Arts & Humanities,
The door to Broadway, James Panowski

Introduction
I would like to thank Northern Michigan University for granting me a sabbatical during the past winter semester. This allowed me to spend two months in New York City gathering information for a book. From mid-January to mid-March of this year, I interviewed some twenty-five stage doormen who work in Broadway theatres. My goal was to compile information about the Broadway theatre from the unique perspective of these often unsung heroes.

Broadway
While the term Broadway means different things to different people, it is, quite literally, the name of a street in New York City that runs diagonally through mid-town Manhattan and beyond. Most of New York's commercial legitimate theatres are located on or within three blocks of Broadway, between 41st Street and 54th Street, and between Sixth Avenue and Ninth Avenue.
This limited piece of real estate is home to some forty-three "Broadway" theatres (forty-four if one includes the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center) as defined by the League of American Theatres and Producers and the various theatrical unions. A "Broadway" theatre seats from 500 on up, an "Off-Broadway" house seats between 100 and 499 and an "Off-Off Broadway" venue seats ninety-nine or fewer.
During my two months in NYC, thirty theatres housed shows that were either in previews or had opened officially. By the time this goes to press I suspect that several shows will have closed and three or four more will have opened.
The Broadway theatre is unique in many aspects, beginning with those theatrical watchmen known as stage doormen. These are the guardians of backstage access to any Broadway theatre and unsung heroes appreciated by those who work on-stage and backstage but largely unrecognized by the general public.
They are young and old; come from a variety of ethnic, cultural and educational backgrounds; and both male and (just recently) female. No matter how diverse, I discovered that they share one thing in common: passion for their work and commitment to the Broadway theatre. These remarkable individuals are truly the guardians of "The Door to Broadway."

The players
In order to make cross-referencing easier and less verbose, here is a list of the doormen I interviewed and the theatres they call home. The following abbreviations will be used: D = daytime doorman; N = nighttime doorman, and S = stand in or temporary doorman. Here they are in alphabetical order: Rose M. Alaino at the Shubert (N), Tim Barrett at the Music Box (N), Joe Battle at the Imperial (N), Rey Concepcion at the Marquis (D), Peter Condos at the Barrymore (N), Curtis Croome at the Imperial (D), Richard J. Farrell at the Longacre (N), Eric Flannigan at the Winter Garden (D), Elaine Foster at the Longacre (D), Robert (Bobby) Garner at the Nederlander (D) and the Lunt Fontaine (N), Joseph C. Kasper at the Golden (D), Louis Pat Keppert at the Brooks Atkinson (D), Jerry Klein at the Royale (N), Dave Mack at the Music Box (D), Gabe Maysonet at the Ford Center (D), James Mosaphir at the Neil Simon (N), Leon Mossen at the Shubert (D), Lype O'Dell at the Plymouth (D), Hector E. Paz at the Marquee (N), Alfredo (Freddie) Quinones at the Palace (D), Robert Rea at the Helen Hayes (D), Jimmy Russell at the Richard Rodgers (D), Luke Stoffel at the Henry Miller, Sam Wilson at the Booth (S) and Jeffrey Zambrano at the Ford Center (N).

I also chatted with Janine Peterson, the regular daytime elevator operator at the Neil Simon, and with Dawn Edmonds, the regular nighttime elevator operator at the same theatre. A kind soul by the name of Donde at the Palace actually gave me a brief ride on their backstage elevator.
While I may not quote or refer to all of them, each provided me with valuable and insightful information about their unique world.

Theatre owners
A theatre, especially in Midtown Manhattan, is a valuable piece of real estate. Thirty of the Broadway theatres are owned by three organizations: the Shuberts (sixteen), the Nederlanders (nine) and the Jujamcyns (five).

The rest of the Broadway houses are a mixed lot. The Music Box Theatre, built by producer Sam Harris and composer Irving Berlin, is co-owned by the Berlin Estate and the Shubert Organization. The intimate Henry Miller Theatre, where the recent hit revival of Cabaret opened and where Urinetown currently is playing, is owned by Dodger Theatricals, and the lovely Helen Hayes Theatre is owned by Martin Markinson and Donald Tick.
All of these theatres employ stage doormen, although the Henry Miller and Helen Hayes doormen are non-union.
The following three theatres, all non-profit organizations, do not employ stage doormen but use security or custodial personnel instead: Circle in the Square Theatre (co-owned by Theodore Mann and Paul Libin) and Studio 54 and the American Airlines Theatre (both owned by the Roundabout Theatre Company).
The New Amsterdam Theatre, beautifully restored and owned by Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, uses young men and women who look as if they just stepped out of a Disney theme park. The Vivian Beaumont Theatre falls under the umbrella of Lincoln Center Theatres (not-for-profit houses) and employs college-age youth as "receptionists."

