The cast was incredible!
Things came together like it was a miracle (though we’re still finishing the full funding of the show). The one wish that did not come true was the producer with the big checkbook. Next time, our outreach will reach farther.
The audience left happy.
Manhattan Rep Theatre said, “You and your team are a class act — you’re invited back any time!”
Cammerron, the actor who played Kevin, flew in from Idaho, went to auditions during the day, had a callback to play Princeton in “Avenue Q,” and was offered a part in Company 68’s troupe. Not bad for a 23-year-old’s first try at NYC.
I not only have a 42nd Street theater ready to put on my plays, and a place I’m “always invited back,” but I have a dozen and more theater contacts in New York City, and I’ve decided when I do go back, I will sublet my own apartment in Greenwich Village through Airbnb.
The actors and directors and crew were amazing to work with and went way above and beyond to make it happen. The actors did their own costumes and many of the props, because they had to step up given I was in Iowa and our budget was tiny. Learned many lessons which will be applied to next time.
Stayed in a small hotel midtown for two nights then did not have a place to hang my hat Thursday-Sunday. Instead, went on adventures, hung with the homeless, experienced New York at streetview, became inspired. I lived at the New York Public Library, in Union Square, Washington Square, and Madison Square parks (thank God it was in the 50s and 60s that week before Christmas, with lows only in the 30s-40s).
I could not have collected so much material for future creative work in a month of living New York the sheltered, tourist way.
Sometime, I will tell the stories of Daisy from the Diamond District, Plaza Pete, and Mavis, the Midtown woman who misses her son but doesn’t want him to know how she’s living.
I found nothing to fear in New York until the last day. By then I was rather sleep deprived, and weary from dragging my wheeled bag all over, up and down subway stairs, and all the rest. (I would, however, put in a commercial for the Campaign bag from Herschel Supply Company. I bought it on Zappos. The wheels and the bag itself suffered days of heavy abuse and came out swinging. For $189.99 it cannot be beat and I’d challenge it against the $500 carry-ons.)
Life affirmed in those days. So much beauty in what some consider the underbelly. So much peace and joy in Washington Square Park and throughout the Village — and I had not yet been educated in the great points of Washington Sq. Park’s history of activism, equality, and social justice. Now I am just more in love.
Sometimes I make the life I’ve been given an adventure. Sometimes, adventure finds me.
