Days of Yore: The Epic Quest for a Job

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

- Don Quixote de la Mancha
The Man of La Mancha, music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

As a fan of both musical theatre and high adventure, "The Impossible Dream" seemed an appropriate start to this post. The job search has been the great quest that most adults encounter at some point in their lives and careers, in some cases multiple times. The means of the quest have changed over the years.

Continuing with the theme of musical theatre (since we all know how extremely accurate that is), the musicals Thoroughly Modern Millie and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying give us a glimpse into the methods of job search in the 1920s and 1960s, respectively. In Thoroughly Modern Millie, Millie Dillmount physically goes to different businesses to speak to them in person. I am guessing her aim in wanting to find a boss she could marry was likely not typical, but it does indicate the need to go physically and search that way. In How to Succeed, J. Pierrepont Finch ("Ponty") is also going to businesses on foot to find a job. But he has obtained a book with specific instructions, not only on finding a job, but also on getting to the top quickly (which he does within a few days). That show is satire, so again, much of it is not typical, but it also shows that the job search was more of a physical endeavor than it often is today. Of course, even today doing it that way doesn't hurt (at least i don't think it does), but things have changed considerably.

In 1935, the US government created unemployment insurance to help job searchers while they were searching for work, by temporarily providing a salary to help in paying bills. These days the requirements vary by state, but you generally have to be actively searching in order to get it. Washington State requires that you do at least three job search activities per week (which could include sending a resume, doing an interview, taking a course on work-related skills, and other things) and keep a log of it. Every week you have to file a claim and report what job search activities you did that week, in addition to certifying that you were "able and available" to go to work, and a few other requirements.

How did we search for jobs in the past? As mentioned above, people generally went to businesses and talked to the people there to find out if they were hiring. Newspapers had a "Help Wanted" section where businesses could advertise job openings, providing brief job descriptions (usually only a few words due to space restraints and per-word charges from the newspaper) and contact information. Many people searched the Yellow Pages in the back of their phone book and called businesses to find out if they had openings. When I was in college, our career center on campus had bulletin boards where they posted job openings sent to them by local businesses, as well as on-campus jobs. Colleges provided "work study" positions as well, so that students could have an income while attending classes. This was also nice because work could be scheduled around classes. I worked in the libraries both at Edmonds Community College and Seattle Pacific University when I attended. When I returned to Edmonds Community College, I took advantage of a "worker retraining" program related to unemployment, where I had an income from the state while attending school. This did not replace tuition, but it was a big help. This program is related to unemployment insurance, but differs in that you are learning a new skill to become more marketable, rather than searching for a job.

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

Even in the old days, there was a lot of calling potential employers. In the past, it was when responding to want ads. On the phone you could schedule a time to come in and bring your resume, possibly schedule an interview. While interviews were almost always in person in the past, it has become more common to do them over the phone in recent years. However, it is still common to do them in person. An interview would often consist of questions to assess a person's fit with the company and how well they might do the job in question. They may also include assessments either on computer or using a typewriter or other means to show how well the candidate can do the job. Most commonly, the phone interview these days is used in the initial screening process. If the company wants to proceed with the candidate, they may schedule a second interview in person.

Another option that worked for me in the past was going through staffing agencies. They contracted with companies looking for temporary workers, also called temps. Companies would need temps for various purposes, such as a limited project that will only last a short time, covering for a worker out on vacation or maternity leave or other kind of leave, or for any number of other reasons. Some temporary positions were considered "temp to hire," in which case the company would contract the person on a temporary basis to get a more practical idea of their fit. If they do well, they can be converted to a permanent employee. Most of my positions in the past have been with the help of staffing agencies. An agency placed me at Wireless Advocates in 2017 for a "3-4 week" position, which ended up getting extended multiple times, and finally became permanent at the beginning of 2018. It lasted until the beginning of 2023, when the company went down. My initial interview for Wireless Advocates was over the phone. I would have another interview, in person this time, a few months later when they were considering converting me to permanent employment.

