around taking photos.

Often, though, just I did what many other show folks did: I went out, I got my lunch, I took it back to the theater to eat, and I slept. If I happened to be working in a house that made a microwave available to the ushers, I’d bring some soup to nuke.

If you walk into a theater between shows on matinee days, you need to be quiet, because it’s naptime. Some folks are lucky enough to have their own private dressing rooms or offices to sleep in. The rest of the actors, ushers and crew crash wherever they can find a quiet, comfortable place: the couches in the lounges; the seats in the auditorium; the carpeted floors; under the stage.

My favorite place to nap was the auditorium itself. I’d select a seat, close my eyes and rest under the kindly glow of the ghost light. As I leaned back in my seat I heard sounds around me, faintly, in the distance. A flurry of woodwind notes might drift in from the lobby as the house manager practiced his clarinet in his office. A new actor might be running through his songs with the musical director in the orchestra pit. One might pick up the echo of crew members calling to their friends from the stage door alley on the other side of the orchestra fire exits. The noise was comforting in the calm cocoon of the darkened theater.

At
Phantom
my wakeup call was the “Magical Lasso,” or the Phantom’s red killer noose. It would descend to the bare stage in all its ghastly glory, swinging and spinning slightly, so the crew could lock it in place for the next performance. The noose was always one of the first things the crew attended to during the pre-set. It meant that the lights in the auditorium would shortly be turned on, and that all of the nappers would groggily start to wake up. It was time to get back to work.

Over the last twenty years, Broadway theaters have become increasingly accessible to disabled patrons. This is unquestionably a wonderful thing. In the 1990s and early 2000s the Shuberts and other theater owners worked architectural magic to make their venues welcoming to as many patrons as possible. Considering that many of the theaters they were dealing with were very old, and were constructed in eras when the disabled were extremely marginalized, this was no small feat.

Accommodations for disabled patrons vary from theater to theater. There is almost always an accessible restroom somewhere on the first floor. These facilities were added to the older theaters one at a time, and were sometimes carved out of box office space. There are seats with retractable armrests for easy transfer from wheelchairs, for people with casts or braces, or for patrons of size. Some seats can be removed altogether, in only a few minutes, to accommodate patrons who need to remain in their wheelchairs.

Many of the pay phones are equipped with keyboards for text relay service for the hearing impaired. Sometimes the Theatre Development Fund also organizes special performances for deaf patrons, which involve rigging up a zipper board on the side of the stage that displays all the dialogue and lyrics. When I was working I always looked forward to these performances, since many of them also included live actors who interpreted the show in sign language. They stood in front of the stage on one side of the orchestra during the performance and signed to the hearing impaired patrons in front of them. These ASL interpretations were exquisitely beautiful, and I always found myself ignoring the performers who were singing and watching the ones who were signing. Every theater also has infrared assisted listening devices for the hearing impaired, which are free upon presentation of a credit card or ID.

There were some things I couldn’t do for disabled patrons. I was not allowed to physically assist them in transferring from their wheelchair to a seat, for instance. If someone asked me to take their arm and lead them up the aisle or down the stairs, I couldn’t do it. I could only walk in front of them to give them confidence and tell them how many steps they had left. That was for everyone’s safety. I also couldn’t obtain or return someone’s assisted listening device; they had to do that themselves.

The other thing I couldn’t do was to shield disabled guests from jerks who happened to be sharing space with them. And actually, this wasn’t always restricted to patrons; on rare occasions I ran across intolerant staff members. I don’t think I will ever forget the night at a certain show where the playwright, who was standing in the back of the orchestra, flatly refused to move out of our way so we could lead a blind woman to her seat.

One evening I was subbing at the Booth. It was a small, wood-paneled jewel box of a theater with a deceptively large façade and a lush downstairs lobby. It usually hosted serious plays with small casts, and as a result, the audiences tended to be older and more austere. Unfortunately, that didn’t guarantee that they had any manners, much less compassion for others.

A physically disabled woman had come in. She’d been able to transfer from her wheelchair to a regular seat in the back of the orchestra. A few minutes after she was settled, I was called to the other end of her row by a group of elderly women.

“This is the
handicapped
section?!”

”We don’t want to sit here.”

”We don’t want to sit with the wheelchair.”

”What if we need to get up? How will we get past her?”

“Can’t you move us?”

To use an old phrase, to go with the old Booth Theatre, I was vexed. I silently reminded myself that if I didn’t want to get fired, suspended or reprimanded, I couldn’t say what was on my mind. Instead, I smiled pleasantly, told the women that I couldn’t move them, and went back to ushering.

They didn’t give up. Toward curtain time, one of them stood up and leaned over the railing to talk to me. She was only two feet away from the disabled patron.

“Can’t you move us? This is the
handicapped
section.” She lowered her voice. “I’ll give you a tip.” I glanced down. The disabled woman had clearly heard this exchange, and she was gazing at the carpet, frowning.

“I’m sorry but I can’t move you, as I said before,” I replied. I was again struggling mightily to bite my tongue. “If you want to move, you can talk to the house manager.” She did; the response was a predictable no.

