Deck the Halls

I rarely chat up the day job because, well, it’s a day job. But when necessary, I spend several hours a week selling tickets for the Folger Box Office. I love the people there and find it to be, for the most part, a pretty painless way to pay the bills.

But the patrons? Sometimes? Oy, the patrons.

Of course at the holidays everyone and their brother decide to go to the theater. And they randomly set their cultural compass down on the Guide to Lively Arts and let it point them the way to something festive. But often, oh fair rare-to-go-to-the-theater folks, have no idea what to do next.

So they call someone, anyone. And when they call the Folger, but really want to go to see Tamburlaine, and I offer to give them the phone number for the Shakespeare Theater, they say “*Sigh* Well can’t you just TRANSFER me?”

Do people think there is one big switchboard that connects all cultural institutions? There isn’t, by the way.

It’s like that rumor about the Indian restaurants on 6th Street in the East Village. That they all share the same kitchen?

Or the guy who called this morning asking about the nutcracker. And I told him we are not doing the nutcracker at the small 250-seat Elizabethan-replica theater that fits about twelve people total on stage at one time. No ballerinas here. And he said, “Do you know where they are doing it? Can you help me contact the place that they are doing the nutcracker? You work in a theater--you must know these things, right”

Nut.

Crack.

Errrrrrr.