#SOBLESSED: the Annoying Actor Friend's Guide to Werking in Show Business (7 page)

I refused after college to be a waitress...so once I
booked a National Tour out of college I never went back...

*

Congratulations! You’ve followed my instructions by
making the obvious college choice (GO BLUE!) that provided you with a rockin’
platform to share your gift and score you some kickass representation (Gersh!
Paradigm!), after which, you diligently pounded the pavement until you booked
an A-List job. You are about to begin rehearsals for your first Broadway show
– oh, what’s that? You didn’t book a Broadway show yet? It’s been like
six months. Get your shit together!

Perhaps your Broadway dreams are going to take a
little longer to come to fruition. Maybe the Powers That Be don’t “see you in
the world” of the Broadway company, but think you’d fit in nicely on tour.
There’s also a chance The Universe wants you to pay a few extra dues in
regional theatre. Whatever the reason is, don’t freak out. Everyone goes LORT
sooner or later. Besides, it might be nice to take a break from The City to see
how many Cheesecake Factorys this fine country has to offer! But before you hit
the road, it’s time to…

TIE UP LOOSE ENDS

Once you’ve accepted a job out of town, you’ll need
to learn how to rip yourself out of your comfortable and reliable life routine
and potentially share a living space with a person whose behavior you haven’t
vetted. That’s OK because you’ll be in a social bubble and required by Equity Law
to be besties with your cast no matter what. Knowing that your out-of-town home
will be a happy one is given – but what about the one you’re leaving
behind?

Find an Appropriate Sublet

If you are subletting from someone else, it is
perfectly acceptable to just give him or her a few days notice. They won’t care
because they’ll be really excited you got a job! If your name is on the lease,
then things will be a bit trickier. First, feel free to immediately post a
sublet request on your Facebook wall. Ambiguity is key here. Friends may go as
far as to ask you what job you booked. It is encouraged to completely ignore
them. Let those people assume you’re taking time off to see the world (i.e.
Dayton, Des Moines, and Schenectady).

Attaining an ideal sublet can be problematic. You
want them to be connected enough to you that you aren’t freaked out if they’re
going to trash your place and be late with rent, but you don’t want them to be too
close to you personally, that you feel guilty charging them more than the
actual rent notated on the lease. It’s a delicate balance. Perusing Gypsy
Housing on Facebook will put you in contact with a person who has at least
three friends in common with you that can vouch for them.

Compose a list of requirements you desire in a sublet
and check in throughout your contract to verify they haven’t crossed the line. Keep
in mind that some people might be able to afford shelter – but you can’t
afford their tackiness. If you acquire a sublet that naively pays three hundred
dollars over the rent, but when you visit on a layoff you open the door to a
hallway lined with dorm room Christmas lights and pink Jesus candles, it might
just be better to kick them out and cover the rent yourself.

Packing. Schmacking. A Regional Life.

Second order of business will be mastering the art of
efficient packing. If you are working regionally, the company will be required
to pay for (sometimes) up to one hundred pounds of shipped boxes
plus
two suitcases. That’s two hundred pounds of fun and freedom for you to enjoy on
your three-month getaway. Take advantage of it! You can start pulling out crap you
haven’t seen in years to send to your destination – just because you can.
I’m talking
everything
. Snorkel gear. Snowboarding equipment. You just
never know if you’ll need that shit. Grab the thirty-percent completed
scrapbook from the vacation you went on three years ago, toss in the guitar you
keep in storage that you’ve never played, and don’t forget your vaporizer or
your bike. If you don’t have a bike, buy one and ship it. Another option is to
not ship anything outbound on the off chance you go antiquing with the cast and
find a sweet chiffonier you want shipped home.

Packing. Schmacking. On Tour.

