and the award goes to

my brother recently accepted a job about which he said: "i would call this a dream job but i didn't know to dream for a job like this."

sometimes you don't know something is a dream until it comes true.

i have often said that theatre is an addiction, not a profession.  i have also said many times that the first thing we all hear in the first class we take is: "if you can be happy doing anything else, do it."  we don't work in this industry because it makes us happy. we work in this industry because we couldn't be happy doing anything else. it's really a sickness. if you have a normal job, if you are happy doing anything else, you should consider yourself lucky.

as a theatre addict, i knew i had to do it - i had to be involved in this business. i first found my way in as an actor when i didn't know there were other options for me. later i found stage management, which i loved and will always consider myself to be a part of (i now say i'm a recovering stage manager. just like an alcoholic, i'll never stop being one, i just don't actively do it anymore). then came marketing and now producing.  i like producing a lot, i think it's one that could stick for a while, particularly at my current company because i adore it.

missing in all of this, though, were your typically awarded categories of theatrical employment (with the possible exception of producing but i've never had a real yen to do that on the broadway level).  i was a terrible actor. i can't draw or design to save myself.  i thought maybe i wanted to be a director at some point but that was a fleeting goal at best.  i've never been particularly compelled to write a play.  i was always much more drawn to the behind the scenes work. being a part of it without being in the spotlight.

what i'm saying is that "attending the tony awards" was not a dream i ever had because i didn't know to dream for it.

(continued after the jump...)

a couple of years ago, the last time the tony's were at radio city, before the beacon move, i got to work the dress rehearsal because one of the alum's of my grad school program worked on them and gave us an opportunity to volunteer.  it was so much fun.  we got to invite people to come with us to watch the rehearsal after our volunteering was done (i held a sign for 2 hours. it was pretty glamorous) and so i brought my brother and one of my best friends and we had a delightful time.  i was all ready to do it the next year but with the move to the beacon, they weren't allowing volunteers anymore at the rehearsal.  with the awards being back in RCMH again, i reached back out to a contact on the inside to see if there would be opportunities to do the rehearsal again.  she unfortunately reported that the broadway league had taken over the ceremony and they didn't control the volunteer opportunities anymore.  which stunk, because i didn't know anymore at the league.

now, as far as i could tell from talking to people last night, most people who were volunteers had some sort of "in" - they knew people who worked at the league or the wing, they had won a raffle or knew someone who was in charge of ticketing.

i was there because i cold-called.

literally.  well, i cold-emailed.

i found an address for the league and sent them an email.  i was fairly certain i'd never hear from them but after a few weeks, i got a response from a very nice person at the league and the rest is history.  there's a lesson in that somewhere.

yesterday was a long day as i had to be there at 4pm and the pre-telecast awards don't even start until 7pm but i made a couple of new friends, so we basically sat and chatted for most of the time before the show started.  for about the first hour, i sat in the back of the orchestra and watched the show.  then i got tapped to take a winner's seat and when she came back, i was relocated to a seat a couple of rows ahead for the rest of the tony's.

throughout the show, i was trying to come up with a way to describe what it was like.  it was not what i expected.  i had expected to be overwhelmed by seeing NPH in person, by sitting across the aisle from sigourney weaver, to have tom hanks walk right past me, etc. to be surrounded by some of the most important and influential people in my industry and just feel completely blown away.  but it wasn't like that at all.

i mean that in the best possible way because the feeling that i had sitting there in that audience was not at all that of being overwhelmed by those people, it was feeling like i was truly a part of them. not because i'm famous or important or significant in any way (i mean, i know my own value but i'm just a very small cog in the machine), but because i knew these people, we all spoke the same language, we were all there for the same goal.  it felt familiar and weirdly intimate.  not that it isn't grand and exciting, but it was also deeply communal.  i don't know why that surprised me so much, seeing as the theatre at it's best is a tight community, but i was really impressed with the true conviviality of the event.

i realize that seat-filling at the tony's is not everyone's cup of tea.  i get that there are many people in this industry (and reading this blog) for whom the whole idea of the tony awards is a waste of time.  but for those of you who, like me, grew up watching the tony awards and still look forward to it yearly with glee, i hope you read this entry not as an "i was there and you weren't," or a laundry list of my favorite moments (though i cannot let this pass without mentioning seeing cyndi lauper perform "true colors" and the fact that you could hear a pin drop in a 6,000 seat auditorium when ms. cicely tyson was speaking), but as my attempt to convey to you a feeling.  a feeling of a dream coming true that i didn't even know how to dream for.