A Touch of the Poet

A Touch of the Poet opened the Orpheus Theater’s fourteenth season

The season we got our New York offer

I was in the opener

And two weeks later

The Homecoming opened downstairs

Our show was supposed to be the big hit

And Homecoming was just this little side project

But it…

Well, it exploded

The show got raves

The sold out the entire run

It extended

It sold out the extension

Craziness

And upstairs we were doing our show

And it was…

It might as well not have happened

The downstairs show had critics come

Then outside critics

Which is always unusual

People from out of town came to see it

And there was talk of it having further life

In Chicago

In Minneapolis

The words ‘New York’ were on everybody’s lips

But we were superstitious

We didn’t want to jinx it

I keep saying ‘We’

Because I was a part of the company

And so I should have been thrilled

But I—and many of us

Pretty much anybody

That wasn’t in The Homecoming

--Felt left out

Like, what about us?

What were we supposed to do?

Then it came

The New York offer

An Orpheus Theater production

Was going to off-Broadway

And who knew what would happen from there?

It was a nice acknowledgement

Of our Artistic Director’s hard work

Especially after the theater and Beth

Had come under fire

For being too risqué

Suddenly there was vindication

So we all should have been thrilled but…

The thing is, there’s only so much success to go around

In the artistic world

So when you see people close to you

Achieve a certain level of it

You feel…

Like there it goes

There goes my success

I left the ‘Congratulations You’re All Going to New York’ party early

And went to sit in the lobby

Beth found me out there

And sat next to me

She was a little drunk

But she was smiling

Which was nice

I hadn’t seen her smile in a long time

‘You know this is good for all of us, right?’ she asked me

And I said, ‘Sure, Beth.  I know’

She patted my knee

And said—

‘We’re all in this together’

And I believed her

I really did

But another part of me thought

I missed it

I missed my chance

Beth didn’t, but…

No matter how successful you are

You’re still human

You still only have two hands

So you can only hold so many people in them, you know?

And some people…

You just have to let go