Read Online Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle by Denise Reich - Free Book Online

in the Bronx and took an express bus to the theater, there was another lovely perk: I went against rush hour traffic. There were perhaps twenty people on board the bus with me. I’d occasionally see buses heading in the opposite direction as I looked out the window; they were invariably standing room only down to the front doors.
    Since Broadway people work later into the night they also tend to sleep later in the morning unless they have a second job. When I was in college I got up at six because I had early morning classes, but I was always in such a state of fatigue that I frequently nodded off at school. Later, I was able to sleep until nine. That might sound lazy to anyone who is accustomed to already being at work at that hour, but it just gave me the eight hours of recommended rest.
    It can be exceptionally hard for night shift workers to relate to those on traditional schedules. They tend to think you’re lazy when you tell them that you sleep later, for instance. What they forget is that evening workers are just starting out when the nine-to-five sorts are finishing up for the day.
    I recall an incident when I was trying to get a doctor’s appointment at a local community clinic. I was in the throes of one of my respiratory infections, I was coughing up phlegm and I was so exhausted that I could barely stand upright. The center did take walk-in patients, but you had to be there at eight in the morning, when the doors opened, to get a spot. The line for walk-ins started at six. Since the clinic was a low-income facility that worked on a sliding scale, and it also happened to be clean, bright and well staffed, it was very popular with uninsured and underinsured people on the West Side.
    I tried to explain to the nurse on duty that I was ill and needed to see a doctor. When the walk-in system was mentioned, I told her that it was almost impossible to get there so early in the morning, since I worked nights. She sized me up, shook her head, and told me in a patronizing voice, “Well, just try to get up earlier, okay?” It was clear that she didn’t get it, and that she thought I was just a lazy ass who didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.
    The other negative to night and weekend work, and it is a large one, is that you have to take time off if you ever have any desire to engage in activities that other adults enjoy. Concerts? Parades? Workshops? Fuggedaboutit. And friends? Good luck. If you have friends who work on traditional nine-to-five schedules, you can forget about seeing them. They’re working when you’re home; you’re home when they’re working. On the holidays when they have time off you’ll be doing extra performances. It takes effort to maintain friendships in such circumstances.
    However, it is entirely doable. I’m a firm believer that we make the time to see those who are important to us, regardless of what else is going on. For years my interactions with my best friend were largely sandwiched between shows on Saturdays. She worked a conventional schedule so we couldn’t see each other during the week. When I was over at Phantom I had Sundays off, but she went to church activities all day long. However, she loved Broadway, so she frequently came into the city on Saturdays to see shows. If I had an early shift at the Saturday matinee, we’d meet up, spend four hours hanging out together, and then head back to the Theater District. We became masters at finding fun things to do in the city that did not take us too far from Broadway. We even saw the sights like tourists; there were trips to MoMA, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. In the evening she’d go to her Broadway theater to see the show she’d chosen; I’d go to mine, to work.
    This tactic worked out well with other people, too; we met for lunch between shows on matinee days. I had a handful of friends who were night owls like me; they sometimes met me at the theater at ten or