#47: "Alone In A Sea"

The last time I stayed after a show finished was last year at the Kings Theatre. By staying late I mean I hung out after the performance was over in hopes of meeting performers. I would have liked to meet these performers, but to be completely honest I had ulterior motives. I was trying to get autographs on a vinyl album. They were for a wedding present. My friends Mike and Candy were over the moon that I got Explosions In The Sky to wish them well as they started married life together. They met at an Explosions show, after all.

I just don't have it in me to want to hang out at the stage door for performers to come out and see their adoring fans. It's not because I'm not an adoring fan, but I think of it in terms of work - if you've just put in a particularly tough shift, would you want to have to walk out the door and be mobbed by people you don't know who think that you just gave the best job performance ever? I think you have to be nice to these fans, but honestly there's a point where I recognize that performers are just doing a job, and they just want to go home.

Having always worked backstage all I've ever known is that the curtain call means more work looms. We've got to tear the show down and get it back on the truck. The show's got to get to the next venue and we've got to start setting up the theatre for the next performance. The performers were just coworkers for the evening, and there was a job to be done.

At first it used to bum me out that my my friends in the audience were able to get a jump on the evening's festivities while I had to work. They could all head out to the local and get settled; I had to head backstage and get ready to get sweaty and dirty pushing boxes and taking down lights. Thankfully I almost always made it to the bar before last call and got to join in the revelry.

These days I work in the front of the house. I don't necessarily like it any more or less, but it is so vastly different than back of the house. I have to speak to the public all the time: answering their obvious questions, dealing with their ticket issues, pointing to the location of the restrooms. Some days I'm on my game and I can chat up any of them, but other days I want nothing more to do with any of them than I want a root canal. I power through, but it's tiring.

Right now I'm sitting alone at a table in the lobby of the venue we're working at simply because I couldn't find anywhere else good for typing. The matinee just let out, and the room is abuzz with patrons exiting, cast congratulating each other, and crew just trying to get their tasks done. This is a room full of hugs, congratulatory words, well wishes, and dinner plans. No one notices that I'm sitting here writing this as a way to avoid getting ready for the next performance. There are no thanks for people like me, just the opportunity to sit alone in a sea of people and use the written word as a lifeboat.