Tech Tales

the ghost never appears physically

ghost scenes take place in complete darkness, lit only by the guards’ flashlights

rosencrantz and guildenstern’s first entrance involves a tango choreographed to beyoncé’s “crazy in love”

other transition music includes “applause” by lady gaga, “loveless” by lorde, “only angel” by harry styles, and “a little party never killed nobody”

gertrude is either drunk or hungover for the entire play

when polonius encounters hamlet to find the cause of his madness, hamlet is reading a copy of “infinite jest”

rosencrantz and guildenstern try to seduce hamlet into a threesome

they also try to seduce claudius

at intermission laertes goes onstage to practice his swordplay and flirt with the audience members in french. osric watches him from behind the curtain and takes notes

the pirates who deliver letters to horatio are dressed in trench coats, sunglasses, and fedoras

fortinbras is a thirteen-year-old boy

and finally:

theater kids ♥️ A shout out to

As promised, here is a master list of online stores and coaching opportunities that some of the Broadway peeps (from performers to wardrobe to crew members!) have started up during the industry shutdown. The company members below have worked on shows including by not limited to (because it would end up longer than the link list >.<): Hamilton, Aladdin, Great Comet, The Prom, Moulin Rouge, Frozen, Mrs. Doubtfire, Lion King, A Chorus Line, West Side Story, and more!

There are a TON more out there, I gathered all the links from people who responded to my posts and I’ll continue to update as I find out more. Some of these are incredible once in a lifetime opportunities from talent af people who generally never have this kind of time between rehearsals and shows and everything in between. 

Broadway Undressed: Virtual Classes/Q&A’s where the industry’s top dressers and wardrobe supervisors gather to tell you all about everything wardrobe and Broadway costumes you ever wanted to know. (Wardrobe)

Acting Through Song with Ricky Rojas: One-on-one Zoom coaching sessions with actor Ricky Rojas who plays Santiago in Moulin Rouge.

DynamixWorks: Dynamix Works is a 2-day Pop-Up Workshop where you’ll interact with Broadway Performers and Artists straight from the Entertainment Industry.​ It’s curated in a focused environment full of learning, training, and feedback to motivate and empower each dancer to be their best self. 

Semiferal Kitty Life: A webcomic about Tiger and a Colony of ferals and their adventures in the back alley by Kelley Selznick (Wardrobe).

Molly Walz Designs: Facemasks from a wonderful dresser friend of mine!

Lauryn Ciardullo: Acting, singing and movement Classes with Princess Jasmine Cover and Aladdin Super Swing triple threat extraordinaire.

Lily Archer Creative: Cosplay and Costume Commissions (Crew)

AV Threads Sewing: Broadway themed Christmas ornaments from Amanda Valtin (Costume Shop)

Not So Starving Artist: Certified wellness and nutrition consulting from Mel Cabey (Wardrobe)

The Kitchen Chemists: Organic small batch topicals created by Jackie Arnold (Moulin Rouge, Lady M) and her wife Shannon.

Benji Rivera Photography: Fantastic photography by an absolutely fantastic performer!

For friends and acquaintances outside of Broadway looking in, I want to try to individualize what’s happening to people in our industry, rather than just this giant doom umbrella of headlines that read “Broadway Shutdown Until June 2021" 

 One of the most important things you need to understand is that we’ve only managed to create a livelihood out of doing something that is exciting that we love through a constant hustle. 

 Just because there are stagelights and sequins doesn’t mean we didn’t work our asses off every single week of every single year. Vacation too? Oh yes. If I didn’t have scheduled work to come back to I’d tell them when my plane was landing and that I could in fact come in to cover that evening show if an emergency came up (and it has). I’d text them again on the last day, letting them know. Not just one boss, ALL of them (and that list gets very long very fast). Because the full time job on top of the full time job is making sure you’re on the list of people who are hiring. It’s hard to relax on vacation when you’re convinced you’ll never work again since no one has booked you for anything yet. 

 Now comes the actual work. We. Don’t. Stop. 

 On the backstage side of things, “making it” in the industry is getting steady offers of calls to work and cobbling together enough of those to create a financially viable week, as opposed to cold calling supervisors and heads and introducing yourself, hoping you’ll get a call back or that a coworker might be able to ease the process by putting in a good word on the other show they’re working on. 

Sometimes you’re “guaranteed” (nothing’s ever a guarantee in this industry, the quotes are important here) 8 shows a week on a show that’s up and running and you calculate how much more work you need to take on to meet additional expenses in your life. Maybe it’s the electric bill, maybe your child needs braces. So performers, stagehands and wardrobe alike tack on to their already packed schedules to make extra money. They teach classes, do concerts, workshop new shows. We take on daywork calls on top of daywork calls. We load in new shows, we load out old shows, we take on work at TV studios that start at 3am and end at 11am, then walk a few blocks over to start a 5 hour prep call, take a dinner break then head to our show preset at 5:30 depending on the day of the week (I want to tell you this is hyperbole, but it’s not, nor was it the only time that ever happened). Most of the time I ate in 15-20 minutes so I could nap for the rest of the break. 

Working back to back calls with breaks scattered in between is par for the course for the majority of us. Full-time work is actually a rarity, and very little of is actually guaranteed. Maybe you do have 8 shows you can work on every week, but you never knew how long your show was going to run. Some were more of a sure thing than others, but we spent a lot of time fretting about what the numbers meant for the longevity of a production. Sometimes you wanted to take it easy but you knew one of your shows might close so you had to work more to have money in the bank for when that work dried up. 

What I want is what the rest of the Broadway industry wants- empathy and understanding. Broadway is big and beautiful and fun and sparkly and without context, there are many people outside of the industry who think we’re getting paid to put on a fun show, that because we were #livingthedream, the dream didn’t sometimes suck when we’re working 70 hour weeks and running on 4 hours of sleep every night. We chose it, but we didn’t choose it because it was easy. 

Understand that hundreds and thousands of people in the industry were doing the exact same thing, working too damn much and too damn hard- always preparing for any rainy days ahead. 

We as individuals all did everything we possibly could. We had back up plans that had back up plans to make sure we had some source of income when one dried up and I am just so tired of hearing sentences that begin with “but why didn’t you just-“ 

Call your Senators, we NEED our jobs to exist again. 

Wear a mask. 

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