My Heart In My Mouth

Paying Your Dues: The Importance of Saying Yes Paying dues, as a journeyman thespian, one embraced heartily by people of my boomer generation, as the means of breaking into the business, seems to be ridiculed by current millennial students. Granted, the financial burdens of student loans are exponentially more impactful now than they were when I graduated from college with about $3,000.00 of student loans. Students today have a calculus for determining their interest in a job that is more financial than passionate, understandably so. My peers and I started out in extremely low-paying backstage technical jobs. Now through the lens of equity, diversity and inclusion, I recognize the privilege of my upbringing and inherited family wealth that allowed me to accept extremely low paying start up jobs in the theatre. Now I would as enthusiastically discourage students from taking many of the jobs I did as a young woman. All good things must come to an end, and after thirteen months abroad, I began to get hungry to return to the theatre, and cognizant that it was time to begin earning my living. My first job out of school after I returned from Italy was as a dresser on a new Joanna Glass play, Play Memory. It was an autobiographical work about the young Canadian playwright’s childhood in the destruction of her alcoholic father’s demise. This job was a godsend. I could have done far worse for my first job; the director was Hal Prince, the costume designer William Ivey Long, and the actors were an illustrious group of New York professional stage actors, including Donald Moffat, James Greene, Jerry Meyer, Jo Henderson, and a young Valerie Mahaffey, all of whom ventured to Princeton, New Jersey, to the McCarter Theatre to rehearse and perform this pre-Broadway tryout. Princeton was my old stomping ground; I’d graduated from the University a year before. An alumna who worked as the assistant production manager at the theatre, called me in Italy to alert me about the opening. Susan Smith has been one of my closest friends since college; there, in our junior year, she and I ran a student theatre in the basement of Princeton Inn, a residential college where I was a resident advisor that year. In addition, we ran a summer theatre on campus between our junior and senior years, so we had been in the trenches together. She knew that I had the chops for this opening-level job, and she recognized a well-timed opportunity for me to return from my year abroad. I’d begun to question how long I could forestall the repayment of my student loans, and was getting anxious about launching my career, which I assumed would be in the theatre. A year completely divorced from the theatre, escorting a six-year-old through the streets of Venice was magical. Once she and her mother had returned to the states, with my internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum coming to an end, it was time to return home and get productive. I can only imagine my parents’ horror when I reported that I was working backstage ironing men’s shirts and tying their shoes. “What a great ROI on our $65,000 college education!” I understand why students and parents now hold higher expectations for their post-graduation prospects than I did in 1982. Nevertheless, I accepted the position with the abandon of a young person who hadn’t yet clearly defined her life’s goals, a feeling familiar to many young people right out of college. I just knew that I wanted to be in the theatre doing something as part of the magical collaboration of the ensemble. I’ve retained that hunger to be a part of the ensemble all my life and am proud to say that I’ve been able to sustain that purpose. Little did I know that my future husband, actor James Greene, would be in the cast. We met when I delivered a bouquet of balloons from his girlfriend to his top floor dressing room at the McCarter Theatre. There, he sat, in jeans and a t-shirt, his handsome German Shepherd Jasper sitting at his feet, while he completed the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. Little did he know my kindred connection with shepherds, as my childhood friend, Liz had two when we were growing up. Jimmie was quiet but friendly, and I found him easy to talk with. Our opinions on politics, feminism, theatre and the play we were working on together were allied, and I soon found myself lingering more often as I delivered his shirts before the show. From Princeton, we went to Philadelphia to open the show at the Annenberg Theatre. I was promoted to wardrobe supervisor for that leg of the tour. Still ironing shirts, but still actively paying my theatre dues. As in all theatre experiences, the relationships with cast and crew are quickly intimate, a crucible of creativity and if you are lucky, a lasting source of friendships. In a light moment during the show one night, Jo Henderson, who played the play’s mother and who sported falsies in her costume bra, referred to them as her ‘Play Mammaries.’ Along with Jo, there were five of us who enjoyed jogging around Philadelphia. Jimmie and I had our first date in Philadelphia, on a Monday night off, at Bookbinders, a classic dark wood paneled restaurant. When we arrived, the maître de, a severe German woman, pointed to a refrigerator near the door and barked, “You vill stand here!” providing us the ice-breaking moment of bonding required on any first date. Later that night, we went to see our colleague, Donald Moffat, who was appearing in the movie The Right Stuff at a local Philadelphia movie theatre. The first time he appeared on screen, our hands shot together in the dark, like they were magnetized. We found ways to spend time together while in Philadelphia, and when we returned to New York, our friend Susan kept us both employed at The McCarter Theatre, Jimmie as Scrooge in their Holiday classic, and I on the props crew, dancing deftly on and off the turntable as it shifted the seasonal scenery. In those early years, I did a lot of free-lance jobs, while experiencing little artistry. Once back in New York, I nevertheless enjoyed props shopping for Second Stage, pre-internet and pre-cell phone. Props searches at that time were literal scavenger hunts, with staccato bus trips all over the city of New York, finding small, used-furniture stores and logging options in a little black moleskin book, polaroid photos taped into the pages, prices scrawled beneath them to later discuss with the production manager and scenic designer. Backstage, I worked with Jeff Daniels, Cynthia Nixon, Jill Eikenberry, young, established actors, but at the opening night party, I met the playwright, Lanford Wilson, whose play, Lemon Sky, we had just opened. Those were the types of rewards aside from the minimal money I earned which made my work completely satisfying. One of the things I think I enjoyed most as a professor was occasionally providing opportunities for those electrifying moments to our students as they graduated and went out into the world. Regarding jobs where the artistry is not immediately apparent. I explained to our students in the Intro to Theatrical Production class that I taught for many years at USC that crew jobs are integral to the success of any show. It seems obvious to me, but I frequently encountered an attitude that they were being asked to perform labor beneath them. I understood that the work is demanding, physically tough and that the hours are long. It seemed clear to me that learning how to be a member of a team, providing useful service as well as getting a 360-degree view of the theatre was a valuable part of their theatrical education. The importance of my role as a prop’s buyer or wardrobe supervisor in these long-ago productions afforded me the gift of hindsight to appreciate how every member of the ensemble contributes. Participating in the productions helped shape those productions, but my roles in those productions also shaped who I became as a theatre practitioner.