Thank You, Mr. Sondheim
It was a really long workday today. My nose was stuck in emails, spreadsheets, and schedules. I took a small break to walk over to the hospital and just work from the Chief Residents’ office. Just having another person to share a space with was lovely after a full morning of an empty post-Thanksgiving office.
After the last schedule was sent I gathered my things and started making my way out. The 17-floor elevator ride down was long, as it usually is. Picture that scene from “Elf” where Will Ferrell’s character hits all the buttons of the Empire State Bldg’s elevator. Seeing I lucked out with stops on many of the floors, I did a quick check of social media, something I don’t do quite as much lately, and saw a number of posts about Sondheim. My curiosity peaked, but the blast of frigid air shocked me into the non-cellphone present as I walked through the main door. It had started snowing. The wind was strong and flipped my umbrella inside out. After a few texts to Adam, I started making my way to the train station. But, something in the air felt different and familiar at the same time.
I got to the train station and pulled out my phone again and that’s when I saw it. Musical legend Stephen Sondheim had passed away. I put my phone down, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. Oof. My heart. I looked back at my phone and continued scrolling, reading the heartfelt words from my former theater colleagues and current friends, many of whom I wouldn’t have met had it not been for Sondheim. My focus shifted from the heartfelt words to the heartfelt friends and slowly I was transported to a time in my life when the theater was my entire world and a moment in time when Sondheim’s music opened up my heart and circle of friends.
Back in, well, a long long time ago in a lifetime far far away, I was a freelance stage manager in Northern California. One of my favorite genres to stage manage was the musical and I had sort of become the summer musical stage manager for City Lights Theater, a small, but incredibly mighty theater company that took a chance on a young stage manager (me). You really should check out their page (and I highly encourage a donation!)
We were known for making magic with very few resources and a heap of talent. They still do this and have only honed in on that magic and talent over the years, creating some incredibly inspiring works. I mean, these people I worked with were (and are) INCREDIBLE. This particular summer, I was stage managing Sondheim’s Assassins. Now, Sondheim’s music is HARD. I don’t read music but have been around it enough to where I can pick things up by ear, but this show challenged me in a whole new way. Standard musicals have a pattern to them. I like figuring out patterns and once I figure out the pattern to a show I’m running, finding that sweet spot of hearing the lyrics, feeling the swell of the music, and calling that cue at the right moment is an incredibly fun process and an experience like no other. From the dimly lit booth, I can see the silhouettes of audience members reacting to that moment and it’s just magical to be a part of.
With Sondheim though, finding this magic from the booth was harder. His rhythms and time signatures were complex, unlike anything I had encountered before. Bruce Weber’s article in the New York Times describes Sondheim’s music by saying, “He wrote speechifying soliloquies, conversational duets and chattery trios and quartets. He exploited time signatures and forms; for “Night Music,” he wrote a waltz, two sarabandes, two mazurkas, a polonaise, an étude and a gigue — nearly an entire score written in permutations of triple time.” I would arrive at the theater well before my own call time (arrival time) and clap out the cues, like a child sounding out words when they’re first learning how to read. Like Debbie Reynolds’ character in Fame (totally dated myself there), I’d snap at myself, “AGAIN!” regardless of whether I hit out the cue correctly or not. I sat with the musical director and we’d “ta-ta-ta-TA!” it out. I’d sit with the director and talk through the cues every chance I got. I’d talk through the counts of the light cues with the light designer, trying to figure out how to do this beautiful design justice. I’d go home, count, study, count again.
That show. Oh, that show. We added elements of video/projections in this beautiful space that once was a repair shop (if memory serves me right). I remember there was this one cue we had to time just right, with a poor crew member uncomfortably sitting atop a tall ladder. I had to call the cue way in advance and they’d basically play telephone since the headset didn’t reach the crew member in charge of what needed to happen. They had to make sure the cue landed in the right spot and they did. Every time (Kimmie, this was you, wasn’t it?). Sometimes it was comical how we made things happen, but when it happened, boy did it happen just right.
That show, oh that show. I met so many wonderful artists during that show. These performers acted and sang their hearts out, nailing it every single time. Ron was this when we met? I think it was when we struck the show (meaning, we took things apart and cleared the stage, for you non-theater folk) that my life-long friendship with Ron Gasparinetti began. I met his husband, with whom I still banter by exchanging, “You had me at, are you going to finish that? You had me at, oh wow aren’t we brave with our wardrobe choices?” And we have, ever since we met, always posed with props. Kimmie, my sweet, sweet Kimmie — just a high school student then, working for the summer crewing on that show and a number more together — saving my sleep-deprived body with a Starbucks delivery at her call time (I’ll NEVER EVER forget that). Now she’s an amazing director and an even more amazing mom to her beautiful child. And Jess. While her life took a different path, that show and the subsequent ones we worked on together, will always hold a special space in my heart. Wherever you are, love, I just pray you’re safe. Please know you’re loved. And there’s my wonderful friend, E. Dale Smith-Gallo, a teacher by day and amazing performer at the bell ring with the day’s end, whose voice would make time stop. He still teaches, though now on the East Coast, and is an accomplished playwright himself! Check out his works! There are so many more actors and friends who made up this cast & crew, who are still in my life and I love dearly. (I do apologize for not including everyone in this post. It’s past midnight on the East Coast, I’m battling a migraine, and my brain is a little jumbled. But it’s never for lack of love).
It was a wonderful show, one that challenged me and helped me grow as an artist, as a stage manager, and as a human being. Stephen Sondheim helped me see more about myself than I had before and how much more I was than the voices of my past that had haunted me. I met his challenging score and supported the beautiful talent on stage with its accompanying imagery.
Tonight I mourn the loss of this artistic giant who helped shape me into who I am today; who made my theater family bigger and my heart richer for it; who helped me see the beauty in the non-pattern, pattern. So tonight, I raise my bottle of ibuprofen (times have changed, friends. Times have changed) and toast my theater life and the wonderful people who made that the most incredible experience, people I’m lucky to still call family, and to you Mr. Sondheim for giving me this moment in time. “Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”
Rest in musical power, Mr. Sondheim.
[End Scene]
“Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration”