The stage doorman
Although there is some variation, most Broadway theatre owners hire two doormen who belong or are assigned to a particular theatre. Whenever any sort of activity occurs, be it a load-in, performance or simple maintenance and repair, the presence of a stage doorman is required. When a theatre is dark, the stage doorman goes on unemployment compensation, substitutes at other theatres owned by the chain or makes do with a combination of the two.
The stage doorman works either the daytime shift from approximately 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. or the evening shift from around 5:00 p.m. until closing/lockup or midnight. Just like actors and technicians, stage doormen work six days a week including holidays. It is a grueling schedule, but I heard few complaints.
According to Tim Barrett and Dave Mack at the Music Box, until the theatre's recent restoration, three doormen protected what Moss Hart called "everyone's dream of a theatre." Evidently the owner, composer Irving Berlin, was both eccentric and an insomniac. He wished to be reassured that he could visit his theatre any hour of the day or night, whether or not a show was running, and know it would be safe and sound under the watchful eyes of a stage doorman.
There also are substitute doormen who cover a theatre on the seventh day or fill in during lunch or supper. These may be temps or stage doormen who currently are at liberty because their theatre is dark.
Until recently, the profession of the stage doorman was a solely male endeavor. But today women guard stage doors of three Shubert theatres: Rose M. Alaino at the Shubert, Elaine Foster at the Longacre and Amanda Short (the first female to enter the profession) at the Booth.
Most were comfortable with the term "doorman." Alaino suggested that to be politically correct one might use such terms as "doorbabe" or "doorchick" when describing her. However she reverted to "doorman" because, as she noted, "I do man the door."
Mossen sees things in a slightly different light. He prefers the term "backstage manager." As he explained, "The job description doesn't entail the extra duties that I've added to the position itself."
I also would have to add Dawn Edmonds and Janine Peterson to this distinctively distaff list. Edmonds is the evening elevator operator at the Neil Simon who works in tandem with the regular doorman James Mosaphir. During the day (except for matinees), Peterson takes folks up to offices like those of the general manager of Rent and Broadway producer, Emanuel Azenberg (who won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Revival of A Play for Private Lives). During the evening, Edmonds transports actors up to five floors of dressing rooms for quick changes and then down again to stage level in time to make their entrances right on cue. Peterson does the same during matinees. Although the Neil Simon is dark at the moment, I suspect both will be busy for several seasons to come after the musical version of Hairspray occupies the newly renovated theatre in mid-August.
The stage doorman's personal and professional space ranges radically from theatre to theatre. In the older theatres, the doorman was an afterthought and is likely to occupy a space slightly larger than a hall closet. Just ask Louis "Pat" Keppert at the Brooks Atkinson or Joseph C. Kasper at the Golden. Newer theatres such as the Ford Center and the Gershwin (originally the Uris) can boast a space the size of a very small studio apartment.
Whatever the size, there seem to be several common denominators between the various spaces: a backstage telephone, a dressing room and on-stage pager, a walkie-talkie unit, a boom box for cassettes and CDs, a television (usually a cable TV hook-up), a VCR (usually built into the television), a Playstation and occasionally a computer hook-up. In spite of these perks, if job-seekers are the least bit claustrophobic, it is not the career for them.
Accessibility from the street through the stage door to the offstage area is very short. In most cases, one direction will take you on-stage and the other upstairs or downstairs to the dressing rooms. Once inside the stage doors of theatres like the Shubert, the Imperial, the Music Box and the Brooks Atkinson, one is a mere twenty to thirty feet from the wings of the stage.
The Lyceum, the Belasco and the Longacre have an open ramp/alleyway to the side of the theatre with a security gate at the street entrance. Once you are buzzed inside, you walk down the ramp to a door leading into the theatre. You must be cleared once again and buzzed into the theatre proper. The Ambassador, the Barrymore and the Broadhurst have a similar setup except that the ramp/alleyway is enclosed.