If you’re going on tour, chances are you will only be
allowed two checked bags weighing no more than fifty pounds each. Considering
you will be on the road and disconnected from life for a fleeting three hundred
and sixty five days or so, it seems only natural that you should be allowed the
same amount of luggage that would typically accompany you on a trip home for
the holidays. I suggest devoting one checked bag to toiletries and shoes, and
the other to clothing. Your carry-on will be filled with anything you couldn’t
fit in your suitcases because you over-packed. It’s inevitable that you will
over-pack. You’ll over-pack so badly that you’ll need to ship a box home,
because you’ll simply have to buy that opening night outfit in your first city.
By the fourth city, you’ll be so sick of your clothes that a bi-monthly Forever
21 or H&M shopping binge will be essential to your sanity. It won’t seem
out of character, because those are the only two retail establishments economical
enough for you to pretend you’re getting an entirely new wardrobe – and
not feel guilty when boredom sets in and you throw everything away five cities
later.

You might also be provided with a trunk that the
company travels for you. In the olden days, a trunk really meant something. It
was huge. It could carry a memory-foam mattress topper and a case of Trader Joe’s
Three-Buck Chuck. More importantly, it was delivered to your hotel room. Today,
a trunk is actually referred to as a “footlocker” and it’s roughly akin to the
size of the cubby where you shoved Nintendo Valentines and Funyuns back in Kindergarten.
The footlocker forever lives in the theatre and nobody is going to assist you
in getting it to and from anywhere functional. If you put a lot of heavy crap
in your footlocker, kindly ask someone to assist you in getting it down from
wherever it lives. You don’t want to tear your rotator cuff trying to locate a
spare tub of protein powder. My theory is that the money saved transporting a
smaller complementary luggage carrier is set aside for the workers’ comp
required to assist injuries resulting from the inability to retrieve said
complementary luggage carrier.

Throwing Your Own Rager!

Your final and most important order of business
before hitting the road will be to throw a
balls-out-celebratory-going-away-bash. Don’t look at this so much as a farewell
party, but more like a formal announcement of your future employment. Make sure
you invite everybody. Pack ‘em in. It doesn’t matter if you’re leaving for
three months or forever. You’d be surprised how many people that you haven’t
seen in years are willing to buy you celebratory drinks for getting a job, when
they’re unemployed. What can I say? People want to bask in your #blessedness!

When planning your party, make sure to take the
Goldilocks approach with nearly every detail. For example, location is often a
deal breaker for many people. You need to find a happy medium in an effort not
to alienate anyone. The location can’t be too obscure and inconvenient, but you
don’t want to be just another asshole that settles on Bourbon Street in
Midtown. If someone gave me a dime for every time I’ve opened up a Facebook
invite and grumbled, “Eww, Midtown,” I’d have a lot of dimes. The venue has to
be just right. Make it central enough so that nobody can complain about having
to take a Brown Line train, but just far enough away from the Theatre District
that you won’t run into people you don’t like, but also close enough to
Broadway that the post-show crowd can’t make excuses to douche out on you. Fuck
it… You know you’re just going to end up at Hourglass.

Time is of the essence. Schedule your party early
enough so that the few weird people you know with day jobs and life goals don’t
decline, but late enough so you aren’t obliterated by the time the second wave
of partiers arrive. Nine p.m. is nice. Seven is for losers and eleven is for
assholes. A middle ground is best, because it allows your party to flow through
two to three waves of people. The early birds won’t have much in common with
the night owls. Luckily, one group will transform into another as the party
goes on, leaving the people present surrounded by others whom they will find
relatable. You, however, will be forced to endure the awkward turnover period
of around twenty to thirty minutes when you’re stuck with that one random
person who sort of latched onto your group after an audition two years ago when
they heard everyone was going out for drinks. They’ll be there all night and
will probably share your cab home.

The one detail of your farewell event that should not
split middle ground is the quality. Make it a #rager they’ll never forget. This
is the last time you’re going to see ninety percent of these people for a while.
Enjoy this precious time with the friends who normally only exist to you
through Candy Crush requests. Try not to be put off if someone close to you
opts for the Irish Exit and forgets to say goodbye. You’ll see them whenever
you fly in for a quick twenty-four hour audition turnaround – just
remember to only text your real friends on brief visits, and go radio silent on
social media.

