Barefoot in the Park

The thing about Samantha was

She only feared one thing:

Panels

She hated being on panels

And when you’re an Artistic Director

You wind up on a lot of panels

So, what she would do

Is bring me with her

As a resident acting company member

To sort of buffer her

And give her a little support, you know?

Very sisterly

I liked it

I always went

I’m very supportive

Blah blah blah—anyway

We were doing Barefoot in the Park

This was in 2000

It was our thirty-seventh season

And yes, that year was sort of a safe year

Before 9/11

Before doing a ‘safe year’ in theater

Was the only thing you could do

Back when it was still acceptable

To have girls getting topless onstage

And, you know, whole plays about sodomy

And whatever

Back when we could still do the fun stuff

Anyway, we’re on this panel

About, I don’t remember really

I think it was—Art vs. The Mainstream

Something like that

And someone stood up

And right away, I’m going—

Shit—angry lesbian

Not that I dislike lesbians

I actually WAS a lesbian in the 90’s

But I know that a lesbian

In an open forum

Is not a good idea

So I shoot Samantha a look

But she clearly is thinking she can handle

Whatever’s coming her way

That was Sam for you

She never saw the hammer

Until it was already nailing her

Into the ground

The angry lesbian asks why we’re doing

Some bullshit Neil Simon comedy

When we could be doing actual, meaningful

Plays

And she says Plays

So that you could actually hear

The capital ‘P’ in front of it

Well Samantha gets all flustered

And starts to say something about

What Neil Simon has meant to the American Theater

Which is like saying you should still do lobotomies

Because they play an important part

In the history of medicine

I grab the microphone

And ask this woman if she’s ever run a theater

And she says ‘No’

And then she says to me

With this really sarcastic edge—

‘But I’m sure you’re going to tell me how hard it is’

And I say, ‘No, I could never tell you that.  You’d have to do it yourself to see how hard it is.’

‘But,’ I say, ‘What I CAN tell you is that it’s a lot harder than criticizing the people who do it.’

That was the end of the open forum

Afterwards, Samantha and I went out for drinks

And she was still rattled

I told her not to worry about the angry lesbian

But she couldn’t help it

Samantha shouldn’t have been an Artistic Director

It was too important to her that everybody like her

She should have been a politician

‘What if we SHOULD be doing more meaningful work,’ she asked me

I said, ‘Sam, you’re doing what the Board is telling you to do, and that’s keep the doors open.  Neil Simon keeps the doors open.  Arthur Miller keeps them open.  Musicals keep them open.  Once they’re open you can do other things, but for now, you just have to keep them open.  You don’t have to feel guilty about that.’

Did I like doing Barefoot in the Park?

No, I didn’t

But it’s not about what I like

Everyone says their goal is to be a professional actor

And to be successful

And to do art

And to make money

And to be happy

You can’t have all of it, you know?

You do Neil Simon and you pay your rent

Or you do old Russian plays

And you croak

I’m not hard

I’m not cynical

I like to eat

People judge you for that

Artists

Sometimes it feels like they judge you for eating

It bothered Sam

It never bothered me

You have to eat

You do the art when you can

In the meantime

You work

You have to think of it

And treat it

Like work

Before anything else

You have to work