About a week ago, I crewed a show at the studio theater for a non-profit outfit up from New York. The guys who run it are friends of our executive artistic director, and they come up two or three times a year. I like them; I dealt with them a bunch when I was at the box office, because when you're the most experienced person they have around they hand you all of the EAD's friends, and I have an unofficial standing request to work their shows even when I'm not the only crew who is both in town and not drowning in finals.
One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you! How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore.
I'm not often visibly rattled. The internal monologue is a different matter. My mouth was making bubbly, sociable conversation, while my lizard brain was huddled in the back of my skull, peering suspiciously out through a slit in the blinds, going, "I don't understand, you are a producer, why do you know who I am?" Because frankly, for the most part, they don't. Aside from the yawning chasm between tech and talent at all levels of the entertainment industry, producing a show is an undertaking not entirely unlike juggling an armload of emotionally-compromised cats to a series of increasingly short deadlines. It's not personal. They have much more pressing things to do than keep track of the minion who is assembling their rented tables.
[Belated recollection #1: This group comes back every year to book their spring show in our cabaret theater. This producer gets a gentle reminder from the event staff every year that he is in fact paying us to clean up after his show, and he does not have to help us. This reminder fails every year, and he ends up striking half of the tables by himself.]
[Belated recollection #2: The dress code for front of house in the studio theater is, in its entirety, "wear black". I used to entertain myself by dressing splashy. The first time he got a load of one of my box office outfits, he asked to take a picture, so he could show his house manager in NYC and tell her to, and I quote, "step up her game". I would have assumed he was flirting except that he is, to the best of my knowledge and in roughly descending order of relevance: gay, taken, and twice the age he probably thinks I am.]
By the end of then night I was like, you know what? He clearly likes me and thinks I am an actual human. He co-directs a non-profit whose mission is providing opportunities to dancers and multi-modal movement artists. I hate pestering people about work when they're trying to do other work, but I bet if I catch him after the performance I can get him to talk shop for a bit and give me some career advice. Or life advice, which is pretty much the same thing in the arts. God knows I need some.
It was a brilliant plan, and it was chugging along beautifully right up until the part where he derailed it by inviting me to our EADs birthday party.
Actually, he asked me first if he'd be seeing me there. I thought he was talking about a different event entirely, because why the fuck would I be at our director's actual personal birthday party? I have no idea what he thinks I do there. Officially, stage crew and event staff are one rung up from the bottom of the ladder, and that only because we get a per-show contract that specifies they will be paying us in money. (Unofficially, I have a lot more clout than that, but only because of longevity and institutional knowledge. It works only irregularly because, you know, unofficial. Nobody else at my pay grade has enough social capital to rattle any cages.) The office staff have meetings we don't go to, lunches we're not invited to, and loads of conversations we're not a part of. A large part of the reason I know as much as I do is because they like to have meetings out in the lobby when "no one" is around -- which is to say, they have forgotten that I am at the reception desk and that I can eavesdrop in at least five languages. I know one of them is getting married in the fall, and I also know that there is a 0% chance I will be invited to the wedding, or any wedding-related activities. They're great people to work around, and most of the time they're even reasonable people to work for, but there is this unspoken assumption that we're all going to go home to different planets at the end of the day.
It took him like three tries to invite me to one party because I could not for the life of me figure out why he was telling the help all about the director's birthday plans. It finally got down to me pointing out that I had none of the details necessary for attending said party -- such as, for example, the time and date it was taking place -- because I had not received an invitation, and him telling me to go poke the EAD's assistant to get one. Then he hugged me and left to catch his train back to New York.
Have you ever spent an entire day trying to get useful work done with your lizard brain jumping up and down in the back of your skull shouting things like, YOU JUST WROTE AN EMAIL TO SOMEONE'S EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TELLING THEM THAT AN IMPORTANT PERSON JUST TOLD YOU TO INVITE YOURSELF TO ANOTHER IMPORTANT PERSON'S PARTY, SINCE WHEN IS THIS A THING YOU DO? It's really annoying. It also does not go away when the assistant replies to your email to say she's put you on the guest list. That just adds a counterpoint all about, YOU ARE ON THE GUEST LIST FOR A PARTY THAT HAS AN ACTUAL GUEST LIST MAINTAINED BY AN ACTUAL ASSISTANT WHOSE JOB IS TO MAINTAIN THESE THINGS WHAT HOW WHY.
