Panglossian Was I
We had $250,000. We earned it with tears, we earned it with arrogance. Kevin the Shark-Tank-Shark/Dragon’s-Den-Dragon yelling in person is 100% less funny, especially when it’s at you. Did you know the judges’ platform is raised, that supplicants are lit from below the platform, that our two minutes and thirty seconds was edited from almost an hour, that I didn’t cry until minute forty-five?
No matter. I know when reruns are on-people stop me on the street and say, “don’t let anyone take away your dream!”
They seldom remember that we won.
We had $200,000. Finally enough budget to get everyone in the same room for rehearsals, the dream team, the list of “If you could work with anyone you wanted…” I brought them to Florida in February, paid better than Equity, rented a seven-bedroom house with a pool, a theatre for the mornings, a gym for the afternoons. Made gift baskets and stocked the kitchen with snacks and beer. Flew in the musicians to make songs from us. Had a dramaturge lead rehearsals, coach us through writing our true experience, the things that happened to us, the things we wanted to tell an audience when we could talk to them for real. That was when Dan got sullen. When Kim-my partner, his girlfriend-said nothing was wrong, everything was fine, though her mouth got tight and her eyes looked sad. When Zay, my other partner, decided she was on Kim’s side.
We had $150,000. We practiced in a high school with a low ceiling. We practiced in a gym full of kids. When Ryan double-backed off the tramp wall the whole gym paused. We drove to Illinois, rented hotel rooms, per diems, a theatre. I told the cameramen to zoom in while Dan was sulking. My mother came as costume hand, years of Halloween and church dresses and handmade faux-Cabbage-Patch-Kids, now sewing sequined leotards in the workroom on the other side of the building, and roller-blading down the hall for fittings.
The cast sent the trampolinists to my room-“Everyone figured we were the ones you wouldn’t yell at.” I’ve made a typo in the contracts. They think they are getting show pay instead of rehearsal pay. I give up my pay to pay everyone, but I already know it’s over-the assumption that I’d cheat them rather than screwing up somewhere in a pile of paper.
It can’t possibly be over.
Our investor flew in. The show wasn’t finished, it wasn’t supposed to be, there was a preshow speech, there was a program note. On the way out, a trapeze-girl from Chicago, my acquaintance, Kim’s friend, leaned in and said to Kim, “even you couldn’t make that act look good.” Fuck you, Chicago girl. Fuck you still.
Dan smashed a prop in front of my mother, and that was the last time I thought I “needed a reason” to fire someone.
We had $100,000 and we finally had a show. A good show. Trashed the last act and the last-act costumes. Cut lines and rearranged. Two new acrobats. A full house of happy people, a standing ovation. After strike we went back to the rental house and the Kenyan acrobat cooked Kenyan cornmeal and chicken. We ate in a circle on the floor with our fingers, we loved each other. I thought they loved me again. I hoped.
We had $50,000 and I found out the stage manager had been starting every command with “Allison says you have to…” and the reason the stunt coordinator no longer liked me was he’d been sleeping with the stage manager.
I still thought I could make them like me. I still thought they would like me when I gave them everything they said they ever wanted.
We had $25,000 and I wasn’t invited to the wedding. In Long Island, conversations in the dressing room stopped when I walked in. The new stage manager, Niki, was on my team, she’d worked for me when she was still in high school. She loved me the way everyone else used to, an island of loyalty in a sea of money and malice.
Everyone wants a job. Everyone wants to be paid to do what they love. Everyone wants creative license. Until they get it.
We didn’t spend the last of the money, didn’t ask for it. I sold the trampoline back to the gym, the money paid for my honeymoon. I still own a 20-foot box truck, the lock rusted shut, still full of things I should look through, things I should sell. Anyone need a keyboard?
Years later Dan and Kim apologized. They are a couple, they have a show. I never hated them, so it’s not that hard to like them now, to say, well, two hundred grand down the drain but I guess you learned something about yourselves.
And then Niki-the-second-stage-manager called for a recommendation. She told me how when she worked for me, when she worked for the circus, that was when she knew. That was when she went to Chicago, to theatre school, to the Shakespeare Festival to stage manage for Teller (of Penn and), and now, to grad school for arts administration. She thanked me for her life.
