Monday in the Monkeycage
The season closed yesterday at the Rep. I expected a quiet night in the monkeycage. Moments into the shift, actually even moments into the building and before my shift, that illusion was shattered.
College kids and the SRO. I didn’t bring enough wine to handle this.
There’s a reception for UW’s PATP (Professional Actor’s Training Program) in the lobby, and a performance showcase by PATP artists schedule in the jewelbox theater. Actors in there early twenties have flooded my entrance. Well-proportioned boys with sonorous voices to make me feel inadequate, buxom girls with intriguing faces and the balls to make meaningless eye contact that remind me why the inadequacy matters.
And the SRO, the Seattle Repertory Organization. Meeting to plan their annual NYC trip and tour of Broadway, Legions of confused, Aquanet-coiffed, pancake-makeup-ed elderly women. When they ask for directions to the boardroom and I answer, they start tottering away at my first instruction, no longer listening, as though “turn right” is either all the instruction they can imagine needing or all the instruction they can handle. The few men in the group avoid eye contact with me, the women, or each other.
So, when he shuffles in, I make an assumption.
“Here for the NY Trip?”
He’s thin, bearded though it looks out of place, as though he’s been stranded somewhere away from his razor. I’ve seen him before, but never noticed how water, how red-rimmed his eyes are.
“Uh? Yes.” And he looks away from me.
I stumble on forward. “Do you know where the boardroom is?”
He’s clearly uncomfortable with me speaking to him, keeps casting glances over his shoulder, out the windows of the small waiting area in front of my monkeycage. He doesn’t want to have to answer.
“I’m here for the big party.” He isn’t looking toward me when he says it. I’m not sure if that means the NYC trip or the PATP reception, and I’m convinced he doesn’t either.
Now he stares out the window, and his helplessness, beyond even his frailty, comes crushing down on me, because I didn’t allow him to conceal it. “I’m just waiting for Tammy to...” And he trails off.
And she swoops in from parking the car. His wife. Small and powerful and vivacious, a board member. She pulls him along in her wake, and he is clearly relieved. They are attending the PATP reception.
At least three groups of the SRO ladies get lost retracing their steps from the boardroom and I have to go retrieve and redirect them. Two of the PATP performers have a loud conversation on the stairs to backstage where they can’t seem to resist using “fuckin’” in every sentence.
I can’t stop thinking about the lost man going to the big party.
College kids and the SRO. I didn’t bring enough wine to handle this.
There’s a reception for UW’s PATP (Professional Actor’s Training Program) in the lobby, and a performance showcase by PATP artists schedule in the jewelbox theater. Actors in there early twenties have flooded my entrance. Well-proportioned boys with sonorous voices to make me feel inadequate, buxom girls with intriguing faces and the balls to make meaningless eye contact that remind me why the inadequacy matters.
And the SRO, the Seattle Repertory Organization. Meeting to plan their annual NYC trip and tour of Broadway, Legions of confused, Aquanet-coiffed, pancake-makeup-ed elderly women. When they ask for directions to the boardroom and I answer, they start tottering away at my first instruction, no longer listening, as though “turn right” is either all the instruction they can imagine needing or all the instruction they can handle. The few men in the group avoid eye contact with me, the women, or each other.
So, when he shuffles in, I make an assumption.
“Here for the NY Trip?”
He’s thin, bearded though it looks out of place, as though he’s been stranded somewhere away from his razor. I’ve seen him before, but never noticed how water, how red-rimmed his eyes are.
“Uh? Yes.” And he looks away from me.
I stumble on forward. “Do you know where the boardroom is?”
He’s clearly uncomfortable with me speaking to him, keeps casting glances over his shoulder, out the windows of the small waiting area in front of my monkeycage. He doesn’t want to have to answer.
“I’m here for the big party.” He isn’t looking toward me when he says it. I’m not sure if that means the NYC trip or the PATP reception, and I’m convinced he doesn’t either.
Now he stares out the window, and his helplessness, beyond even his frailty, comes crushing down on me, because I didn’t allow him to conceal it. “I’m just waiting for Tammy to...” And he trails off.
And she swoops in from parking the car. His wife. Small and powerful and vivacious, a board member. She pulls him along in her wake, and he is clearly relieved. They are attending the PATP reception.
At least three groups of the SRO ladies get lost retracing their steps from the boardroom and I have to go retrieve and redirect them. Two of the PATP performers have a loud conversation on the stairs to backstage where they can’t seem to resist using “fuckin’” in every sentence.
I can’t stop thinking about the lost man going to the big party.
posted by JJisafool at 9:39 PM
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