The Gershwin depends on elevator access. Once inside the Gershwin, you walk down about fifty feet of hallway to the stage doorman's area. Directly next to the area is a huge freight elevator that takes actors, technicians and musicians up several stories to dressing rooms and stage level. Doorman clearance is necessary before getting on the elevator.
Perhaps the most unique setup is the triptych of the Royal, the Majestic and the Golden. There is an enclosed alley entrance just west of the Golden on 45th Street. It offers free access until the end of the alley, then visitors have to get buzzed into an area that resembles a courtyard.
Once inside, there are three stage doors. To the left is the Golden, straight ahead is the Royale and to the right of the Royale is the Majestic. At this point, visitors must be buzzed in to the backstage areas of each theatre.
I have discussed access to the various theatres because the stage doorman is the primary person responsible for backstage security. This is of no little importance when one considers the safety of the actors, technicians, and others, as well as the protection of many thousands of dollars in sets, costumes, and sound and lighting equipment.
Folks at the Palace (originally home to such vaudeville headliners as Ed Wynn, Judy Garland and Danny Kaye) have to navigate four landings and some twenty-five steps down to the bowels of the theatre two flights below the stage. The elevator at the Palace was installed at the behest—some say, the demand—of Dame Sarah Bernhardt (missing one leg) when she contracted to direct a play in this theatre.
The Palace and the Neil Simon are the only Broadway theatres with backstage elevators that actually figure in the running of the show. At the Palace the elevator spans eight floors. The first floor is below the stage, and the second floor is the operator's station. Floors three through eight are all dressing rooms. The elevator is about four feet by seven feet and can hold about ten people plus the operator. Several pages of elevator cues for Aida are taped on the wall and, from what I could see, indicated that the elevator operators at the Palace are every bit as busy as Peterson and Edmonds.
The magnificent Nederlander Theatre opened September 1, 1921 as the National. It then became the Billy Rose and the Trafalger before being named in honor of the late theatre owner David Tobias Nederlander in 1980. His sons now own and operate nine theatres in New York and several others throughout the country.
Seating 1,200, the Nederlander is an ideal space for Rent, which has occupied the theatre since 1996, when it transferred there from Off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop and became a mainstream hit winning four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The tragic death of its creator, Jonathan Larson, remains a powerful incentive for all who perform in this updating of La Boheme.
Getting to the stage door at the Nederlander is rather tricky. To the left of the box office and the auditorium itself, and down some one hundred feet down a marbled hallway under an American flag to a door that reads Staff Only. After opening a door and taking a left, there is about twenty-five feet before buzzing at yet another door. This door opens into an open alleyway with bricked walls on either side. The actual backstage door is at the end of this approximately seventy-five-foot walkway.
The brick walls on either side of the alley are signed by fans and actors alike—some are merely autographs, some scribbled heartfelt messages. One of the most touching is: "To the sexiest, most talented group of actors in NYC. Thank you for bringing Jonathan's vision to life. We love you all." It was signed by Al and Nan Larson, Jonathan's parents.
Inside the theatre, on the wall above the callboard in the corridor leading from the stage door to the dressing rooms is a simple wooden plaque that reads: "Thank you, Jonathan Larson." It has become tradition that every actor on the way to his or her dressing room rubs the plaque for good luck and says a silent prayer for Jonathan.
Two important things to remember:
• Do not assume that the stage door is the only way in or out of the theatre, a blessing for
• Rest assured that security cameras are placed strategically so that the doorman can see who requests access before buzzing them in.
—James Panowski

