October 30 – Day 54: The Final Full Tuesday


Slow day. Nothing to do in the daytime hours, so I slept in. For a change of pace, I decided to go get a bagel for breakfast. I had thought about bringing it back here and eating while writing, but ultimately found myself missing sitting in the window and watching people pass on Avenue A, so I opted for that. It was a nice day and there was enough foot traffic to make it worthwhile (and since it was during school hours, there were no annoying kids mucking up the place).

One of the most important things about the day for me was that it would have been my mother’s 97th birthday. I can only imagine what she’d have thought about my doing a show in New York.

I thought briefly about walking up to the theatre (which I’ve done only once on this trip, I think), but was still feeling congested enough that I decided to take the subway.

I’d finally ordered our show t-shirts (charcoal with the show logo in yellow and white) on Monday night, so everyone from the cast who had ordered paid me. The good news about the shirts was that, since they needed only two colors of ink rather than three, my price was lowered by more than $30. 

 
 
 Don't you wish you had one?

It was another good show. Good audience response and I think we responded in kind. It’s really a balancing act where we play off of each other, and when we’re in sync, it’s really a lot of fun. I don’t know if the more responsive audiences are because we’ve just gotten better, if it’s less of 59’s subscription audience (who may feel an obligation to be there because they’ve already bought tickets), if it’s a different demo, or people who have different expectations of the show because of the New Yorker review, but we’ve pretty much passed the YAQA phase. (That said, we’ve gotten a lot of sleepers lately. (Even the more quiet crowds tend to laugh, react non-verbally, or even talk back. (During the FBI raid last night, I heard a woman in the front row call Matt’s character “a sonovabitch.”) On top of that, we’re almost sold out for the rest of run, so knowing we have full houses makes a big difference.

After most shows (meaning, not this one), I’m usually one of the first to change and leave the dressing room, but with this one, I’m almost always one of the last. That’s mainly due to my using the shower to rinse the goo out of my hair, and my wanting to let everyone use the bathroom before I take my time in there. Tuesday was no exception. If I wasn’t the last one out, I was second-to-last, so when I came up, Leah was there with a couple of friends (one of whom is a Custom Made company member who basically came east to see the show—among others), talking about the show. I joined in, rather than checking to see if there was anyone I knew downstairs (and, so far, there have been only a few). We chatted for a few minutes, and I turned and suddenly saw my friend Rachel, who had come to see the show, waited for me, and when she heard my voice upstairs, came up.

We all talked for another few minutes, then everyone wanted to get a drink and a meal, so we walked to the Pig and Whistle, an Irish pub on 3rd that this night was featuring a loud acoustic guitarist playing a lot of Billy Joel (there’s something unusual about hearing “Piano Man” played on a guitar …). I ordered a “Pig Ale” (hopefully not made with real pig) and a shepherd’s pie (hopefully not made with real shepherd), which turned out to be pretty good. It’s a meal that’s hard to screw up, but they did a good job of it.

 Some guy spent hours of training to learn how to pipe mashed potatoes like that.

We talked about a lot of stuff, but one of the topics for me was something I always tell my business students; about how, in five or ten years, they’re going to be working at some job and wonder how in the hell their life experiences led them there. The example I use is a friend who had gotten his MFA in acting in Florida, moved to New York, ended up being a doorman, a bellman, and an elevator operator in a number of New York hotels, and now drives the train between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. I mean, what kind of a career path is that? In the same way, as recently as three years ago, I’d never have suspected that I wouldn’t have done just one show in New York, but two now—and that I would have lived in the city for extended periods of time. On some level, I still can’t process it.

We stayed about an hour, then broke up. Everyone else was going uptown, but Rachel and I were headed downtown, she to Brooklyn (everyone seems to end up in Brooklyn, one way or another) and me to the Village.

I was still a little hungry, so I stopped at Sunny and Annie’s, but not for a sandwich; in this case, for a “King Cone” ice cream drumstick. I FaceTimed Pidge while I was still eating the cone (which she really appreciated …), then watched some television and turned in. I wanted to get a relatively early night since I had a séance to attend on Wednesday.

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