I’ve come to New York to production manage a new play by an old friend. We have history, Yehuda Hyman and I – we met back in the days of the S.T.A.G.E. benefits, when he was choreographing and still named Larry. In 1987, we worked on a brand new musical revue called Blame It On The Movies, the book written by Billy Barnes, the music a compendium of movie music from over the decades with musical direction and arrangements by Ron Abel. It was directed by another dear friend, David Galligan, and produced by Catalina Productions, Frank Levy and Gregory Harrison at the Coast Playhouse, a small non-equity theater on Santa Monica Blvd. near Sweetzer. I was about twenty-seven at the time, recently having moved to Los Angeles on the coattails of my actor husband, James Greene, and we lived in a rental house in Tarzana, where we experienced our first LA earthquake and adopted our third cat. I loved the trio of creatives on Blame It On The Movies. The cast was headed up by Barbara Sharma, playing a quirky usherette in a movie theater. The rest of the cast moved around the stage in adapted movie theater seats with casters and much of the choreography was physically willing the chairs into configurations to allow seated kicklines, etc. As the stage management team, Ando Iovino and I went through a lot of spike tape, and I remember learning most of the choreography by standing in the front of the house and mimicking the actors. I had to put several folks into the show as it ran for months at the Coast Playhouse. The cast grew close. It was great fun. Our original cast included: Bill Hutton, Christine Kellogg, Michelle Nicastro, Anne Marie Runolfsson, David Ruprecht, Barbara Sharma, Timothy Smith, and Patty Tiffany.

Not too long after we closed, BIOTM was invited to come to Burt Reynold’s Jupiter Theater for an off-off Broadway try out and then to the Criterion Center in New York City. I didn’t have my AEA card at that point and Frank Levy and his producing partner in New York, Roger Berlind, were looking for a more experienced stage manager to bring the show into New York. But Larry (Yehuda now) and David and Ron apparently told Frank that they needed me to go with the show because no one but I could do it – how satisfying that was to hear. They told me they refused to go unless I was hired as the Stage Manager. (I think that’s a little apocryphal as Equity origin stories go). And voilà, I suddenly had my first AEA contract, and was an Equity stage manager. We had a ball in Florida, swimming at night in the water just near where our condos were. The theater was a dinner theater, and I’ll never forget that smell of the black rubber mats in the runways between the kitchen and the dining area. Also legend in my mind was the night that Burt Reynolds came backstage with a very squiffed Maureen Stapleton, whom I knew from the upper west side of NY where Jimmie and I resided. Burt was being very generous and shaking hands with the entire cast, while Maureen was saying grossly inappropriate things like “Let’s go f*%k in the dressing room, Burt!” It was pretty heady for a starting out stage manager.

Cut to 40 years later, and this summer, my phone rang and Larry’s, now Yehuda’s name came up on the phone.

Hey, Els, do you know anyone in New York who would like to production manage my new show, Dancing Into Roses?

It didn’t take long for me to determine that the dates would work for me and I knew we would have a good time working together again. And so I said, “If you can deal with my working for the next while from Los Angeles, that would be me.” And so I worked remotely, from the end of August until October 17, when I flew to New York and immersed myself into the world of Dancing Into Roses. The director, Leo Egger of Eno River Players has done a deft job of guiding Yehuda to tell his story. The stage manager, Sari Klainberg is a dream, and the young designers are all incredibly talented and professional. Madeleine Rubin-Charlesworth, Production Designer, Lauren Lee, Lighting Designer, Gabe Whitnack Sound Designer, and Karen Boyer, Costume Designer. Special thanks, too to Chris Daly, our wonderful ASM and Alex Anderson of Reentry Theater of Harlem for our security. The cover photo of our Dancing Into Roses company after our final dress is below, by the amazing photographer Basil Rodericks.

We have been working tirelessly this week, and it has been terrific to see the artistic integrity of our creative team at work grinding, sewing, listenin, building cues and scenery and costumes to support this rich story of Yehuda’s. All the scenic materials were gathered at Materials for the Arts and worked into the rich fabric backdrops for Yehuda’s work. Here are some shots of our tech process.

Today we opened the play to an attentive audience, including David Galligan and Ando Iovino, who traveled down from Connecticut with their friend Rufus driving. And promptly sat in the center of the front row. I told Ando she had to report when Yehuda clocked David’s sitting there. It was early on, I think.

Yehuda doesn’t want to know when you are coming to see the show. He wants you to come of course, but I am forbidden to share who is there when. State secrets.

After the show came down, we went next door to the excellent Scandinavian restaurant which abuts the theater. Yehuda came over (he had lots of friends there today) and we were able to catch up a little bit before David and Ando and Rufus returned to Connecticut.

Other folks in the house today – Bob and Sally Edgar, my incredibly indulgent hosts for this foray to New York. I am forever grateful to them.

If you’re in NY, I’d love to see you sometime in the next week in Brooklyn. JACK arts is a beautiful space and they have been so supportive of our process. And, in my opinion, Dancing Into Roses is a little bit of theatrical magic.

We have seven more shows and you can see the schedule here on the JACK website, or here on the Mystical Feet Company website.