Dudley Did Right

I am ecstatic, gentle readers! I know, I know, an unusual admission on tour, I admit it. What could possibly have made me so happy? A particularly great performance? A glowing review by either faculty or students? An offer of lucrative work on Broadway? Hell no--it's LUNCH! Free lunch, to be exact. Whenever we go to a school and perform just for them, they are required to feed us. I think that clause is included in the contract less because the company is concerned about our welfare and more because they figure free food will mollify us and keep us from complaining about the fact that our show should never be done in a school auditorium. And it shouldn't. Our show is way too damn big to fit into a middle school, especially since there is no back-up plan or stripped down version of it that we can do when we try to shoehorn it into a space it isn't built for. So instead we are clambering over ourselves and our set pieces like ants on a dropped picnic lunch, desperately trying to find empty space in which to place props, costumes, or, heaven forbid, ourselves. And the result is rarely anything better than half-assed, at least from a technical standpoint, because the space isn't built for a set our size, nor is the wiring or lighting system built to deal with the number of lights we have. This is in no way a reflection or condemnation of either our technical crew or the construction of most school performance spaces. Merely the attempt to combine the two. But because our producer is willing to do this show in a walk-in closet if the price is right, we continue these types of shows. (And we're doing them for the rest of the month fo February. Oy.) And so, we are bribed with free lunch. And believe me, it works. At least some of the time. We've done some performances where a relatively good day has been ruined by a substandard lunch. And some days, like today, when lunch has made all the difference in the world.

We performed today at Dudley Middle School in Dudley, MA. The day started off rocky and took a sharp downward turn from there. The place where we were supposed to load in was not at the loading dock, as one might expect, but a set of double doors that led into a band room adjacent to the stage. The issue? The doors were at the top of a grassy hill covered with snow with no path leading to them, so we had to back the truck as close as possible, and use the ramp as a bridge. Then a number of boxes and cart had to be returned to the truck or stashed as far away as possible since there was no room for them on the stage itself. Also, the proscenium arch of our set was just tall enough to brush the black curtains hanging from the top of their stage, resulting in bot a precarious raising of the proscenium AND our scrims for Sleepy Hollow getting caught on aforementioned black curtain, making it impossible to raise the scrim the Headless Horseman hides behind at the end. So the big scary ending? Not so much. Also, because we were in a school, we had no run crew, which meat we had to move all the set pieces and switch out the (unnecessarily heavy) doors. This is fine--we've done it before, but because of it, some of the scene changes take a little longer, and everyone is rushing around trying to get everything done as quickly as possible, which means invariably pieces get forgotten. Like the change from Monkey' Paw to Necklace, where someone forgot to remove the stove from down center, and we start necklace with a big stove right in the middle of everything. But never fear--I had figured out a perfect moment to gracefully walk the stove offstage as one of the suave, tuxedoed Narrators. So I make my move, I lift the stove, begin to walk it off and discover, in a rather sudden and jolting way, that it was still plugged in. We have it plugged into a cord which runs underneath the deck to the back, so that we can have one of those fake firepots inside it to make it look like it's actually working. I had forgotten that, but was reminded quite forcibly when the thing stopped moving and yanked ME to one side, crashing into my ankle. So as Bob, as the other Narrator, starts saying both his AND my lines, I (as gracefully and as Frenchily as possible) search for the plug, undo it, and waltz the stove offstage, feeling like quite possibly the biggest ass since Francis the Talking Mule. (look it up)

Most of the really cool lighting cues in Tell-Tale didn't happen, which didn't bother me too much, since the kids still got all ooked out when I cut the old guy up and popped his eye out with a spoon. (They can watch this, but teachers freak out about video games....) And there was a lot of just general trying not to kill ourselves moving around a veritable obstacle course in the dark. Oh, and did I forget to mention that our load in STARTED at 6:45 am? Thank heaven our group is not the type to kvetch...too much. And thank goodness for all involved that we got to eat lunch before we loaded out. Why? Because Dudley Middle School treated us to a feast the likes of which I have not laid eyes on in all my years sniffing around school cafeterias. We got at least 20 individually wrapped ham and cheese subs with all the fixins. A huge tray of tater tots, plates full of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, cake, and apple turnovers, bags of chips, and a pot of creamy tomato soup with egg noodles in it. 12 cans of both Diet and regular Coke, and a bunch of bottled water, and the most important part--to go containers. The food was made by the little old lunch lady, who stood, MAYBE, 5 feet tall and was so happy to feed us that I felt bad about having to leave. The food was also excellent. The soup was amazing, and the cookies were sinful. The sheer amount and quality of the food made us quickly forget what a huge pain in the ass the day had been up til then, and we returned to our tasks after eating with a renewed sense of purpose, and a deep and abiding love for everyone at that school. I even didn't mind the fact that yet again we had to use a band room as our dressing room--which of course meant NO MIRRORS. Oy. But hey, I got myself a free lunch. And thanks to the generosity of Dudley's sweet little old lunch lady, a free dinner as well. The bar has been raised, and I fear the rest of the week will not be able to live up to the standards which have been set. But if they can, I may not mind private performances anymore. (Amazing how that free food mollification program really works, ain't it?)

