Believe it or not
Don’t let the grandmother act fool you
I’m a shark when I want to be
First I bake you cookies
Then I bite your balls off
But I also acted
Everybody who worked at that theater
Acted at one point or another
You don’t wind up in theater administration
Unless, at one point
You wanted to be up onstage
The only time I was happened in 1986
Come Back, Little
Sheba
Another actress was supposed to play the lead
Got sick, and Sarah, the AD
Was sitting in the Marketing meeting
And she looked at me
And said—
‘You. You’ll
work.’
She could have auditioned
But that was after we stopped with auditioning
We stopped bringing in people
Altogether
After Sarah had—oh, what would you say?
Been in power?
That makes it sound like she was Napoleon
She just decided
That we needed a set acting company
And I agreed with her…to a point
It’s much easier to shoot publicity photos
When you have a set fifteen people
That you use regularly
And it was nice to put press releases early
Because all the casts were determined
By the September
But…
It also damaged our standing in the community
Because suddenly
We weren’t in the community anymore
Or, of them, rather
We were…
Locked up
Like the chocolate factory, you know?
Nobody ever goes in
Nobody ever goes out
Sarah said it would be all right
That we’d just piss off a bunch of actors
But that they’d get over it
And if they didn’t
So what?
She thought we just needed to worry about the audience
Leave it to a former actor
To say ‘Screw the actors’
She didn’t realize that actors, very often
Are the audience
Sometimes the only audience
When the play’s bad
Actors show up anyway
Because they understand you need the help
The audience—it’s not a thing
It’s not a real thing
It’s fickle
It…
Actors are a community
Audiences are vapors
They come and go
You wanna succeed in theater?
Be good to the actors
That was my marketing advice anyway
But Sarah…
Sarah got a little lost in the job
I understand—when you get sick—
Anyway, we’re not talking about that
The story is—I played the lead
In Come Back, Little
Sheba
And it went…well
Believe it or not, I’m not awful
I lead with my boobs
But who doesn’t?
Who wouldn’t?
Seriously, though
It was nice
To be onstage
I had missed it
A lot
And my kids came
And that was…
My girls
They saw their mom up onstage
And they said—
We want to do that
And I told them they should
And giving someone that advice is—
Oof
Anyway, everybody loved the show
And Sarah complimented me
And I said—Sarah, they loved it
Because they’d never seen me before
They liked that you put somebody new up there
Instead of the same fifteen people
She just laughed at me
And kissed me on the cheek
That poor girl
I hate to say she’s the reason
The Orpheus is in the state it’s in today, but…
There are some things
Even a marketing pro
Can’t spin
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