Free On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway by Randy Anderson

uncomfortable.
    “ Are you OK?” I asked. “You seem nervous.”
    “ I am! This is your big debut! Aren’t you nervous?”
    “ Are you kidding me? I’m freaking out! But it’s gonna be good, so I’m excited, too. I hope you like it.”
    I hadn’t shared any of the play with him. He only knew what it was about, nothing more. He’d asked me, on several occasions, to include him in the writing process, but I didn’t allow it. Like the adage, “don’t shit where you eat,” mine was, “don’t create where you copulate.”
    “ I was going to bring you flowers,” he said, “but I thought you wouldn’t like to have to carry them around all night.”
    He was terribly wrong and even more wrong for saying that. I think it was because he didn’t want to carry them around all night. I suppose a boy giving another boy flowers is still somehow awkward in our society, but I love flowers and wished I had some for my opening night.
    “ Don’t worry about it. And stop being nervous. It’s out of our hands. Let the actors be nervous.” I sent him upstairs to join his friends.
    “ We’re at five!” shouted Lolly from upstairs. “Hi, C.J.!”
    I didn’t see her greet my boyfriend, but I knew it was our stage manager.
     
    Finding technical staff was far more difficult than I first thought. Luckily, the four moveable lights in the Red Room reduced our lighting design from a “job” to a “favor,” which Big Rob gladly granted. But I was hard-pressed to find a stage manager, the cornerstone position for any production. My several attempts to bring in an experienced stage manager at a salary of zero brought me no takers. Nor did any friends volunteer, so I recruited a friend of a friend, who had no idea what the job entailed. Thankfully, the flawed idea that a warm body was better than no body would never be tested. Lolly arrived just in time.
    One week before the show, as we began technical rehearsals, I was gleefully burning the candle at both ends. My schedule included nine hours at Blah-Blah Big Bank, four hours in rehearsal, and three hours at the bar. I certainly could have cut those days shorter by skipping the bar, but that was actually the most productive part of my day. A great deal of business would happen in those dark-wooden dens. Talking through issues with the show, drumming up an audience, brainstorming future projects, or simply blowing off steam all happened in the magical hours just before and after midnight. But even at 24 years young, this schedule exhausted me.
    As the rest of the group made their transition to performers, I recognized I was going to be left in the house without a stage manager. Thankfully, three days before opening, Lolly walked through the door.
    “ What the fuck, dudes?” shouted the tall radiant woman in no particular direction. “Let’s make some theater!”
    “ Lolly!” I exclaimed, leaping out of my chair.
    “ Oh, there you are. I heard you were putting on a show. Let’s make some theater! What do you need?”
    Lolly was a good friend of mine from college. A fantastic actress with an offbeat artistic sensibility, she was easily the wildest, most adventurous redhead I knew. She had just moved to the city after spending the last three years in a graduate acting program in the middle of nowhere America.
    “ I’m afraid the show is cast already,” I said. “Too bad you didn’t graduate a month ago.”
    “ No shit. Seriously, what do you need? I don’t care what you have me do. I’ll do anything. I just wanna work.”
    So, I relieved the petrified friend of a friend behind the light board, and Lolly got to work.
     
    “ Randy, close down the box, get the fuck up here, and let’s do a show!” Lolly shouted down over the noise of the KGB patrons.
    The moment had arrived. I closed the strongbox, put it under my arm, took a breath, and sprinted up the stairs two at a time.
    When I walked into the Red Room Theater, it evoked a whole different energy from when I