Well that was fun. 30 minutes before Friday night's short play festival call time and actor Doug texts me to tell me he has been arrested. And get this - just for walking his bicycle through the subway station emergency door without paying for a ticket.
Clearly the police slow-down is well over. I sure miss it.
I went through the emergency door myself once (although I had a monthly pass in my pocket) and I got a fine - a $100 fine, which wasn't pleasant but since when are cops arresting people for stiffing the MTA a whole two-fifty?
They finally released him at 10PM but this whole thing was just a ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money.
Luckily the folks at the festival were able to scrounge up a substitute actor on short notice, and he was miraculously almost off book by the time our show was up. His name is Steve but I didn't catch his last name - I need to thank him for his good work. I paid him too, of course.
And I did sit through the other three plays again. The first two plays had some fairly substantial blocking adjustments since Thursday night - especially the second play, where the female actor dropped the bit where she mimes fellatio with the male actor, who is supposed to be gay. That cut a whole 15 seconds off the run time - which was still close to 30 minutes. Not counting striking the excessive set.
The playwright sat in the row in front of me so she didn't see me banging my head against the wall.
And I can't believe I missed another piece of furniture in that set - a table, in addition to the two chairs, a sofa, two blocks to represent a coffee table, a room divide and a cart full of crap. WTF were they thinking?
Only two more performances to go. Oy.
