The good, the bad, and the ugly

My time in West Virginia is coming to a close. So many thoughts in my head… starting with the good ones: the show has made phenomenal strides in the past few days. We played for an audience for the first time last night, and I was so proud of everyone. It was an honest-to-goodness play all of a sudden. The actors were living in their reality, they were talking and listening to each other, they accommodated to the addition of audience reaction and laughs beautifully, and made it through with grace and dignity. I think everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief, then geared up to do the same thing the next night.

Night after opening night shows make me nervous. Often actors relax a bit too much and they get sloppy. Didn’t happen tonight, They were running with a little less adrenaline, but the result was a show with even greater ease and clarity.

Sure there are still glitches. But they have learned to think in the moment, like pros, and they got through any flubs seamlessly. My Annelle even fixed my own oops moment, when she noticed that I’d left the couple of pages of notes and my pen on the set after giving them to the actors before the show, and swept it right up along with the mug she is supposed to take off stage after the first scene started. I squinted at the stage wondering, “What was that paper she picked up? Who left THAT on the stage?” My lighting designer resonded - "Your notes." Heh-heh. Woops.

I feel like a proud momma.

Tomorrow they open and I wish them all success and satisfaction. I will miss them all very much.

What I won’t miss (and here’s the bad stuff) is the job at the bed and breakfast which has turned into something of an indentured servitude. When the B&B agreed to donate the room for me to stay in, it was as a sponsorship of the show. The fee that businesses pay to sponsor the show was waived, and instead, I got the room. Which wouldn’t have been rented out except on weekends. And I was only here two weekends. So, as lovely an offer as it was, this was a business transaction. They got advertising, I got the room.

In addition, I said I would work some shifts, time allowing, since at the time they were very understaffed. What I didn’t realize was that I was signing myself up for every breakfast shift they could give me. The breakfast shift starts at 7:30. Yup. AM.

Yesterday I had one table in three hours. Today I had two. So I am spending three ungodly hours sweeping, mopping, and filling sugars, because heaven forbid I don’t look busy or the eighteen year old skinny-legged, barely through puberty manager who runs the day shift will get cross with me. His name is “Bo”. Easy to spell.

Now, if I was at least getting a paycheck next Friday with my $2.50 an hour waiter pay for the twenty-four hours I will have worked this weekend, I could maybe stomach the situation. Hey – every dollar is one dollar closer to my Ipod, right? But when I asked two weeks ago if the owner needed my social security number, and that was why I hadn’t gotten a check yet, she said (when she already knew this was the situation, because I’d left her a note asking that same question several days before) she gave me a surprised look and said, “Oh, no, part of the agreement was that because we are giving the room we wouldn’t pay you hourly at all.”

What?

No one told me that. So then I feel like an asshole, so I mumbled an, “Oh, I see, I didn’t realize that…”

Then I went to mop the floor all the while humming, “It’s a hard knock life for me…”

Really, I feel like little friggin’ orphan Annie. Sweeping for a bed and a crust of bread. Jeesh. Four years in a professional training program for this?

When the subject came up with the woman from the theater who had made the arrangements (I didn’t bring it up, she asked) she claimed not to know anything about that, hmmm, that’s not what she’d intended, things must have just gotten confused.

But she doesn’t do anything about it.

So yes, I am “ready to spit nails” (as Shelby in the play says) but I can’t do anything about it. If I’d walked out on my last three shifts, I would have gone down in Berkeley Springs as the uppity director chick from DC who was too good to work for her living. So I’m stuck. And it’s frustrating as hell.

But of course this got me thinking about the bigger picture. That trapped feeling? Must be nothing compared to what Latino immigrants (legal or not) feel like working as dishwashers in every restaurant in NY and DC. Especially those that are not legal. They can’t fight for their rights as an employee because someone might turn them in. So they are tethered. Sometimes for life.

And then I thought of the several young mothers who work at this restaurant. They can’t be making much more than I am. And they are supporting a family. But their lack of training (probably) and skill or education keeps them in the best job they can find in a service industry, fighting with other waitresses for better tables, and mopping the floors with vinegar (ewww, yes) when there aren’t any customers so that they will be deemed good workers and the Stalin-esque “Bo” will assign them good shifts.

It sucks, it really does. I get to leave this place. They don’t.

The irony of the whole situation is that the woman who owns the place is by trade a lawyer specializing in employment law.

Sketchy.

When I try to look at the good side I tell myself that the experience at least gave me the opportunity to meet more of the locals, especially the young people of BS. Otherwise I would never have had my opportunity to be righteous about the teenage mothers who won’t use condoms because, “In this town if you use a condom everyone will think you have an STD”, and the other day with the born again Christian girl who told me she burned A Prayer for Owen Meanie after having to read it for English class because it was “such a horrible book”. I asked her if she understood the ramifications of book burning. She kind of smiled and said, “I burn lots of books!” and giggled. I wanted to get up on the chair and shout at her, “What’s next birdbrain? Six million people?”

Instead I bit my tongue. You gotta pick your battles.