It’s worth two hundred grand.
______________________________________________________
(No pressure, Niki.) When the show was good, it looked like this.
.
No matter. I know when reruns are on-people stop me on the street and say, “don’t let anyone take away your dream!”
They seldom remember that we won.
We had $200,000. Finally enough budget to get everyone in the same room for rehearsals, the dream team, the list of “If you could work with anyone you wanted…” I brought them to Florida in February, paid better than Equity, rented a seven-bedroom house with a pool, a theatre for the mornings, a gym for the afternoons. Made gift baskets and stocked the kitchen with snacks and beer. Flew in the musicians to make songs from us. Had a dramaturge lead rehearsals, coach us through writing our true experience, the things that happened to us, the things we wanted to tell an audience when we could talk to them for real. That was when Dan got sullen. When Kim-my partner, his girlfriend-said nothing was wrong, everything was fine, though her mouth got tight and her eyes looked sad. When Zay, my other partner, decided she was on Kim’s side.
We had $150,000. We practiced in a high school with a low ceiling. We practiced in a gym full of kids. When Ryan double-backed off the tramp wall the whole gym paused. We drove to Illinois, rented hotel rooms, per diems, a theatre. I told the cameramen to zoom in while Dan was sulking. My mother came as costume hand, years of Halloween and church dresses and handmade faux-Cabbage-Patch-Kids, now sewing sequined leotards in the workroom on the other side of the building, and roller-blading down the hall for fittings.
The cast sent the trampolinists to my room-“Everyone figured we were the ones you wouldn’t yell at.” I’ve made a typo in the contracts. They think they are getting show pay instead of rehearsal pay. I give up my pay to pay everyone, but I already know it’s over-the assumption that I’d cheat them rather than screwing up somewhere in a pile of paper.
It can’t possibly be over.
Our investor flew in. The show wasn’t finished, it wasn’t supposed to be, there was a preshow speech, there was a program note. On the way out, a trapeze-girl from Chicago, my acquaintance, Kim’s friend, leaned in and said to Kim, “even you couldn’t make that act look good.” Fuck you, Chicago girl. Fuck you still.
Dan smashed a prop in front of my mother, and that was the last time I thought I “needed a reason” to fire someone.
We had $100,000 and we finally had a show. A good show. Trashed the last act and the last-act costumes. Cut lines and rearranged. Two new acrobats. A full house of happy people, a standing ovation. After strike we went back to the rental house and the Kenyan acrobat cooked Kenyan cornmeal and chicken. We ate in a circle on the floor with our fingers, we loved each other. I thought they loved me again. I hoped.
We had $50,000 and I found out the stage manager had been starting every command with “Allison says you have to…” and the reason the stunt coordinator no longer liked me was he’d been sleeping with the stage manager.
I still thought I could make them like me. I still thought they would like me when I gave them everything they said they ever wanted.
We had $25,000 and I wasn’t invited to the wedding. In Long Island, conversations in the dressing room stopped when I walked in. The new stage manager, Niki, was on my team, she’d worked for me when she was still in high school. She loved me the way everyone else used to, an island of loyalty in a sea of money and malice.
Everyone wants a job. Everyone wants to be paid to do what they love. Everyone wants creative license. Until they get it.
We didn’t spend the last of the money, didn’t ask for it. I sold the trampoline back to the gym, the money paid for my honeymoon. I still own a 20-foot box truck, the lock rusted shut, still full of things I should look through, things I should sell. Anyone need a keyboard?
Years later Dan and Kim apologized. They are a couple, they have a show. I never hated them, so it’s not that hard to like them now, to say, well, two hundred grand down the drain but I guess you learned something about yourselves.
And then Niki-the-second-stage-manager called for a recommendation. She told me how when she worked for me, when she worked for the circus, that was when she knew. That was when she went to Chicago, to theatre school, to the Shakespeare Festival to stage manage for Teller (of Penn and), and now, to grad school for arts administration. She thanked me for her life.
It’s worth two hundred grand.
______________________________________________________
(No pressure, Niki.) When the show was good, it looked like this.
.