Present Laughter

First, let’s talk about the fact

That they believed I was from Spain

Uh…right?

What part of Spain

Do the untanned, red-headed boys

Come from?

You’d be amazed

What you can convince

A Board of Directors

As long as you’re willing

To adopt a fake European accent

And claim to have known somebody famous

Of course, this was back in the early 80’s

When there was only so much you could do

To really cross-check somebody

Back then, it was a lot easier

To take over a small Equity theater company

Nowadays, you just have to buy your way in

Or be directly related to Mike Nichols

Anyway, I’m here to talk about my year

Running the Orpheus

I guess I should tell you

I was a failed actor

With no money

Who read an article

In some paper

That said this theater was looking for an Artistic Director

Now, I’m not stupid

I know they’re not just going to let anybody walk in the door

And take over a place like that, right?

Wrong

I walked in the door

I asked when the next board meeting was

I showed up

I told the Board that they were all ugly and foolish

(Again, in a fake Spanish accent/Again, they believed I was SPANISH)

And then I said I was going to be running their theater from now on

And do you know what they did?

They gave me the keys

Nobody believes that story

Hell, I don’t believe it

But it’s true

Back then, and hell, even now

The art community

Is the one professional community

Where we believe

The people who know the least about us

Are the ones who can help us the most

When we’re in trouble

We’re always looking for new blood, new blood

We never want to believe that experience is what’s necessary

And why?

Because experience bores us

Professionalism bores us

Fuck, punctuality bores us

I mean, let’s just be honest here

And then we wonder why theaters are closing left and right

Because nobody sees us as a business

Because we don’t see ourselves as a business

I just heard the other day

That an Artistic Director in Houston

Is taking a year off 

To go compete in a waltzing competition

I kid you fucking not

Does that sound like something the CEO of a company would do?

And yet it’s okay

It’s excusable

Because we’re artists

And artists do crazy shit

Hell, we’re expected to

That’s why a con artist

With a bad accent

And a bad attitude

Telling everybody they’re shit

Can be given the keys to the kingdom

And nearly destroy the kingdom in the process

Hell, I lost money on a production of Present Laughter

Present Fucking Laughter

Noel Coward

Do you know who loses money doing Noel Coward?

Nobody

Except me

I did it

No wonder the year I ran the Orpheus is legend

It should be

The Year Noel Coward Lost Money

And if you think it couldn’t happen again

Well, have you heard about the guy they got in the 90’s

After that woman Sarah?

Ohhhhh well, let me just leave you with this

You’ve heard that history repeats itself, right?

Yeah, well, in the theater

History doesn’t just repeat itself

It never ends

We can’t learn from our history

Because we live in our history

We depend on our history

Doing old plays

Putting up photos of past productions

Believing that at one point

We were at our best

It’s history

It’s all history

All we are

Is history