I'm not in objection to any of this. Clearly I have made myself a friend. The context is just really doing a number on my brain. One of the reasons I was so good at that job was that I was charming and helpful when you were looking right at me, and I was completely out of sight and out of mind otherwise. Nobody paid attention to me because nobody had to; I just ran around and did things and they didn't have to think about it. The class division between management and minions there also irritates me on a regular basis, mainly because it means people don't talk to each other about really obvious stuff, and it takes me a while to cotton on when I run into someone who is either entirely ignorant of it, or entirely indifferent to it, which this dude plainly is.
Which of these is the case is an open question. Judging from what I've seen of his performances, whatever got his attention is the same thing that keeps getting attention from the ballroom people. Everything I have ever personally seen him do on stage has been, at some fundamental level, experimentation with and exploration of the delicate clockwork of interpersonal connections. The last piece I was witness to was a duet that I can only describe as an intimate tap dance, a phrase which I encourage you to not think about too hard, lest it stop working. I saw him run it with his dance partner in an empty theater before one of the shows. There was a ringing silence when it ended, as the two of them had to re-adjust to a world that contained more things than tap shoes and each other. He was doing comedy ballet panto at one of our holiday shows last year, and the joke he ran with was still that he kept getting way too closely intertwined with the other dancers in increasingly outlandish ways. He's done a lot of pieces with his co-director and performing partner of 25+ years that are literally just creating a shared pattern and turning it around over and over again, so the audience can see it from all of its many intricate sides, and saying, look at all the marvelous ways this fits together!
This seems to be a capital-T Thing for him, and it's probably the same capital-T Thing the Eccentric is aiming for with bachata, and that the flamenco dancers get from chasing duende, and possibly that Ye Ballroom Instructor was going for when he quit actually asking me to dance and started just walking in my general direction with his hand out. Normally, I err on the side of assuming that folks talk to me because I'm friendly and I'm in front of them, but these people keep zeroing in on me. It's becoming a pattern. right down to the part where they are super confused when I don't immediately realize what's going on. I'm just like, I'm happy you have decided we are friends! But I'm unsure when this happened! Sorry for the confusion, I'm adjusting!
I like to think I'm quicker to catch on now, what with this being my third or fourth time through this dance in as many years, but it's also a terrifying conclusion to come to, mainly because jumping is the only way to get there. One, they think they're being obvious and are bewildered when I have questions, and two, the more important someone thinks this stuff is the more likely they are to gnaw their own arm off at the elbow to escape having any kind of conversation about it. Breaks the hell out of the whole 'back away and look at this logically' tactic.
Based on history, the correct course of action here is to go to the damn party and bluff like I'm not utterly confused until that is actually true. And also possibly find out if he knows swing or merengue, because I can lead those without stepping on anybody too much.
One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you! How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore.
I'm not often visibly rattled. The internal monologue is a different matter. My mouth was making bubbly, sociable conversation, while my lizard brain was huddled in the back of my skull, peering suspiciously out through a slit in the blinds, going, "I don't understand, you are a producer, why do you know who I am?" Because frankly, for the most part, they don't. Aside from the yawning chasm between tech and talent at all levels of the entertainment industry, producing a show is an undertaking not entirely unlike juggling an armload of emotionally-compromised cats to a series of increasingly short deadlines. It's not personal. They have much more pressing things to do than keep track of the minion who is assembling their rented tables.
[Belated recollection #1: This group comes back every year to book their spring show in our cabaret theater. This producer gets a gentle reminder from the event staff every year that he is in fact paying us to clean up after his show, and he does not have to help us. This reminder fails every year, and he ends up striking half of the tables by himself.]
[Belated recollection #2: The dress code for front of house in the studio theater is, in its entirety, "wear black". I used to entertain myself by dressing splashy. The first time he got a load of one of my box office outfits, he asked to take a picture, so he could show his house manager in NYC and tell her to, and I quote, "step up her game". I would have assumed he was flirting except that he is, to the best of my knowledge and in roughly descending order of relevance: gay, taken, and twice the age he probably thinks I am.]
By the end of then night I was like, you know what? He clearly likes me and thinks I am an actual human. He co-directs a non-profit whose mission is providing opportunities to dancers and multi-modal movement artists. I hate pestering people about work when they're trying to do other work, but I bet if I catch him after the performance I can get him to talk shop for a bit and give me some career advice. Or life advice, which is pretty much the same thing in the arts. God knows I need some.
It was a brilliant plan, and it was chugging along beautifully right up until the part where he derailed it by inviting me to our EADs birthday party.
