2:25 p.m. - 2008-11-10
Conundrum
The Overture Center was designed and built by geniuses. It cost two hundred million dollars, but rather than spend part of that money soundproofing the various music halls, they spent most of it on marble floors. Expensive, fragile marble floors that are in constant danger of being cracked by footsteps. The seats in the main hall are ample and comfortable, designed as they were for today's ample Wisconsinite. Backstage, in contrast, is a dreary place with nary a comfortable seat to be found. The "green room" resembles nothing so much as the break room at a Wal-Mart. There are also a couple of fluorescent-lit dressing rooms, a laundry room and a wig room.
For some reason, I tend to gravitate toward the wig room during orchestra down time. It's always uninhabited and has the beauty parlor chairs that bend way back. Usually I hang around in there and read. Recently I had a brief meeting in the wig room with one of the other percussion guys to go over parts. (I realize this reads like a gay sex euphemism but we were actually just talking about percussion parts. In the wig room.) We spent a couple minutes chatting and left the wig room. Right outside the wig room door stood the main backstage guy. He had come to the wig room to yell at us.
"You can't be talking in there!" he exclaimed. "There's conduit running through that room up to the stage. Everything you're saying can be heard backstage!"
At this point it should be noted that the wig room is an enclosed, windowless space on the floor BELOW the floor the stage is on. Intuitively, one would not expect that normal speaking voices would carry outside the room to the stage. But that's the genius of the Overture Center! They constructed it in such a way that you can hear everything everywhere! The other percussionist and I were thoroughly flummoxed. The backstage guy, having delivered his tirade, went back to whatever it is he does.
What the fuck do the backstage guys do, anyway? They like to stand around looking really surly and I think they're in a union. They seem to spend a lot of time concocting arbitrary rules, rules known only to themselves, then laying in wait for someone to violate one of the rules, at which time they spring into action, or rather a union-guy-like APPROXIMATION of action. That is to say, scolding. No talking in the wig room! No leaning stuff on the wall! No opening the big door after someone's closed it! No touching the pristine floors! No gum! No white shoes after Labor Day!
There has to be some quality or other I possess that provokes the ire of petty authority figures. They look at me and peg me as a troublemaker, a nogoodnik who threatens the very order that they've barely ever lifted a finger to maintain. That or they really do have nothing better to do than bother people. Whatever, if the head backstage guy wants to make me the focus of his inane chiding, I say: Bring it! I'm as lazy as you are, Backstage Guy, and I too have way too much time on my hands, so I'll always be backstage, getting on your nerves and breaking your dumb little rules faster than you can make them. If someone's spilling coffee on the floor, I'll be there. If someone's standing in the way of someone who's trying to walk somewhere, I'll be there. If a wall gets scuffed from normal wear and tear, bet your ass I'll be there, Backstage Guy, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Also, this past week in orchestra we had a guest conductor, a tiny, spritely Estonian woman. I felt conflicted. Although it's in my nature to always hate the conductor, I have to confess that I sort of liked this one, possibly due to her perceived commitment and musicality. Or, maybe it's just hard to hate someone when they remind you of an elf.
