Saturday Night

There is a lounge attached to our theatre. It is a holding station for the audience before they enter the theater. It is a bar, basically, but since they do not have a liquor license they sell cokes, water and various pastries. I get the water I have on stage from that bar each night and this afternoon when I went to get that water there was a couple of patrons in the lounge already waiting for the show. It was a Grandmother and her Grandson, James, who I am guessing was around 12 years old. I said Hi. He was a very polite kid that introduced himself. I showed him the lobby banner that we have with all the pictures of the characters I talk about during the show. I pointed out Art Sieving's picture and the others that I would talk about during the show and told him that when I mentioned these people he should remember what they looked like. He was a great kid and took more than a polite interest in what I was telling him. At the time I thought to myself... I hope the Grandmother knows that I say the F word in the show. It is usually the Grandparents who send me an irritated email after the fact saying that the use of that word was troublesome.

While we were on Broadway the producers had several versions of lapel buttons made for the show. One said, "Find your voice and throw it." Another said, "Help stamp out ventral-phobia." Still another said, "Broadway is for Dummies." One of the racier one's said, "Ventriloquists do it with their mouth shut". Like any printed material the more you buy the cheaper they are. We ended up with lots off the buttons left over after the Broadway run. Recently the Production Manager of the original production found an unopened box of the buttons and sent them to us here in Rochester. We handed them out to the ushers and have used them as special treats to the donors and sponsors of the show. They love them and it is great to have them for give aways.

I was so concerned that I might have offended the Grandmother of James with my language, I decided to give him one of the extra buttons. I felt like the extra attention I gave to him would make up for my language. I quickly grabbed one of the buttons from back stage and put it in my pocket for the curtain call to give it to him. During my curtain call I yelled for James to come to the stage. With great ceremonial purpose I gave him a button and said in front of the cheering crowd... including his Grandmother... "Thanks for coming to my show." The unfortunate circumstance is, I grabbed the first button I could get. It was one of the racy ones that said, "Got Wood?".

Do you still get Karma points for good intentions?
As you were,
Jay