(I would like to take this opportunity to re-iterate one of my rules for blogging my life story. More than a year ago, I wrote that I would only write about one certain celebrity encounter that I had in my life. That will actually be in Monday's post. But for now, I need to clarify that this rule means that I'm not even going to mention any celebrities I saw on stage during my week in NYC. So, anytime I mention a certain production I attended and say that I saw the original cast or members of the original cast in it, it's going to be up to you to go on the Internet to research it to find out who I saw. I should add at this time that after I conclude this phase of the blog, I will start writing about my other celebrity encounters. However, I probably won't get to Phase II for at least another year.)
Monday, 03/12/84, was the day we did some sightseeing. We went down to the United Nations and took a tour. After that, we went to the World Trade Center, saw the stock market in action and went to the observation deck. At the time, I thought I would be making serveral trips to NYC and might go to the WTC on more than one occasion. I actually never went back and in the aftermath of 9/11, I was saddened that I would never scale the heights of the Manhattan skyline like that again. I never have been back to NYC since.
We didn't have any shows scheduled to attend that evening, so it was a free night for all of us. I decided to see what was available at the TKTS booth for half-price. When I got close to the front of the line, I saw that one of the shows with tickets available was "The Rink." This was early in the musical's run, so the original cast was still in it. I certain thought it was worth paying half-price to see these stars live. Following the performance, there was a lot of stuff going on that kept me up really late and I didn't get much sleep that night.
Tuesday morning, I had a hard time getting out of bed. Grad told me I needed to get up if I wanted to go to take the scheduled tour of the Player's Club. At first, I wanted to stay in the hotel and get some more sleep, but I figured that since this was one of the things that my parents had paid for on this tour, I should get up and go. I got to the lobby just as everyone was about to leave.
The Player's Club was very interesting and worth missing sleep over. It was a social joint for stage actors that was founded by Edwin Booth. Booth was a well-know actor in his time, but he is unfortunately more know for being the brother of John Wilkes Booth. The tour guide told us that if anyone in the room with Edwin Booth ever started talking about John Wilkes, he would just get up and leave without saying anything.
That night, we saw an Off-Broadway production of Clifford Odet's play "Paradise Lost." It was interesting to note how it looked like the single-set productions we did in college, but with WAY better actors. With this, I could definitely tell the difference between us amateurs and the real pros. Many of us had a long ways to go before reaching that level and very few of us, including myself, would ever attain that.
Wednesday morning, we took a tour of Radio City Music Hall. Seeing it on television doesn't really do the size of the venue enough justice. That place is HUGE. We got to go on the stage and under the stage. We saw the hydraulic system. It was so much more advanced than anything I would ever come across in my years of doing theatre.
Wednesday afternoon, we all had tickets to see "Torch Song Trilogy." This was not the original cast, but it was still extremely well-acted. I thought the actor playing the lead role was excellent. However, Dr. W said he was nowhere near as good as the original star. However, Dr. W did admit that the one thing this actor had going for him was that he was actually good-looking. A couple of the characters in the plays comment about how good-looking the guy is, and Dr. W did not thing the original actor was very good-looking.
In the middle of the second act, I realized I could hear someone snoring. I kind of thought it was funny, but then I realized I was the one snoring. I was so worn out from the last few days that I actually fell asleep during the performance. I was very embarassed and hoped that no one noticed. At the very least, no one gave me any dirty looks.
Some amazing stuff happened to me that Wednesday night. I will go more into detail about it on Monday.
For the remainder of this post, I want to mention an unusual situation that was taking place at the hotel where I was staying. There were families living in the rooms there. What was going on at the time was that the city was paying to house people whose apartment buildings had burned down. On of the other people on the tour said they had talked to a child who told them this was why they were living there. While I was in NYC, I saw a local news program that focused on the issue, in which there were several hotels that were being used as temporary residences for these fire victims. Some of the people who were living at the hotels said that while it was nice to be at the hotels, they really needed to be re-located to affordable housing and would rather the city pay for that instead of hotel rooms.
A little more than a year later, I saw a report on "60 Minutes" about people who were still staying at the hotels. Many of them who were at the cheaper motels were living in terrible conditions. The owners weren't doing any regular maintenance on the rooms. One woman had bugs crawling all over her food. She said that she would get a check from the city to cover the cost of the rent, but she had to immediately turn it over to the motel owner. She would rather be using that check to pay rent somewhere else.
A friend of mine in the Theatre Department said he couldn't wait to go to New York City to become an actor, where he could live somewhere that had bugs crawling all over the food. He had seen the same report.
It definitely made it hard for me to want to go to NYC to try to become a real actor. I'm glad I didn't try.
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