Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (7 page)

Working in the Theater District and Times Square in the late 1990s and early 2000s was akin to being inside a kaleidoscope: all the colorful tiles around me were constantly being shuffled and reconfigured into new and exciting patterns. As soon as I became accustomed to them, someone shook the can again and everything tumbled into another position. Times Square and the Theater District have always been in flux, but during my tenure as an usher, the changes seemed to be happening at a lightning-quick pace.

When I first started working off-Broadway, 42nd Street was a ghost town. The storefronts were closed and concealed behind brightly painted gates, and the New Victory was the only venue on the entire block that was open on a regular basis. There were many other historic theaters up and down the street, but they were, for the most part, disused.

The empty theaters on 42nd Street intrigued me. There was one in particular, with large iron mask medallions on the front doors and a ticket window, which aroused my curiosity. The signs on the doors identified it as the Pandora, an eerily apt name for an enigmatic space. Whenever I could, I tried to walk on the same side of the street as the Pandora so I could peer between the bars on the iron grates.

While there was no action at the Pandora, small changes did occasionally occur with other theaters up and down the street. For a while, inexplicably, snippets of poetry were posted on the abandoned marquees. The Liberty and Selwyn temporarily housed Fiona Shaw and Willem Dafoe, respectively, for solo shows. Shaw performed T.S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land,
and the title couldn’t have been more appropriate for the spectral street or the ramshackle Liberty Theatre. I found out about both productions too late to get tickets, unfortunately. In fact, when I saw the title of Dafoe’s show
The Hairy Ape
on the Selwyn marquee, I think I may have mistaken it for more poetry.

At one point the Selwyn was also used as a Visitors’ Center. I wandered in because I was excited about seeing the theater, and was disappointed when I found that the Center didn’t allow access to the auditorium. Until the mid-nineties, the Apollo Theatre was the site of the Academy nightclub. I did get to see that, thanks to an opening night party for the New Victory Theater that was hosted there.

By the time I started working on Broadway, 42nd Street was in the midst of its slow creep back to life. The Pandora, which was actually the Empire, which was originally the Eltinge after female impersonator Julian Eltinge, was actually picked up and hauled down to the end of the block. The façade, lobby, proscenium and various elements of the auditorium were restored for use as the entrance to the AMC cinema. I haven't a clue what happened to the door medallions, but larger versions of the masks are still visible on the ceiling of the AMC lobby. The architectural elements that identified it as the Pandora were actually movie props from the early 1990s and were not historic at all; the theater had been used as a location for an action film and they’d never cleared away the set dressings. The Liberty also survived, but spent most of the last two decades sealed off behind a wall. The poor Times Square Theatre has changed hands several times; nobody seems to know what to do with it.

The new Lyric Theatre incorporates the façade of the demolished 1903 Lyric Theatre and architectural elements from both the Lyric and Apollo. The New Amsterdam and Selwyn, along with the Biltmore and Studio 54 further uptown, have all returned to use as legit Broadway theaters. While I wasn’t around in the seventies to experience its decadence, Studio 54 was still familiar to me as the former site of the Ritz nightclub from the early 1990s. I had gone to the Ritz when I was fourteen; it was mildly amusing to me that the site of my underage rock club kid exploits had gone legit.

However, some theaters still fell through the cracks. Between 1995 and 2010 I watched more than ten of them go down. Henry Miller’s Theatre (named for the turn of the century playwright, not the
Tropic of Cancer
author); the Harris, the Apollo and the Lyric all died. There was no funeral for the Central, which was concealed behind the Lunt-Fontanne and Ho-Jo’s and was quietly destroyed. On 42nd Street a number of movie houses were picked off: the Rialto, with its wavy blue terra cotta façade, was one of them. Some tiny theaters on 42nd Street between 7th and 6th also bit the dust; they were so small, and apparently so insignificant, that nary a word was said about their demise. The Ideal Theatre on 8th Avenue, which had long been a peep show, was also demolished.

Once 42nd Street came back to life, the businesses there seemed to appear and vanish at an alarmingly rapid clip. The Disney Store popped up adjacent to the lovingly restored New Amsterdam Theatre, but then popped away again as a string of slick retail outlets opened along the Deuce. An ancient Egyptian goddess spread her gilded wings over the entrance to the Museum Store for several years, but finally flew away. A behemoth Easy Internet facility with hundreds of computer terminals was resplendent in its 1970s orange décor, but it logged off before 2010. Warner Brothers opened a fantastic three-story extravaganza of a store that was decorated with murals parodying Broadway shows; it only lasted until 2001 or 2002. Ellen’s Dine-O-Mat, a cute restaurant that was a tribute to 1940s automats, opened at the corner of 43rd and 7th; it went out of business after only a few years when the building that housed it was demolished.

