#1
Posted: 6/12/14 at 9:28am
Interesting story here:
As a teenager in 1975, Deborah McIntyre found work as an usher in those stately Broadway theaters: the Barrymore, the Longacre, the Majestic, the Lyceum and the New Amsterdam. It was a backstage world of lush curtains, narrow stairways, tiny dressing rooms and intensely felt make-believe.
........
Of late, she worked as an usher for “A Raisin in the Sun,” with Denzel Washington, at the Barrymore. So it was that she heard that President Obama and his wife were coming to see the play, on Friday, April 11.
Ms. McIntyre is African-American, which was rare for ushers when she started out. To see Barack and Michelle, watching a black cast led by Denzel? As she puts it: “Oh. My. God.”
She was not scheduled to work on that Friday night, but she went to the theater because she wanted to see the president. She arrived at the gold and glass doors of the Barrymore about 5:30 p.m. Already, the Secret Service was in place. Ms. McIntyre saw the house manager, and she says he confirmed that she worked there. Security let her in.
Ms. McIntyre went downstairs to the staff dining space to sip soup and wait for the play to start.
She stood in the mezzanine that night, nearly vibrating. At the curtain call, the camera flashes flickered like crazed fireflies. She felt tears.
On the way out, she saw the apprentice manager. Did you work, she asked? No, Ms. McIntyre said she replied, “I was just here to help out.”
........
She ended up talking to a vice president for Shubert. You didn’t have a ticket and you breached security, he told her. What gives you this right? We’re going to have to terminate you.
“Terminate me?” Her voice hiked up, as she recalled it. “Nothing happened!”
Security officers escorted her to clean out her locker. Shubert runs more than a dozen theaters, and she was banned from all of them. (She can work elsewhere.) Ticket offices even taped up photographs of her, as if she were a wanted criminal.
According to the article, she's retained a lawyer and is fighting her termination and banning. Some people are suggesting that the punishment is too harsh, but what do you expect when the President and First Lady are involved? What do you all think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/nyregion/security-and-enthusiasm-clash-in-theater-of-the-absurd.html?ref=theater
As a teenager in 1975, Deborah McIntyre found work as an usher in those stately Broadway theaters: the Barrymore, the Longacre, the Majestic, the Lyceum and the New Amsterdam. It was a backstage world of lush curtains, narrow stairways, tiny dressing rooms and intensely felt make-believe.
........
Of late, she worked as an usher for “A Raisin in the Sun,” with Denzel Washington, at the Barrymore. So it was that she heard that President Obama and his wife were coming to see the play, on Friday, April 11.
Ms. McIntyre is African-American, which was rare for ushers when she started out. To see Barack and Michelle, watching a black cast led by Denzel? As she puts it: “Oh. My. God.”
She was not scheduled to work on that Friday night, but she went to the theater because she wanted to see the president. She arrived at the gold and glass doors of the Barrymore about 5:30 p.m. Already, the Secret Service was in place. Ms. McIntyre saw the house manager, and she says he confirmed that she worked there. Security let her in.
Ms. McIntyre went downstairs to the staff dining space to sip soup and wait for the play to start.
She stood in the mezzanine that night, nearly vibrating. At the curtain call, the camera flashes flickered like crazed fireflies. She felt tears.
On the way out, she saw the apprentice manager. Did you work, she asked? No, Ms. McIntyre said she replied, “I was just here to help out.”
........
She ended up talking to a vice president for Shubert. You didn’t have a ticket and you breached security, he told her. What gives you this right? We’re going to have to terminate you.
“Terminate me?” Her voice hiked up, as she recalled it. “Nothing happened!”
Security officers escorted her to clean out her locker. Shubert runs more than a dozen theaters, and she was banned from all of them. (She can work elsewhere.) Ticket offices even taped up photographs of her, as if she were a wanted criminal.
According to the article, she's retained a lawyer and is fighting her termination and banning. Some people are suggesting that the punishment is too harsh, but what do you expect when the President and First Lady are involved? What do you all think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/nyregion/security-and-enthusiasm-clash-in-theater-of-the-absurd.html?ref=theater
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 6/12/14 at 09:28 AM
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