We attended 310 plays in 2023!
310! How is that even possible? It’s an awesome number, to be sure, but it falls just shy of our record mark of 317 in 2019. And by we, I mean my partner, Chris Foster and I. 317 plays and musicals in 2019 and 310 in 2023. Verifiable proof that theatre-going has not returned to its pre-Covid levels. Of course, Chris and I did not have Harbinger in 2019, the theatre company we co-founded in the pandemic in 2021 which produced four smash hits in ‘23 that has also kept us very busy this year.
I’m a little bit embarrassed when people at a theatre ask throughout the year what number show we’re on. One, because I really don’t know. I just counted this year’s on Saturday night, 12/30. And two, because I feel the question is treating the number of how many shows we see as rather odd when it is so ingrained in my life. I know what show I’m going to see before I know what’s for dinner, but sometimes I don’t know what to say when someone asks “What number are you on?”
I suppose I fell in love with theatre as a way of life, as a means of existing in the world, as a culture by reading the newspaper. My oldest brother, Mike, had a job at Village Pharmacy and he would bring home the Sunday New York Times, and I would pore over the “Arts & Leisure” section as a newly minted teenager and read Walter Kerr, Frank Rich and dream about the world that Al Hirschfeld presented. It would be many years before I was a regular theatre audience member but I primed my pump reading thousands of reviews before I could see my first Peter Brook, Mike Nichols, or Steppenwolf production.
In so many ways, I feel like I’m living the life I’ve always aspired to-I act, I teach, I direct, I review, I vlog and first and foremost I attend. We are lucky to live in the Capital Region and can attend 310 shows this year. We visited many theaters for the first time-Trinity Rep, Paper Mill Playhouse, The Spiegeltent & The Globe among many others in London. We made numbers racking trips to London, Stratford, Ontario, Niagara on the Lake & Provincetown. In the Northeast, we made a dozen trips to New York (many with family) and we also made many trips to Hartford, New Haven, Milford, Catskill, Harriman, Springfield not to mention the beloved Berkshires. Locally, we are STILL discovering new groups to support like Glens Falls & Schuylerville Community Theatre and Hudson River Shakespeare Company.
Our personal connection to attending makes us the new Statler & Waldorf we were touched to learn as Don Mealy pointed out to us in a note after Joe Fava’s passing. There were the fantastic opportunities to support and attend my former student Josh Romeo’s self-produced shows in Manhattan. Speaking of counting, Josh used to tell me at our lessons that he had a goal to perform in 50 shows before leaving the Capital Region for college. He made it. I also have the indelible memory of Liam Pickett coaching his Footloose campers on how to bow in their curtain call when I visited his final dress rehearsal of his perfectly cast “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Liam tragically passed away of a burst aortic artery at 31 this past December.
Life is theatre and theatre is life. Counting gives purpose and meaning whether you’re counting days, years or plays. In the Capital Region where your audience is your colleagues, the more you attend, the better the art can be because it will be financially supported by your friend’s attendance.
Attending works of art with a community that ask you to engage with it openly and humanely feels like a civic duty when there are those who are still hot to censor and others who won’t come back to a theatre for health concerns. I must attend as often as I can to make up for the 16.8% who haven’t come back. Of course, you could just say there are too many plays and too little time. I mean, there’s a new Jez Butterworth play opening in January.
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