by Anne-Marie Pietersma. @woah_annemarie_just.
Ready for a little theatre history fun?!
It’s March 2020 in New York City and you, a patron of the theatre, perhaps even a performer, probably have a ticket for Company on Broadway. At this pivotal point in theatrical history, you probably thought you were gonna get to see Patti Lupone sing “The Ladies Who Lunch”.
A consortium of dramaturgical experts were able to agree that during this time, if you are a performer, you probably stood in your shower envisioning yourself as every other-gendered lead that you could reinvent.
You probably wondered, and preemptively got anxious about the possibility of your phone ringing in the theatre despite you checking multiple times to confirm it was off- and Patti LuPone yelling at you. Would it make you an outcast - or a star? And how would you HANDLE IT?
When the show was postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic, you probably thought your rescheduled tickets for September 2020 were “a sure thing” since it seemed “so far away.”
“Not to worry, the theatre will come back, it’s just an intermission,” said SUNY White Plains theatre professor Roosevelt Bailey before sobbing into his feline companion, Cat-rina Lenk.
“Patti is no Elaine Stritch, but I got these tickets for free, so…” said Estelle Cobb, a former Upper East Side philanthropist turned Upper East Side woman who’s just pissed.
Primary documents are inconclusive, but projections show you probably have your tickets re-re-rescheduled for September 2021.
Or not - because much like your sense of purpose, your finances have run away and hidden themselves, leaving you in an infuriating, confusing scavenger hunt to panic run-through blindfolded.