While I was working at Wireless Advocates, COVID changed everything. We transitioned to working from home in March of 2020. This was a new experience for me, and I was impressed how well our team adapted. It was also great, as I have been taking care of my parents, and I was more available for them while still being able to devote much of my time to my job, often even doing overtime. I was thankful to have a steady and dependable job when so many people were unemployed due to the pandemic.

When Wireless Advocates folded, I once more filed for unemployment, and found a changed method. Many of the requirements were the same. However, in the past, we were required to go to our local WorkSource office for an orientation session. They didn't ask me to do that this time (though they did state there was a possibility they may require me to go at some point). Methods of hiring had changed. Staffing agencies post their openings on their websites, and I didn't have as much success as in the past at contacting them. For the first time, much of my job search was done on LinkedIn. In the past I had posted my resume there, but I hadn't done much job searching there. LinkedIn has also added some excellent courses that I have taken to help with job skills as well as blogging.

Years ago, I often used online job boards, such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, and others. This time, I used LinkedIn, indeed.com, and a few others, but didn't have as much success on the boards that worked in the past.

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

When doing interviews this time, more were over the phone than ever before. Rather than do it in person, some were done over Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other online video chat services. After an initial phone screen at USI Insurance in Seattle, I was invited to the only in-person interview I have done during this job search. I was truly excited with how well it went. This one seemed a perfect fit. My amazing previous manager was a tough act to follow, but this manager seems an excellent candidate. Following that in-person interview, I had another interview over the internet with a manager in another state.

All that to say...

Today I start my new job at USI Insurance! I am super excited for this new adventure, and I can't wait to get started!

Canvas Trek Chocolate Wrapper

In our ongoing campaign to introduce the Canvas LMS (Learning Management System) to Edmonds Community College, our fearless leader Steve Sosa challenged me to make a wrapper to put on chocolate bars, and do something that was different from my normal "look and feel."

Canvas Trek
Steven Sauke
Illustration, Chocolate Wrapper
2013

To work with this challenge, I considered that we would be putting it around a chocolate bar and researched the origin of chocolate. I found out it originated with the Maya and continued with the Aztecs. As my previous art for the project had a more overt Star Trek theme, I decided to go with a more Mesoamerican theme in this case, as a nod to chocolate's rich history (pun intended). But this was also related to Star Trek, so I managed to include some subtle nods to that theme. In my research, I found the Mayan glyphs for Star, Road, Life and Wealth. Thus, as close as I could approximate it, I included "Star Trek, Live long and prosper" in Mayan. (Of course, not being an expert in their language, they may have used different glyphs that more closely worked with the meaning and grammar and such.) I also found a Mayan mural with a chief preventing a servant from taking his vat of chocolate. I based the illustration on that, but modified the fingers to make a Vulcan salute. I selected a texture that looked most like it might be on a rock wall. The background is a photo of the Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

Days of Yore: Office Equipment

As with so many other things, offices have changed a lot over the years. Ancient artists and writers used chisels and other instruments on rock. Cavemen chronicled their hunts and other events on cave walls. Eventually, people started using other materials such as papyrus, parchment, and eventually paper. Scribes copied down text by hand.

Image by Pavel Timofeev on Adobe Stock

Quill

Long before I was born, people used quills (made of large feathers) to write on paper. They had to keep their inkwell handy, as the quill didn't have ink in it, and they regularly had to dip the end of the feather in ink. Some quills had a metal tip. The man in the picture below is writing with one. (These days, they are hardly ever used, though if Harry Potter is to believed, wizards still use them.)

Fountain Pen

Eventually, fountain pens become more common, adding the new feature of ink inside the pen so it didn't have to be dipped regularly. It did have to be refilled from time to time, though. They were not typically made of feathers.