 

 

A photographer and two poets, Jonathan Johnson

The sense of story in American landscapes

In celebration of Steven White's photography exhibit in the Huron Mountain Gallery at Peter White Library during the month of August, two poets, Jonathan Johnson and Russell Thorburn, met with the photographer and discussed the aesthetics of taking pictures of abandoned barns and farmhouses in the Upper Peninsula and Lower Michigan.

White has an MFA degree in painting from the University of Arizona. He studied the history of photography while in school. Currently, he works as a landscape architect and a planner in the Marquette area.

The Conversation
Steven: I've taken a lot of pictures in my backyard under climactic conditions. Snow, rain, mist, wind, all types of light, early in the morning. I'm interested in moods. How light changes even in a half an hour.
Jonathan: What's stunning about those photographs is how transparent the forest becomes in the winter. But look at this photograph of an Engadine farmhouse. There's a little board hanging on through the whole year.
Steven: When I go by the house in Engadine, I'm thinking there's a lot of buildings that are abandoned. They appeal to me. They either have been abandoned because people have moved on or passed away. Sometimes there's a new house across the road.
Russell: I see the farmhouses as works of art, photographed, but the buildings themselves are like works of art weathered by time.
Steven: It's like getting to know somebody. If you've known somebody since they were very young and now they're elderly, that's a lot of changes. That interests me in farmhouses. Even if I don't have a camera, I still get out of the car and look at them.
Russell: Especially the windows. Who was looking out those windows a hundred years ago? What were their lives like?
Steven: They don't make buildings like that anymore. The craftsmen, the carpenters, the materials have changed.
Russell: Do you ever see someone walking around these places? Like someone watching you watch these farmhouses?
Steven: A few times I've stopped to take a picture in the middle of the highway. Faces seem to be always looking out the window. I want them to come out. I leave my car at their mailbox. I don't want to be an intruder. (Pause.) This is one I took on Mackinac Island last fall. I'm not a big fan of the Mackinac Island scene, but the trees in this photograph remind me of Paris and Steiglitz.
Steven: That's what attracts me to weathered buildings. It's like looking at a person with creases in her skin, wrinkles, maybe a scar. There's a story there. We're all aging.
Jonathan: There's a design, then environment has an answer after time. Another thing, the photographs of barns and houses are ways of looking at our own mortality that's tolerable. They depersonalize our mortality; we can see that a barn is not going to be brought back, it's caved in on the side and in all likelihood is going down.
Steven: I look at a lot of photographs in pairs. It seems more complete to have two.
Jonathan: Two images imply time, some time transpired, even if they're not images of the same house. In the Engadine house there's the obvious implication of time and timelessness—the house keeps going and there are changes around it. It adds to the sense of story. There's a story in time, the continued story of decay, and the story of what went on inside.
Steven: Among my strongest influences have been the photographers of the W.P.A. I was working as researcher for the National Park Service in Arizona once and I had to recreate this homestead photo from photographs a hundred years ago. The perspective was from this same rock outcropping. In the original the homesteader was there, wearing a Sunday suit and bowler hat and looking off in the distance.

Editor's Note: For more information or to purchase Steven White's art, call 228-2561. His exhibit is funded by the Marquette Arts Council.

Steven White's "Farmhouse"
in the Face of a Woman Once

Weathered boards say the snow
was hard, wind in arches unwilling to quiet.
The roof cannot keep paper from peeling.
Nor crows from sheltering in its deep holes.
The farmhouse wants to travel, like you.
You never linger long. The yard overruns with ideas
that bend into weeds. A darkness further back.
Pieces of automobiles buried without prayer.

You leave footsteps in snow, kneel
to photograph shadows growing their own chateau,
hundred-year-old oaks shattered at the waist.
Your name's an image pressed against glass.
Your camera clicking faster than your heartbeats
when you realize you are never going
to see this farmhouse again.

But this farmhouse, with its shades half drawn
for a century, once had corn raised high, hand
in the field waving, if you squinted in the sun
and your cry was stronger than the wind.
A photograph is coming home.
You press your camera to your coat. The cow
that roamed the yard was dead long ago.

Still, you aim your lens
to the farmhouse with its museum guards
of snowdrifts, fallen boards, a history of privilege
out in the open, sunflowers bright
as a dress's buttons, imagined in the heat, and you
photograph night settling down behind, if only
to remember a detail that was never there.

Russell Thorburn

Another Summer
—after Steven White's "Engadine House"

From across the road her bedroom window
is a lakeful of abandoned sky,
and then he drives on.

Later, air is the color of pavement,
the color of the blank bay,
a house that can never stand and walk away.

His car does just as he asks, floating
over highway seams and blowing A.C. over his knees.
He spends the money because his body's old.

But the cold he remembers, driving deeper
into the night than he has in years,
is water in the creek across her father's field,

sitting beside her in a current that pushed
at the small of his back and tugged
around his shorts. It's only now—

as the cruise seems to accelerate, holding
its speed up a long rise, stars and curve
of shore to the horizon below—that he realizes

the water must have been the same for her.

Jonathan Johnson