Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (9 page)

In the spring of 2006, a few months after
The Phantom of the Opera
became the longest-running show in Broadway history, I made my official performing debut on the Great White Way. You can blame
Phantom
for that. The show had been invited to sing David Friedman’s song, “Help Is on the Way” at the New Amsterdam Theatre as part of the grand finale of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS’ spring benefit show, the Easter Bonnets.
Phantom
has long been a huge supporter of BC/EFA, and every fall and spring the show embarks on a massive fundraising drive.

Being asked to close the Bonnets was an incredible honor. The show brought together performers and crew from almost every play and musical on Broadway, as well as many off-Broadway and national tour productions. Every show put together a skit, a song or a dance and designed an Easter bonnet. Some productions took a silly approach; others were serious, and the range of talents on display was remarkable.

I was stunned when the stage managers at
Phantom
invited everyone to participate: ushers, bartenders, merchandising crew, stagehands, and wardrobe.
Phantom
was always wonderful to its support staff, but this really went above and beyond. They had just handed me a chance to sing on a Broadway stage.

I decided to participate; so did another usher, Stacy. When we arrived at the first rehearsal, things were awkward. The ballet dancer who handed out the sheet music passed us over, even though we were standing right in front of her. I had to wave her over again once she’d walked away, and she made it clear that she was not thrilled that we had been included. I didn’t care; she was not in charge, and we had been given a direct invitation. As I looked around the room I was relieved to see that many backstage and front of house folks were participating; I spotted a few of the bartenders, some merch staff, makeup artists and crew members.

There are two major reasons why I’m never going to be a professional singer. Both of them reared their disagreeable heads and complicated my Bonnets rehearsals. One, I can’t read music. I suppose that’s a biggie. Two, singing in harmony totally throws me off, since I can’t really hear the others who are doing my part. My alto voice is pleasant and on-key, however, so I resolved to make it work. I stayed after rehearsal, asked the musical director, Jonathan, to play through my part for me, and made a recording so I could practice at home.

And practice I did. I didn’t care that my voice was going to be swallowed up under the professionals’ work; I didn’t care that I couldn’t sing nearly as well as they could. I still wanted to do my best. It was a Broadway show, it was for BC/EFA, and I was taking it very seriously. By the day of the first performance, I was ready to go.

I’d been to the New Amsterdam Theatre once before, but as an audience member, not a performer. As I walked through the lobby I remembered the protocol: every employee entering the theater to work, or leaving at the end of the night, needed to say hello or goodbye to Olive Thomas, the beautiful Ziegfeld Girl. Olive’s ghost had been involved in numerous incidents around the theater, and some of the New Amsterdam ushers who subbed at
Phantom
had told me stories about their interactions with her. I didn’t know if I counted as an employee but I didn’t want to take chances; as I passed through the lobby doors I whispered a greeting to lovely Olive.

When I checked in I was presented with a performers’ lanyard and laminate. We were all invited to autograph the production show posters, which would be sold later to benefit BC/EFA. As I took up the Sharpie and added my signature to each poster, I was reeling. Broadway debut, performer’s laminate, autographs. Where did it end? By the time we were escorted backstage I was giddy.

Backstage, I almost lost my nerve when I bumped into one of the giant
Lion King
masks in the corridor and nearly toppled it over. In the back of my mind I halfway feared that someone was going to pop up, tell me I didn’t belong there, and cart me away to the front of the house. Fortunately, it didn’t happen. I was under the stage at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and I was about to make my Broadway debut.

We assembled onstage in the darkness. The entire
Phantom
orchestra accompanied us, and each of us singers carried a music stand and chair for one of the musicians. On the other side of the scrim, the 102-year-old Ziegfeld Girl, Doris Eaton Travis, did a vintage dance number. I could barely hear her words and I saw her only as a silhouette against the backdrop; but I savored every second of it. I’d read Eaton Travis’s memoir,
The Days We Danced,
and I was awestruck to be less than six feet away from a woman who had performed in the
Ziegfeld Follies of 1918.
What did it mean to experience a century? What was it like for her to return to the stage on which she danced almost a hundred years ago? I couldn’t even imagine.

Usually before performances I try to center down. This time, I simply watched Doris Eaton Travis’s shadow as it flickered across the scrim. When the number concluded, I clapped heartily. As I looked around, I realized that the entire
Phantom
ensemble was applauding along with me. We all knew we had been privileged to be in the presence of true greatness.

And then it was our turn. I set the chair and music stand down, got into position in the chorus, and sang. I’d become a tiny part of the New Amsterdam history too.

In total, I got to sing on the New Amsterdam Theatre stage three times: once for the dress rehearsal; twice for the actual performances. It was enough. Being up there even once was more than I ever could have asked for.

“Thank you, Olive,” I whispered as I left the New Amsterdam after the last performance. I meant it.

Act Two

The New Victory Theater — deliberately spelled with ‘er,’ and not the more flowery and common ‘re’ — held its very first opening night party at the Apollo Theatre on 42nd Street. The Apollo, at that time, was home to the Academy rock nightclub, and was in its last stages of existence altogether. Within a few years, it would be demolished for the construction of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, now known as the Lyric Theatre.

The caterers had set up large candlelit tables of food in the stark, lonely space. We piled delicacies onto plates and roamed through the empty theater, our voices echoing. Since there weren’t any seats on the floor, many of us perched on the edge of the stage.