***

Now that you’ve tied up loose ends, it’s time to kick
up your heels, hurl two fifty-pound suitcases down the four flights of stairs
in your walkup, and hail a reimbursable cab out to LaGuardia or JFK, and whatever
adventure that economy priced ticket intends to take you.

DRUNK HISTORY: THE NATIONAL TOUR

In the Roman Catholic religion, there are artifacts
known as “relics.” Relics are items closely associated with saints. If you are
lucky, one day you’ll meet someone who toured the country on a Full Production
Contract, and that person is known as a First-National Relic. If you come in
contact with this rare entity, I suggest you spend significant time in its
presence. The First-National Relic is sacred. They are an ancient national
treasure. They existed in a time when people actually went on the road to save
money. They indulged in superfluous luxuries they didn’t even need. The
First-National Relic owns an apartment. They may even own a second property in
a foreign location such as The Poconos. The only confirmed whereabouts you can
witness this endangered species in action is in whatever city
Wicked, The
Lion King, Jersey Boys,
or
The Book of Mormon
is playing –
where they hide safely within their holy sanctuary.

What events transpired to bring along the extinction
of the Full Production Contract tour? Take a trip back in time with me as I attempt
to transcribe the somewhat booze-hazy yarn I learned at Chelsea Grill, from a
First-National Relic (who I’ll lovingly refer to as Old Annoying Actor Friend)
that used to drink at a place called Marlowe – which is now the Brazilian
BBQ joint next to Joe Allen’s on 46
^th
Street.

The Fall of the First National

A Drunk-matic Tale Told in the Words of Your Old
Annoying Actor Friend

In the past, when you were no more than a babe, I
earned an enviable living out on the open road. In those days, you didn’t go on
tour to pay bills. You went on tour to buy timeshares. Now, your weekly tour
salary is like the $200 you get in Monopoly when you pass GO, before rounding a
corner filled with hotels. It didn’t always used to be like that…

A Long Time Ago, in a Broadway Season Far, Far Away…

There once was a revival of
The Music Man
,
directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. It was nominated for a lot of
awards, but it didn’t win any – except one. The 2001 First National Tour
of
The Music Man
holds the esteemed acclaim of being “The First Time a
First National Touring Company Launched Non-Union.” I think the cast was making
about 76-trom-BONES a week. This pissed off everyone. Equity actors were
picketing cities all over the country. Newspaper articles ran in local papers.
There was even general outrage among non-theatrical folk for the injustice of
paying actors so little to perform while charging premium ticket prices to
audience members.
The Music Man
required a gigantic cast, and the
producers felt that the only way to tour the show at all was to send out a non-union
company for (allegedly) salaries as low as $450 a week, plus housing and a $35 per
diem. Actors’ Equity was certainly not going to agree for any of their valued
union members to work under such conditions. HELL NO. Steps needed to be taken
to ensure this did not happen to a First National Tour ever again.

A New Kind of Tour

When Actors’ Equity was given the chance to
co-develop a cheaper way for producers to send actors out on the road, they
freakin’ jumped on that shit. AEA was like, “Please don’t send the tour out
non-equity!
The Music Man
was a mistake and we know that! We’ll do anything!”
And that is when the very first Multi-City Ass Rape Tour was born. For now,
we’ll just call it
42
^nd
Street
. The First National Tour of
42
^nd
Street
launched in August of 2002 under the newly conceived “Special
Agreement Tour Contract” (a.k.a. Special Agreement to Be Paid Shit) with a
minimum weekly salary of $575. That sounds like music to my ears. Come on along
and listen to, the Lulla-bye-bye of Your Dignity. It might seem like a lot of
money if you only make $30 at the dairy – but the
42
^nd
Street
tour was playing first-rate cities, including a sit-down at the
Ahmanson in Los Angeles, while the exact same production continued to run on
Broadway, where the cast made over twice the amount. But – hey! At least
the tour was union!