Further uptown in the Theater District, many beloved haunts closed in the late 1990s and 2000s. Oh La La, the tiny coffee shop in the Marriott Marquis Hotel that sold the best hot chocolate ever produced in the Western Hemisphere, was replaced by a Starbucks. Teatro Pizza, where the slices topped with baked ziti provided a carbo-load that could pull even the weariest usher through matinee day, went out. Over by the Winter Garden, a fast food joint that included a Pizza Hut, a KFC and several other chains was closed. It had all the charm of a subway station, but it also had large Broadway posters on every wall. Speaking of subway stations, just downstairs from the Pizza Hut in the 50th Street 1/9 stop lurked Siberia, a tiny bar that had had reportedly served as a rendezvous point for Soviet KGB spies during the Cold War. That eventually went away, too.

A fair number of ushers and crew members have been kicking around Broadway for decades; they’ve developed preservationist hearts along the way. Many attended Save Our Theaters protests in the early 1980s, when five Broadway theaters, including the Morosco, the original Helen Hayes and the former Astor, were unceremoniously knocked down. Some were even present on the Morosco’s final day, when protesters both famous and anonymous were carried away in police vans.

Thus, many ushers, including myself, tried to make one final pilgrimage to any restaurant that was closing around Midtown. I headed over to McHale’s, Barrymore’s and the Cheyenne Diner between shows to have one last late lunch. Even the Howard Johnson’s on 46th, which we all typically avoided due to its rude wait staff and unimpressive food, was given a goodbye.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t have photos of the theaters, shops and restaurants that were dying. To this day I deeply regret that I never spent a few hours walking up and down pre-gentrification 42nd Street, taking photos. It just never crossed my mind. I’d never even thought to take a photo of myself at work, either.

I started documenting as many things as I could around the Theater District, including my own employment when possible. When I was dealing with film, which was expensive to buy and develop, I had to be conservative in my projects. When I switched over to a digital camera I essentially could take an unlimited amount of photos, and I did.

Taking my cue from Berenice Abbott, I tried to document things that might neither be preserved nor noticed. I photographed street signs and old marquees; the shops in Times Square and public art, and the exteriors of the little theaters on 42nd St. before they were pulled down. I attended one of the final performances of
Urinetown
at Henry Miller’s; I was not interested in seeing the show as much as I wanted to explore the theater before it was demolished. I couldn’t get any photos in the auditorium, but when I was alone on a stairwell I whipped out my camera and snapped a few clandestine shots. Since the entire place was going to be gone in a matter of months, and I wasn’t taking photos of the set or the performance, I didn’t feel particularly bad about it. I returned to Henry Miller’s Theatre later on to capture the exterior on film.

I couldn’t stop the changes that were sweeping the Theater District, but I could certainly document them.

One of my college professors once told me, “In the theater, holidays mean one thing: extra performances.” He was correct. On Broadway, the show doesn’t stop for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Passover, Arbor Day, Halloween or anything else. Extra performances are often tacked onto the schedule during holiday periods, particularly Christmastime, to capitalize on the huge tourist crowds visiting New York City. These shows are almost always sold out.

As an usher, I worked more holidays than I could ever count. The production team sometimes tried to give us a break, but there was always a tradeoff. If we didn’t work Christmas Eve, we’d be there on Christmas. If we didn’t work Thanksgiving, we’d have two shows on Black Friday. Taking time off during holiday weeks was frowned upon for obvious reasons, whether one was cast, crew or front of house staff.

Those who needed to travel out of town to see family found this very problematic; those of us with relatives nearby usually found ways to make it work. Luckily for me, I was in the latter group. My Mom lived in the city and I usually saw her on Christmas Eve. As such, I didn’t mind working on Christmas night; by evening the celebration was over, so it didn’t matter if I went to work. If nothing else, since most people were home, it was an easy commute for me.

I don’t observe Thanksgiving at all, so working on that holiday never bothered me either. I learned early on never to mention this to patrons. When they asked “Did you enjoy Thanksgiving?” and I cheerfully told them that I didn’t celebrate it, they looked at me as though I were a space alien, a heathen, or both. I still remember the expression of shock and horror on one particular patron’s face when I let him in on that secret. Getting into the wheres, whys and hows of my refusal to observe Thanksgiving would have made their heads spin, and it was neither the place nor the time for a discussion of that nature. I simply learned to smile, nod, thank them for their question and tell them that I’d had a good day. That wasn’t lying; I usually
had
had a good day. I hadn’t specified that I’d had a good
Thanksgiving.