I turned to the disabled woman, who was still staring at the carpet. She’d come out for a nice night of theater, and she hadn’t even made it to curtain time without being insulted. I hated that. I wished that I could move
her
so she wouldn’t have to spend two hours stuck near such miserable people. All I could do was apologize and wish her a pleasant show. I knew that it wasn’t enough, and that it wouldn’t even begin to undo the damage that had been wrought by the obnoxious women. She wasn’t going to remember the performance; she was going to remember that she had once again been ostracized and treated poorly by those around her.

Sometimes I really wished that I had all the powers that audience members thought I had. And in hindsight, even with my job on the line, I wish I’d told those women off.

There are Broadway ushers everyone knows. Some are notorious for very negative reasons, but whether they have a good or bad rep, every face lights up with recognition when they check in with the head usher or someone mentions their names. They’ve been around the block for so many years that it’s impossible not to have worked with them.

There was a sweet-natured usher who sang when he ran into people he knew. You usually heard him, trilling away, long before you spotted him. There was an extremely old woman who seemed to be completely dotty at first glance. When you spoke to her you learned that she had graduated from an Ivy League school. She had hip problems that made her walk slowly, but she was committed to swimming every day. There was an usher who unfortunately had hygiene problems and smelled bad. There was a Chinese woman who had gone through the Cultural Revolution and had stories to share about it; there were other intriguing faces that popped up again and again.

Rigby was one of these local celebrities.

I ran into him early on in my ushering career; he remained a constant presence until the mid-2000s. He had a steady house that happened to be closed on a regular basis, so he floated around as a sub most of the time.

He frequently referred to himself as Uncle Rigby, which made sense. He really
was
like a mad, short-tempered, eccentric uncle. He was short and squat and always had wild beard stubble; his glasses looked as though they hadn’t been replaced since the early 1980s. His wardrobe, when he was not in his ushering uniform, consisted of Broadway t-shirts. He bought a new one from every show he saw and wore them in rotation. Rigby’s other trademark was the pair of large plastic bags he always carried. I never did find out what they contained, but they bulged to the brim.

Rigby was a card-carrying member of Equity — properly Actors’ Equity Association, the theatrical performers’ union — but one never could pin down exactly where he’d performed. He claimed to have understudied on Broadway, but curiously, he could never be found in the Playbill,
Theatre World
or the Internet Broadway Database, either under his given stage name or his legal one.

Rigby also claimed to have slept with some Hollywood and Broadway luminaries, and said that he’d sang for the USO. In addition, he told me that he had performed in a children’s theater production of
Pinocchio,
that story about the little wooden boy who tells lies. I believed the last of these claims, and found the choice of show to be somewhat ironic.

Rigby and I occasionally had coffee before matinees. I was never sure if I actually wanted to go to these meetings or if I just felt guilty about saying no to Rigby. He frequently asked me personal questions; I always steered the conversation back to something safer. Rigby was a terrible gossip, and when he smiled and said, “You can trust me,” I almost wanted to laugh in his face. He also had a biting wit, and sometimes served up insults slathered in pretty words. I couldn’t decide if I enjoyed his company or if I found it a chore; the fact that I even had to debate it probably said it all.

Even if he told a lot of falsehoods and was snappy and acerbic, Rigby was a generous soul. He frequently received free tickets to shows and he always invited someone along. Before I grew to hate going to the theater, and when we were still friendly with each other, I was frequently his guest. We saw
Encores!
at City Center and obscure shows off-Broadway; fascinating productions I’d never have sought out on my own.

On numerous occasions, he showed concern for others, too. Once, when I was fighting through yet another bout of illness, he stopped me and peered into my face. “You look ghostly,” he said. “But not Alice Ghostley.” There was no way to avoid laughing at that.

As time went on, I distanced myself from Rigby. I was tired of his veiled insults and gossiping, and I realized that I really didn’t enjoy being around him at all. When I moved and got a new phone number, I chose not to give it to him. I still saw him around, and I still wished him well, but I turned down his social invitations.

And then one day I heard that he had died of a heart attack.

He was in his fifties, he was a Broadway usher, and he lived in a single-room occupancy hotel. He had called someone to tell them that he couldn’t breathe and they’d sent an ambulance, but by the time he got to the hospital he was dead.

There was no funeral; there was no huge outpouring of support. There were very few tears shed for him. His death was a delicious bit of Broadway gossip, no more, no less. Most of the people he had invited to shows or treated to lunch seemed to be indifferent to his passing.

Rigby didn’t have any family in New York, and his corpse remained in the morgue for quite some time. Finally, one of his relatives was located, and his cremated remains were transported to the Midwest. I was halfway sorry for Rigby that his ashes ended up there. He’d always expressed a great deal of contempt for the Midwest, and I’d ascertained that growing up in the region hadn’t been entirely pleasant for him. On the other hand, I was extremely relieved that a family member had appeared. If Rigby’s body had remained unclaimed, it probably would have ended up in Potter’s Field.

Someone from the Actors Fund organized a small memorial for him. Fifteen people or so showed up; we sat around a long table in the conference room and told anecdotes about Rigby’s life. Nobody mentioned his Broadway claims. We all knew they had probably been lies.

At the end of the memorial, the moderator from the Actors Fund said, “I wish we’d had a chance to hear Rigby sing.” I agree. I wish we had; I wish he’d actually had the Broadway credits he claimed, and most of all, I wish he’d had the chance to be more than Eleanor Rigby.