Headline: It's Not Gossip When It's Work

 Arts and Ideas

Fall, 2000 issue

When you work "behind the scenes" in show business, people often ask what that's like. It's like this. Say you tell your friends and family that you work at a venue where Barbara Streisand recently performed. For that performance, you had to invent a way for Barbara to fly onto the stage on a crystal glider. You then figured out a way for the sound to be so good that every person in every seat swore that Barbara was singing for them personally, ten feet away. Then you managed a way to have everyone in the room get a faint whiff of gardenia during the third through seventh bar of the fourth song. Day of show, you managed to talk Bill Gates into paying for valet parking for the whole crowd, and finally, just before curtain, you reach the holy grail of audience services and discover a way to eliminate lines at the women's bathroom at intermission. You tell your friends and family this, and they will say, "What's Barbara really like?"

That's what it's like.

That's what they really want to know, deep down in their little starstruck hearts. All performers-from the local dentist playing Rosencrantz at the Grange to the major pop recording artist performing for tens of thousands-are presumed to be just as interesting during a rehearsal day bagel break as they are on the stage.

"What kind of bagel did they eat? Toasted?"

So in the spirit of giving the people what they want, I'll dish some dirt for you. I don't want to be a name dropper, but I happen to have built up a lot of first hand information about what performers are like to work with. I've worked with many notable local personalities as well as some nationally known people. Besides personal experience, I hear certain things about certain people from certain people who work with them. Especially if these certain people are disgruntled. Word of advice to any famous people reading this: keep those who work with you gruntled.

I toured for years with a famous pianist, so naturally local stage hands would tell me stories about other pianists. I must have heard the same thing about Tori Amos twenty times. Apparently, Tori, who's a sexy gal, sits at the piano with her left foot at the pedals and her right stretching out behind her, so that she's barely sitting on just the corner of the bench. And when she plays ("Even in rehearsal!"), she moves on the bench in such a way as to create a lasting effect on America's male stage hands, who always describe the scene in hushed, reverent tones. They all tell the same joke:

"We almost retired that bench right after the show."

She gruntled them.

I also often heard, maybe a million times, that pianist/comic Victor Borge is a nice guy. Everyone goes out of their way to say this, but I figure that anyone who has relied on the same act for twenty years has plenty of time for niceties.

Whoops, there I go name dropping, which, as you see, led directly to cattiness. It's hard sometimes to ride the line between telling interesting yarns and divulging privileged information. However, it seems safe to talk about general categories of performer personalities, or at least their professional personalities. With few exceptions, I don't know how any famous people I know eat their eggs or treat their pets, so don't expect any real dirt about Laurie Anderson or David Copperfield or Ali Akbar Kahn or Tandy Beal or the Flying Karamozov Brothers or…

Whoops. So, here's my slightly subjective breakdown of some performer personality types, be they dancers, actors, or musicians.

The Eccentric

The question here is did their eccentricities allow them to become performers or did performing make them eccentric? In any case, these people typically have unusual demands ranging from wearing lucky socks to refusing to travel on Fridays. They are the second most likely people to have "handlers," professional assistants who make sure things are set up just the right way.

We try to avoid speaking directly to the eccentrics. They're often unfamiliar with basic laws of physics and have disturbing views of what people might consider entertaining. Better to have the handlers explain that light can't bend around walls and people might not enjoy hearing "the loudest sound they ever heard" without warning.

Typical quote: "Since running hot water to all the toilets in my home, calls from Spielberg's people increased ten percent. Of course I'm not switching back."

The Ego

The egomaniac is more rare than you might expect, given that the obnoxious artist is such a stock character in fiction and the public's presumption that anyone with talent, money and good looks must compensate for it by being an asshole. Many performers are unfairly branded egomaniacs by people who don't understand why the performer won't hang out with them. We see right through that kind of thing.

Some Egos are insufferable to everybody all the time, but many are closeted. You have to get to know them to discover their little secret, and by then it's too late. There's nothing worse than being a confidant to a closeted egomaniac. It's "You can tell me, does this outfit make my butt look too perfect?" one day and "I think my website needs some sort of advice to young people section" the next.

Though some are lifers, the Ego is often a temporary condition, a step in the maturity of the performer that they eventually get over. That, and the fact that sometimes they make us money, is why we don't kill them on the spot.

Typical quote: "You missed my performance? Here, let me put the video on."

The Space Cookie

Space cookies would never make it without their handlers- who make sure that when the curtain goes up the performer is not at the zoo. All true space cookies have at least one story about getting onto the wrong plane.

Perhaps the best thing about the space cookie is that you can always convince them they borrowed twenty dollars from you last week.

Typical quote: "Well then whose luggage to I have?"

The Inventor

This highly creative and energetic type doesn't know when to stop. Generally, for a show to go well, you want to stop changing the show in time to get in a few rehearsals to polish the show- get all the timings right, look for problems, etc. The crew is frantic during this time, working off messy lists of cues and taking notes about things to fix before opening night. With an inventor involved (usually a director or performer with creative control), major things are changed and added right up to the wire. This is a harrowing experience for the crew, whom the audience will presume to be at fault if it all falls apart.

Inventors usually work you the hardest and pay the least, but they're often the preferred boss for those who like to live on the edge.

Typical quote: "What if we trained a monkey in a sailor suit to swing in and ring the bell? We still have a couple of hours."

The Cooperator

While some performers are critically involved in all aspects of their performance, including publicity and technical matters, others are easygoing to a fault. The Cooperator will listen raptly to any moron's suggestions about their show, or even their career. Tell them a yellow tie might work with their tux, and they'll go shopping. The cooperator is often a musician who's just interested in playing. They are pitifully easy to take advantage of, and if they become famous they become surrounded by hangers-on that the cooperator isn't rude enough to dispose of. They often fall victim to stage technicians who are always looking for ways to use all the technical gizmos at their disposal. When you see a folk singer accompanied by a laser light show, you can assume the Cooperator has collided with a Gizmologist.

Typical quote: "You're the expert."

The Nice, Normal Person

A famous person who exhibits all the signs of being a perfectly pleasant, humble and happy character is presumed by the public to have something terrible to hide, and it's just a matter of time before they go off the deep end. In reality, most performers, especially professionals, are just great people who enjoy performing for its own sake. Still, better to hide the knives.

Typical quote: "You need a lift?"