I didn’t chat much with my colleagues; instead, I looked around. The Apollo was intriguing, even in its decayed state. At one time, it must have been a wonderful theater. There were fanciful cherubs sculpted into the proscenium arch; plaster ivy climbed the walls; and a beautiful dome dominated the ceiling. It was all rotting away. The seats in the orchestra had been removed and replaced by a wooden dance floor. The wings were still intact, but a red brick structure had been built on the stage. Peeling paint was everywhere. I was profoundly sad to see how neglected it all was.

At the end of the night, I left the theater via a decrepit unused passage and walked out onto a cold, dark, silent 42nd Street. The only real illumination on the street came from the gleaming New Victory Theater; it sat in stark contrast to the abandoned buildings that lined the rest of the block.

The New Victory was the first of the disused 42nd Street theaters to be restored and returned to regular use. It had followed the same pattern as most of the other theaters on 42nd: it had started life in 1900 as a Broadway performance venue, had switched over to movies sometime in the 1940s, and had finally become an adult cinema. The building itself, and all of its elaborate architectural elements, had been left to deteriorate. Fortunately, the New 42nd Street Corporation came to the rescue in the early nineties and painstakingly renovated and restored the theater.

The New Victory and the story of its restoration intrigued me and fostered a love of theater architecture that has persisted to this day. I recorded documentaries and news footage about it on TV. When I didn’t have anything else to do at the theater, I walked around the balcony to study the putti on the ceiling dome. I wandered up and down 42nd Street on my breaks and looked at the other old venues.

I eventually bought a copy of Nicholas van Hoogstraten’s
Lost Broadway Theatres
and studied every page
.
The book contained a very helpful map of the Theater District, and I noted where the extant venues were located and looked for signs of them when I passed by on the street. The New Victory was in van Hoogstraten’s book, and I was thrilled to learn that David Belasco and Mary Pickford had both been associated with the theater. Belasco had owned and managed it for a while; Pickford had performed there as a young girl.

Just as Pickford had been expected to be wholesome and friendly as America’s Sweetheart, the New Victory wanted its ushers to be personable, fresh-faced and cheerful. The customer was always right; we were always to smile and nod; and we were to leave the heavy lifting and patron conflict resolutions to the managers. The management held meetings to regroup after every performance and sent us to customer service and résumé-building workshops.

We were outfitted in casual black t-shirts or sweatshirts with the New Victory logo and were provided with large red shoulder bags to hold our programs. More than once, when I worked as a Broadway usher later on, I wished I still had one of those satchels to carry my Playbills. The New Vic’s ushers performed various duties on a rotating schedule, from running the elevator to taking tickets; and after the performance ended and the patrons left, we were expected to help with some basic pickup.

The New Victory has developed a very well-respected Usher Corps program that specifically employs, trains and mentors teenagers, but during the first season, a much wider span of ages and backgrounds was represented. I was a teenager myself, but as far as I could see I was one of the younger people on staff. I’d found the job through my college, since one of the house managers had a connection to my school. He’d posted a “help wanted” flyer on my department’s bulletin board; I’d responded. It was a good match: I was interested in working on Broadway and the New Victory was close enough to start. It was also compatible with my class schedule. Most of the performances were at night, and the matinees were easy to work around, more or less.

Many of the patrons who came to the New Victory’s first productions commented on how young some of us ushers were. I found this to be incredibly rude. I had been raised never to discuss people’s ages or comment on their appearance even if I knew them, so when I asked customers for their tickets and their first response was “You’re a baby” or “How old are you?” I was taken aback. It did, however, teach me one of my first lessons in the theater and customer service in general: how to smile, nod, and refrain from telling people off. Some patrons honestly didn’t know how offensive they were being, and I had to take their comments in that spirit.

The New 42nd Street, which ran the New Victory, wanted to create a family venue with an appealing and diverse schedule of programming. In the first season they were successful…mostly. The Montreal-based human-only circus Cirque Éloize opened the theater with a fantastic production that included both aerial acts and comedy. I’d just started to learn French; several members of the troupe patiently helped me with my pronunciation and taught me some new vocabulary. Once or twice they even let me pick up their clubs and try my hand at juggling, even though it was painfully obvious that I wasn’t particularly good at it.

Julie Taymor’s
The Green Bird
ran for a very prosperous month, and both Taymor and composer Elliot Goldenthal were frequently seen around the theater. There were two versions of the show: a children’s edition for matinees and an adult one for the evenings. Truth be told, there wasn’t much of a difference, just a slight softening of some of the jokes and innuendoes. In addition, the actress playing Pompeana, a living statue, was nude and covered in white body paint in the regular version of the show. For the matinees the nudity was nixed and Pompeana wore a white bodysuit that covered her from head to toe instead. Other intriguing shows from that first season included a piece by the Paul Taylor Dance Company and a joint South African-American musical about women called
Sheila’s Day.
There were also a few pieces that didn’t go over too well, such as an absolutely God-awful opera about American football and a storytelling festival. The latter was in the wrong venue; the former was just wrong.

At the end of the season, the New Victory hosted the 1996 Drama Desk Awards. As we rolled toward the summer the schedule slowed down, so Kelly, one of the house managers, arranged for some of us to interview for jobs with Shakespeare in the Park. I jumped at the chance to move on and up; I had already decided that the New Victory was going to be a stepping-stone, not a destination.