I find it hard to reach that person who I was back then, to sort out what was real in the moment and what has sprung up around us in the intervening years. And it’s impossible to recall, in retrospect, whether I carried with me the same blind, romcom hope that this would be something special, or whether I knew already through some magic of a shared universe that this would be different. That’s, in part, what working with Carol is like.)Īnyway, I went. You know Sigourney Weaver’s character in Working Girl? Imagine if they made a spinoff about the character and that character had a sister who had Sigourney Weaver’s razor sharp business acumen, and style, and curly hair, and height, but had an opposite temperament: kind and witty and always willing to mentor and would never claim Melanie Griffith’s idea as her own. How to describe Carol? Okay, go with me here. Please forgive me, Carol! (Carol was my and Kristen’s direct supervisor and one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met.

I remember how much a beer cost at the concessions stand (because I programmed the Square myself) but I do not quite remember my job title! A professional success. The one who’s like “Why are you sitting on the tarmac of the airport when you really should be racing to the top of the Empire State Building? Get out of here! I’ll send you a postcard from Paris!” Kristen was the Audience Service Manager and I was, I believe, the Venue Services Manager. Five years ago I was like one of those Instagram Influencers who lives in a shoebox with 16 roommates and piles all of their fancy stuff into the one corner in which they take pictures so that everyone just assumes their whole life is glamour.Īnyway, it was nearing 7 and I didn’t know if I had a date or not and the House Manager was getting ready to take one couple into Door One and I was seething about taking the other couple into Door Four and my best friend Kristen, who I worked with, told me “Just go! I’ll take care of them!” with all the benevolent, selfless energy of your favorite character in every romcom. And I’d gotten a new credit card for the date because I was, say it with me now, a financial disaster but also very interested in putting on airs. And I wasn’t sure what he’d agreed to was a date, despite the fact that Facebook Messenger in 2014 is the pinnacle of romance.

Because David had come to see me perform a one-man show in August and afterward I’d complimented his shirt and then waited until he left to invite him to dinner over Facebook Messenger. I cannot, off the top of my head, recall what happens at the beginning of Detroit but these people were on fire to see it with their own eyes in their own seats smack dab in the middle of the theater and I, and the House Manager, were their mortal enemies and dream-crushers in this pursuit.Īnyway, I was stressed. Or maybe you don’t know, which is how we so often had patrons get super shirty about having to watch the first 5 minutes of a play on the monitors instead of being let in with their sixteen bags and their dinner leftovers and their still-wrapped cough drops and their many questions to a dark theater full of people being lulled into the magic of a shared universe.

If you’ve ever shown up late to a theater you know it’s a whole thing. (I’ve had many jobs.) How much of my 20s and 30s was spent drilling FAQs into my brain only to end up this: an adult who cannot remember his work email password to save his life?Īnyway, it was a Tuesday and I was stressed because it was the first performance of Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit and it started at 6:30 and dinner was at 7 and I was all clear to go when two pairs of late patrons came tumbling in and caused a scene about having to wait in the lobby until the late-seating cue.

It amazing the little factual details that you carry with you from previous jobs, like the performance schedule of a theater, or the coding numbers for a foreclosure complaint, or the items that come on a Jumbo Combo at the Hard Rock Cafe. The shows on Tuesday started at 6:30 pm and I could leave as soon as we got the audience sorted. I remember the day of the week most specifically because I was rushing from a show at Philadelphia Theatre Company where I was working. We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. This week: The two stooges brunched with Giuliani! And Trump’s poll numbers are in collusion!ĭavid and I went on our first date five years ago tomorrow.

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