New York 2013

New York 2013

 

Times Square Harper, Me and Genoa

 

In 2008 I took 18 kids to NYC. We saw Spring Awakening, Curtains and The Sandbox and The American Dream. I said I couldn't go back, because you cannot top a trip where your kids got to not only see plays written by Edward Albee directed by Edward Albee, but they got to meet and have a talk back with Edward Albee. How can you top that?

 

You can't.

 

But, funny thing, the kids still had a great time. They got to see The Revisionist by Jesse Eisenberg, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave. They waited outside the theatre after Chicago and Once and had their photos taken with cast members.They schlepped all over the city, through Central Park, to the Met Museum, to the 9/11 Memorial to Greenwich Village.

 

So what the hell do I know?

 

I got to see a former student who is now working in NYC "in the field" as we like to say. The Founding Artistic Director of the Cherry Lane chatted with me and asked if I still wrote plays---it was a delightful, adult conversational break in my routine of counting to 21 and saying "Littleton, Buddy Check!" and "Littleton, Personal Belongings!"

 

What was called Ground Zero in 2008 is now called the 9/11 Memorial. When we went back then it was still a hole in the ground with some chain link fencing scattered around the peripheral. Now they've built the Freedom Tower and the memorial fountains and it's all walled in, you need a ticket  and you walk through security three times to enter. Last time I got out of it, I stayed on the edge with our tour guide while the kids entered the ...site...graveyard...hole. I was sick to my stomach. This time, with the way they cattle you through I couldn't get out of it. I had to go in. I really don't have anything more to say about it.

 

FAME

We went to see Once starring working New York Actors, and next door The Orphans starring Alec Baldwin was playing. The kids in Once were solid, but I got excited when I realized "Daa" was played by David Patrick Kelly--who not many people know as a Broadway actor despite his long career. However if you are my age, you know him as Luther in The Warrriors. He put beer bottles on  his fingers and clicked away chanting "Warriors, come out to pllllaaaaaaaaaaayyyeeeeyayyyyyy".

Both shows got out at about the same time, and while there was a respectable crowd anxiously awaiting the cast of Once at the stage door (several of my students included), Harper and I tried to work our way back to the hotel, but were corralled by NYPD on horseback trying to whip the massive stampede outside the theatre next door. There were at least  a hundred people amassed at the stage door waiting for a glimpse of Alec Baldwin. I like Alec Baldwin. I have respect for him as an actor. But I just wanted to get through the crowd back to hotel. Both Harper and I were ready for some breathing room, and between the throng, the mounted police and the limos, we barely escaped. And while we pushed our way through---which included me mouthing off to the mounties who wanted me to get out of the street and back onto the sidewalk with the other suburban lookie loos---I entertained Harper with a monologue about how disgusting it must be to have people want to meet you after a show not because of what you have created on stage, but because they saw your face on TV every week.

 

 

 

These are the kids outside of Chicago. The Ambassador is a gorgeous old theatre, and the show was not disappointing. It really should be tired by now but they breathed life into it. Christopher Seiber played Billy, and I felt like the only geek in the audience going "He's on my iPod! He was in Monty Python's Holy Grail!"

 

All for now---