On Sunday, 03/11/84, the second day of the New York City theatre tour, the group got up to go to brunch at Sardi's. This was, hands down, the best food I had ever eaten in my life up to this point. I was a picky eater and I normally wouldn't even look at a lot of the food they served, but it all tasted so good. It was almost like I was eating real food for the first time.
After brunch, the main item on the agenda was to see "Little Shop of Horrors" in the Soho section of NYC. In order to get there, we would have to take the subway. I was very scared of the prospect of taking public transportation. All I had heard were horror stories about bad things happening on the subway. I will tell you that for the whole week, not one unfortunate incident took place on the subway. But I also never rode alone. I always had one other person with me.
My TV production teacher, Dr. G, was on the tour. She used to live in New York and was very familiar with the city. At one point, Dr. G and I somehow got separated from the rest of the group on the subway. We started walking down toward Soho. I was freaking out because I thought we were going to be late for the performance. However, I found out later that the show started an hour later than I thought it did. We actually had plenty of time and made our way down to the venue. Along the way, Dr. G pointed out, "There's Grammercy Park." Grammercy Park? I knew about that park because I had read juvenile novels by Emily Cheney Neville when I was in junior high school. I said, "Oh! That's the private park!" Dr. G nodded.
We also passed Tower Records. I knew its reputation as the greatest record store in the world. I hoped I would be able to go there and check it out. We caught up to Dr. W and the rest of the tour at the "Little Shop" theatre. Rod was also there. We surprisingly still had some time to kill, so I found a pizza place nearby and got a slice. (Yeah, I ate a lot of pizza that week.)
After going inside the theatre and getting our seats, I was amazed at how small the stage was. At Artesia High School, we had a HUGE stage at the auditorium. As I found out at "A Chorus Line," the stage at my high school was larger than your average Broadway theatre. Our stage at Eastern New Mexiso University was probably about half the size of that. The "Little Shop" stage was probably one-fourth the size of the ENMU stage. I couldn't believe that they could mount a musical production on it, but they did. (The rest of this paragraph has a spoiler in it. Please skip to the next paragraph if you've never seen "Little Shop" on stage.) Another surprising thing about "Little Shop" was at the end of "Don't Feed the Plants," after Audrey II has taken over. On the last note, these cloth vines fell from the ceiling. It was a nice little jolt to end the show. This is one thing they would not be able to replicate in the movie or in most stage productions.
The tour didn't have anything planned for the rest of the day. Rod told us about what they had going on at the Off-Off-Broadway theatre he volunteered at. (Interestingly enough, that stage was larger than the one for "Little Shop.") Dr W said he would go and he encouraged us to see it as well. Many of the others went back to Midtown. I decided to stay and see the performance.
Prior to curtain, I literally had hours to kill, so I walked up to Tower Records and spent a lot of that extra time there. I went all over the store and found a couple of records to buy. There were a lot more records that I wanted, but every time I found the placard for those records, the slot was empty. When I got back close to Soho, It started snowing and blowing really hard. I ducked inside a door. When I looked up, I saw that I was inside the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. The previous year, I had considered entering a program for playwrighting which had been recommended by Dr. R, but it was too expensive for me to go. I stood there for a few minutes, and thought, "Wow, I made it." However, there was a sign that prohibited trespassing, so I figured I'd better get out before someone called the cops on me.
I found a nearby restaurant where I could eat. I went inside and saw signs on the tables that said "$5 minimum for tables." I didn't know what that meant. I thought I would have to slap down $5 to sit at a table. The next day, I figured out that I needed to order at least $5 worth of food for me to sit at a table. I went and sat at the bar and ordered a meal. I went to the bathroom while I waited for the food. I came back and ate and spent some extra time looking at the records I had bought. This proved to be a challenge as I was trying to read the liner notes while sitting on a stool.
I paid and started to go outside. It was still cold, so I looked for my gloves. I couldn't find them. I realized I had left them in the bathroom. I went in there, but they were gone. I went back to the cashier and asked if anyone had turned in some gloves. No one did. I figured that someone just took them. That was my own fault. I was going to have to go the rest of the week without gloves, and they were really nice gloves, too. I walked all the way to the theatre with my hand rolled up inside my jacket sleeves and holding the bag of records. My hands were still cold.
The production we saw was a British comedy troupe called Bloolips. They put on this cabaret-style show with sketches and songs, but they were half-way doing it in drag. When I say "half-way," I mean they wore some women's clothing and had heavy make-up, but they weren't trying real hard to pass themselves off as women. I remember one of the guys had a butch haircut. And even though I was still a little bit of a homophobe at the time and was uncomfortable when the cast came out on stage, I did enjoy the show. One of the things that I recall was that after the intermission, one of the theatre producers made a plea for the audience to donate money to help keep the theatre group running. I was very uncomfortable with that, even more uncomfortable with being in the presence of so many gay people. I felt like I was being made to feel guilty for enjoying the presentation for which I had only paid $5. It was almost as bad as going to church and having them pass around the collection plate after we had already tithed for the month.
We went home on the subway. We had a full day ahead of us for the next day, which I will cover tomorrow.
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