The only other thing I want to talk about is Obama's stimulus plan. I should be more specific, since debating the entire plan would take way too long (as anyone who watches the news knows--you can't actually debate the plan, just yell about it for 5 minutes and call that analysis--I'm talking to you, Fox News!) I want to address the idea of keeping CEOs who run companies receiving federal aid from making more than $500,000 a year until such time as the aid money is paid back. This has incensed many people. Well, let's be fair--this has incensed many CEOs and the pundits who rely upon those CEOs for their punditry. Can anyone, having seen the debacle that was the Big Three automotive manufacturers' CEOs flying private planes to Washington to beg for cash, DOUBT that something like this needs to be in place? People are yelling (they always yell--why? They're on TV--they have microphones--we can HEAR THEM!) that such a thing will kill innovation because so many of the raises these people gave themselves...I mean...received were for performance-based innovation or some such rot. Okay, let's think about this. You can't make more than $500,000 until your company pays back the money it got from the government. You can't pay back the money you got from the government unless your business does well. Your business can't do well unless you have people innovating and doing things that will make your business run more efficiently and profitably. So, if you innovate, you'll pay off the money and can give yourself--I mean--EARN a higher salary. Sounds like motivation for innovation to me. Plus, I'm sorry, but what the hell does any CEO do that they deserve hundreds of millions of dollars a year just at a BASE salary, before you factor in stock options, bonuses (which apparently are not affected by the salary freeze--way to go, GOP!) and the ridiculous severance packages? And let's not forget, gentle readers, that these CEOs will still be making $300,000/year MORE than the man who put the limit on them to begin with! It's ludicrous! And at least he's also trying to get Congress to pass a resolution not to give themselves raises either! Here's the thing, for all you people terrified of socialism (though this concept has absolutely no resemblance to any kind of socialism whatsoever--if anything it's the purest form of capitalism there is--you borrow from me, I get to set the terms. You don't like it, you don't have to take my money.) We've seen what rampant, just-let-the-corporations-go-about-their-business-with-no-oversight-or-repercussions has gotten us. We've seen what hey-we'll-let-the-market-take-care-of-it has done. Remember, gentle readers, the last time we put our trust wholly in letting the market regulate itself, we ended up having to go to war in order to fix the economy and pull ourselves out a depression. Unfortunately, we went to war too early this time and that helped put us IN one! So I don't want to hear the whining about how this harms the purity of our economic system, or how this is a case of the government getting involved in things it shouldn't be regulating. Remember--these people are the ones BEGGING the government to bail their sorry asses out. They screwed themselves over and now they want the government to refill their golden parachutes. Well, guess what? You want fiscal responsibility? You got it. You borrow money, you don't get to siphon it off into another McMansion or gold card or private jet or company Jaguar. Maybe you should sink that money into learning how to recognize a Ponzi scheme. Or into figuring out that you shouldn't give a mortgage to people you KNOW can't afford it! Or into researching how to make a car that doesn't suck. Just a thought. And maybe just maybe, you should embrace the idea that after doing things the way they've been done for so long has ended us up eyebrows-high in shit, it's time to look for changes that are more than merely cosmetic and actually carry some sort of weight. Debate the efficacy of the stimulus plan all you want, but don't tell me these idiots who put their companies into this situation deserve to just be handed a shitload of money and NOT have to tow some sort of line for it. And if that's socialism, then I am all for socialism. Socialism isn't a dirty word, gentle readers. A mix of market-driven socialism is alive and well in much of the world today. And yes, that means that some taxes may be higher. But then at least if your taxes are higher, you'll be getting something more than shafted. And the way it's looking, the only people getting taxed higher are the people who have the money to afford it. Even if they are only able to take home half a million a year. Those poor people. How will they ever get by?