Actually, he asked me first if he'd be seeing me there. I thought he was talking about a different event entirely, because why the fuck would I be at our director's actual personal birthday party? I have no idea what he thinks I do there. Officially, stage crew and event staff are one rung up from the bottom of the ladder, and that only because we get a per-show contract that specifies they will be paying us in money. (Unofficially, I have a lot more clout than that, but only because of longevity and institutional knowledge. It works only irregularly because, you know, unofficial. Nobody else at my pay grade has enough social capital to rattle any cages.) The office staff have meetings we don't go to, lunches we're not invited to, and loads of conversations we're not a part of. A large part of the reason I know as much as I do is because they like to have meetings out in the lobby when "no one" is around -- which is to say, they have forgotten that I am at the reception desk and that I can eavesdrop in at least five languages. I know one of them is getting married in the fall, and I also know that there is a 0% chance I will be invited to the wedding, or any wedding-related activities. They're great people to work around, and most of the time they're even reasonable people to work for, but there is this unspoken assumption that we're all going to go home to different planets at the end of the day.
It took him like three tries to invite me to one party because I could not for the life of me figure out why he was telling the help all about the director's birthday plans. It finally got down to me pointing out that I had none of the details necessary for attending said party -- such as, for example, the time and date it was taking place -- because I had not received an invitation, and him telling me to go poke the EAD's assistant to get one. Then he hugged me and left to catch his train back to New York.
Have you ever spent an entire day trying to get useful work done with your lizard brain jumping up and down in the back of your skull shouting things like, YOU JUST WROTE AN EMAIL TO SOMEONE'S EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TELLING THEM THAT AN IMPORTANT PERSON JUST TOLD YOU TO INVITE YOURSELF TO ANOTHER IMPORTANT PERSON'S PARTY, SINCE WHEN IS THIS A THING YOU DO? It's really annoying. It also does not go away when the assistant replies to your email to say she's put you on the guest list. That just adds a counterpoint all about, YOU ARE ON THE GUEST LIST FOR A PARTY THAT HAS AN ACTUAL GUEST LIST MAINTAINED BY AN ACTUAL ASSISTANT WHOSE JOB IS TO MAINTAIN THESE THINGS WHAT HOW WHY.
I'm not in objection to any of this. Clearly I have made myself a friend. The context is just really doing a number on my brain. One of the reasons I was so good at that job was that I was charming and helpful when you were looking right at me, and I was completely out of sight and out of mind otherwise. Nobody paid attention to me because nobody had to; I just ran around and did things and they didn't have to think about it. The class division between management and minions there also irritates me on a regular basis, mainly because it means people don't talk to each other about really obvious stuff, and it takes me a while to cotton on when I run into someone who is either entirely ignorant of it, or entirely indifferent to it, which this dude plainly is.
Which of these is the case is an open question. Judging from what I've seen of his performances, whatever got his attention is the same thing that keeps getting attention from the ballroom people. Everything I have ever personally seen him do on stage has been, at some fundamental level, experimentation with and exploration of the delicate clockwork of interpersonal connections. The last piece I was witness to was a duet that I can only describe as an intimate tap dance, a phrase which I encourage you to not think about too hard, lest it stop working. I saw him run it with his dance partner in an empty theater before one of the shows. There was a ringing silence when it ended, as the two of them had to re-adjust to a world that contained more things than tap shoes and each other. He was doing comedy ballet panto at one of our holiday shows last year, and the joke he ran with was still that he kept getting way too closely intertwined with the other dancers in increasingly outlandish ways. He's done a lot of pieces with his co-director and performing partner of 25+ years that are literally just creating a shared pattern and turning it around over and over again, so the audience can see it from all of its many intricate sides, and saying, look at all the marvelous ways this fits together!
This seems to be a capital-T Thing for him, and it's probably the same capital-T Thing the Eccentric is aiming for with bachata, and that the flamenco dancers get from chasing duende, and possibly that Ye Ballroom Instructor was going for when he quit actually asking me to dance and started just walking in my general direction with his hand out. Normally, I err on the side of assuming that folks talk to me because I'm friendly and I'm in front of them, but these people keep zeroing in on me. It's becoming a pattern. right down to the part where they are super confused when I don't immediately realize what's going on. I'm just like, I'm happy you have decided we are friends! But I'm unsure when this happened! Sorry for the confusion, I'm adjusting!
I like to think I'm quicker to catch on now, what with this being my third or fourth time through this dance in as many years, but it's also a terrifying conclusion to come to, mainly because jumping is the only way to get there. One, they think they're being obvious and are bewildered when I have questions, and two, the more important someone thinks this stuff is the more likely they are to gnaw their own arm off at the elbow to escape having any kind of conversation about it. Breaks the hell out of the whole 'back away and look at this logically' tactic.
Based on history, the correct course of action here is to go to the damn party and bluff like I'm not utterly confused until that is actually true. And also possibly find out if he knows swing or merengue, because I can lead those without stepping on anybody too much.
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