The only holidays I particularly cared about, other than Christmas, were Halloween, Mother’s Day and my birthday. Halloween at the theater could be great fun, since some house managers allowed us to work in costume. Thus, in various years I greeted patrons on the aisle as a cat, a ballet dancer, Ginny Weasley from the
Harry Potter
series, and a gothic version of Pippi Longstocking. As time went on, though, I found that I preferred to call out for Halloween. I started volunteering as a puppeteer in the Village Halloween Parade. Carrying large puppets for several miles and making them dance and interact with the screaming crowds was far more physically taxing than ushering, but it was also infinitely more fun.

On my birthday I didn’t want to be anywhere near the theater, or even New York: I generally used my two weeks of annual unpaid leave and got out of Dodge. And if I happened to be working at a production with Sunday performances, I called out on Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, since Sunday shows were almost always matinees, there really wasn’t a way to work
and
travel to an outer boro to see my mother. Mom was just more important.

The only holiday that made me groan was New Year’s Eve. Sometimes the management made December 31 our dark day; perhaps they knew just how difficult it was for the cast and crew to get to and from work. In other years, they scheduled the December 31 performances as matinees, so everyone could get out of the Theater District before nightfall and avoid the worst of the chaos. Every now and then, however, we were unlucky and had an evening performance on New Year’s Eve.

What was so bad about New Year’s Eve? Well, let’s break it down. Most of the theaters are right off Times Square, a stone’s throw from the site of the New Year’s Eve ball drop. Folks camp out all day for a prime spot, and by the evening, Times Square is crammed with hundreds of thousands of people. To facilitate security, the NYPD always blocks off the streets around Times Square. You can’t blame them; they have to keep everyone safe and there’s a finite limit to the number of people that Times Square can accommodate. However, if you’re trying to get to work, and your place of business is on one of the streets with limited access, it’s a complete pain in the ass. In theory, the police are supposed to let you through the barricades if you have legitimate reason to be on a certain street. If you live there, you’re staying at one of the hotels, you’re working or you’re seeing a Broadway show, you’re supposed to show some proof to the police officers, and they’re supposed to allow you through the barricades to continue to your destination. In practice, though, you might end up being redirected over and over again.

Broadway theater employees usually have an excellent rapport with the beat cops that patrol Times Square. On New Year’s Eve, however, they’re not around, and the new cops aren’t necessarily familiar with those who work or live in the area. One year the police refused to let an entire group of ushers past the barricades. Someone finally managed to get in touch with one of the house managers; he had to go down to the barricade and personally vouch for his staff.

To combat this, the next year the Shuberts equipped us with photo ID cards and letters from our house managers. Even these had little effect, however. When I presented my documents and tried to enter Times Square through the barricades on 45th and 6th, I was unlucky enough to get the one police officer in Times Square that hated Broadway in every way, shape and form. How did I know this? When people stepped up to the checkpoint and showed him letters or ID cards from other employers, including those on the same street as my theater, he let them pass immediately. When someone with Broadway tickets or theatrical employee identification approached, he shunted them off to the side and told them to wait.

I watched for nearly ten minutes as numerous individuals from other businesses all over Times Square were allowed through the barricades; I watched as the cluster of Broadway people grew. Eventually, I approached the cop again.

”Sir, I’m sorry, but I do have to get to work…” I tried.

“WAIT!
I told you to wait! Just wait!” he screamed. Apparently, in addition to hating live theater, he had a very short fuse. I backed away and found another officer on the other side of the checkpoint. As soon as I showed him my credentials he opened the fence for me, let me through, and wished me a pleasant evening.

Walking through the restricted zone on New Year’s Eve was like traveling through a post-apocalyptic city. There was nobody there, and that absolutely, positively never happens in New York City. Even early in the morning, when there aren’t many pedestrians out, there are still cars. This time? Nada. I gulped as I walked down 45th toward 8th Avenue. The Lyceum Theatre in the middle of the block was dark for the night, the lucky bastards.

As I approached Broadway and 7th, Times Square proper, the roar of the crowd assailed me, and I was actually pushed backward by the force. Flashing lights. Horns. Noisemakers. Music blasting from speakers; vibrant colors glittering on the giant television screens and billboards. I walked down a narrow path; on either side of me, separated and controlled by metal fencing, there were thousands and thousands of people, all of whom were screaming.

At every street corner there was another battalion of cops. There was no way to speak to them over the din; I just flashed my ID and got waved along. By the time I reached the theater I was exhilarated from the sheer rush of energy I’d experienced.

I don’t think I will ever have the desire to watch the ball drop in Times Square. I don’t even bother with it on television. If I ever had the chance to walk through those barricades again, though, I’d probably do it. Being on the outside of the throng, and watching it pulse around me, is how I’d always want to do New Year’s Eve in New York.