The fre at Flea, a year ago tonight.
Photo: Hunter Canning
Everyone has one last show.
Mine was The fre on the flea. The Flea Theater was only open a few days longer than Broadway, so when my show in the residential neighborhood was canceled, I switched my tickets to downtown production, reducing my fears to the point that I could almost ignore them. THE Fre – a fable by Taylor Mac about the costs of escaping a homophobic and anti-art past – took place in a ball pit. I look at the e-mails I sent to the theater that day, in which I asked stridently, “Can I sit on a chair instead of in the stall?” and I am delighted to have thought that, in some way, I was controlling my risk. I didn’t use a mask; I remember trying to open the bathroom door without using my hands. I spent a large part of the show watching an audience member, an Obie Prize winner for his lifelong support for the theater, which was delightfully reclined between the balls. Its gray head occasionally disappeared beneath the surface.
The conversations I had around the birthday were often of the “little I knew” type. Little did I know that night, for example, that I would go to Manhattan only three times in the next 365 days. Little did I know that I didn’t need to worry about the balls as much as I needed to avoid the person sitting behind me. So, on second thought, the pandemic has been a period when many things like “I didn’t know” publicly, including (but hardly limited to) the problematic ethics of the industry and the intense vulnerability of those who live on it. Take the flea. Since The fre, the place staggered under successive waves of crisis: layoffs, leave, a company-wide call for labor and racial justice, the departure of the longtime managing director (and main target of the baseline calculation), a crack in the board more layoffs (from unpaid people this time), silence. I knew a little bit about the problems there before the shutdown, but really … little did I know.
Yesterday, the theater had a little party for you in Father Duffy Square – the north end of Times Square – where the big red steps of TKTS lead to the excitement. For the first time, despite the shutdown, there was some excitement to see. We will be back it was a collaboration between the Times Square Alliance and Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS; it was a USO-style event to gather troops, send a hopeful signal to the neighborhood, and generally get people used to the idea that live entertainment and personally was coming back. It was a standard public event, with speeches “again until the rape” by playwrights, actors and art promoters, interspersed with some musical numbers.
As with many outdoor presentations, lines of sight were impossible. Even standing in the VIP observation area (the steps), I had a hard time seeing the people who were there to cheer us up. There was a forest of cameras; at least the guy over there Live With Kelly and Ryan he seemed to have a good view. Unable to really watch the dancers, at least I was able to reflect on the lyrics for “On Broadway”, which is quite depressing. There was some crowding around the barricades, VIP or not, that made me uneasy, so I ran off to the bottom with some other critics. That movement was happy normal: I ran off to the bottom with those same people at a hundred intervals, a dozen award shows. I would forgotten that, my little tribe, people that I have always taken for granted. I hardly knew.
Friday was beautiful. There was something almost hallucinatory on such a beautiful day to be the stoppage’s anniversary – a warm spring morning makes you feel hopeful, even if you’ve talked to artist after artist who was kicked out of the field. It can be hard to believe some of the ecstatic language we use in the theater, as we are watching so many precious people leave, perhaps forever. And I shudder a little when artists talk about being “essential”. As much as I love the theater, our current use of the word “essential” actually means those we have forced to work on, even when it is clearly dangerous. Grocery stores did not close; theaters yes. I celebrate that our theaters have closed, because it is one of the few ways to protect our people, recognizing that they were not essential. Theater is vital, beautiful, useful, inevitable. Won’t these words do too?
And so, I was able to briefly experience the birthday as a joyful day, not just a marker of 365 dark days. Artists were emerging, bravely, to remind us that thousands of artists are willing to suffer to keep their audience safe. It was also wonderful to see the elders in our community – Chita Rivera, Joel Gray, Brian Stokes Mitchell, André De Shields – doing what they have always done. As they did for a million years combined, they appeared and expressed their deep love for the form. I bless all the gray hair on their heads. (Rivera, the 88-year-old star, has no gray hair, so I bless her elegant blue jacket.) De Shields didn’t just speak; he also sang – with full backup chorus on face shields – “Magic to Do” by Pippin. He is unstoppable. When we look at the damage the pandemic has done to artists, we will see how it has treated each generation differently: young people have had their training interrupted and mid-career artists have seen their hard-won gains evaporate. But our elders survived. De Shields said, as he approached the microphone: “The first Broadway show will be starring André De Shields and Chita Rivera!” He was playing. But critics turned to each other, deep down. This was exactly what the theater needed. Little did we know.