Image by Nomad_Soul on Adobe Stock

Typewriter

My grandpa and I had a running argument (in good fun) about whether the typewriter or computer was better. He insisted that his typewriter had always worked, and he didn't see why he should use a computer. He did comment once that he saw a typewriter in a museum that looked exactly like the one he still used. When I stayed at his house while I was in school, I enjoyed doing my homework on the typewriter because it was a novelty. But for me, being used to computers, it wasn't as efficient. (My grandpa eventually told me he wished he had been more willing to learn the computer, as he did realize near the end of his life that they are very useful.)

Typewriters had a roller on the back where you threaded the paper. There was a ribbon on a spool that you had to replace from time to time. They had the same keyboard (generally) as the average computer keyboard, but you had to push the keys a lot farther down, and it took more muscle. Each key had a corresponding striker that jumped up and hit the ribbon, placing ink on the paper in the shape of the letter you just typed. If you hit the key too hard, the striker could punch a hole in the ribbon, and sometimes the paper! Also, if you pushed too many keys at once, all the corresponding strikers would jump up and sometimes get stuck. If you made a mistake, you had a couple options: you could go back and type "####" over each letter that you accidentally typed, or you could move the paper up and put white-out over it to cover up the mistake, or you could go in after the fact and cross it out with a pen. Those options could end up looking messy, and the other option, which was neater but much more tedious, was to pull the paper out and completely retype everything on that page, hoping you wouldn't make another mistake. White-out came in a couple forms: a white fluid with a brush built into the lid of the bottle to brush the paint-like fluid over the text, or a roll that resembled white, opaque Scotch tape, but narrower, that you could draw over the text you wanted to hide. You had to give the fluid time to dry, but once you were done, you could go back and type over it. When you reached the end of a line, there was a lever that moved the roller and paper down a line and back to the other side of the paper.

For the most part, typewritten reading material looked like this.

Computer

Computers, so named because they compute, seemed much more practical to me than typewriters. I went over changes in computers here, so I won't go into great detail on how they have changed. However, I will say before I was born, they filled up a room and were very expensive. As they progressed they got much smaller, but still a good deal larger than they are now. These days, we can take laptops, tablets and cell phones with us most places we go. A small thumb drive can hold many times the data the massive computers of yesteryear could hold.

No more did we need to #### out mistakes, or white them out, or crumple up the sheet of paper, throw it in the trash, and retype everything. Now if we made a mistake, we could just hit Backspace or Delete. Computers offered so many more options. You can't play Mario Bros or Carmen Sandiego on a typewriter, now can you?

Calculator

I find it interesting that computers and calculators are not the same thing, but both words have similar meanings. Their root words, compute and calculate, are fairly synonymous. They have certain functions in common, as computers can also do math problems. Back in the day, though, an old-fashioned calculator was a lot more portable, and even if you had a computer handy, more practical for doing math.

Mimeograph, 1918
Life magazine
Public Domain

Mimeograph

I remember we had a mimeograph machine at our school when I was in elementary and middle school. I know that many have had varying feelings on machines replacing workers, but I can assure you that mimeographs do not do the function of a mime, and I doubt it could replace Marcel Marceau (though I imagine he may have used one from time to time). That's a mime-o-graph, and as far as I'm aware, it does not exist. It had a similar function to a photocopier, but involved a roller, and the copy was not the greatest quality. You could theoretically mimeograph pictures, but it came out very poor quality. At least in my experience, you could tell a mimeographed sheet because the ink was blue. At school, they generally used them to copy text, and sometimes we would get mimeographed quizzes. As I haven't used one or even seen one since the '80s (possibly early '90s), I forget how they worked, but I was able to use it at the time. 

Carbon Paper

Another way of making copies was using carbon paper. It was maybe half the thickness of a normal sheet of paper, and generally black or charcoal-colored, and glossy. You would put a sheet of paper on the table, put a sheet of carbon paper over it, then put another sheet on top. You could then write on the top sheet, and the pressure of your writing instrument would also place what you were writing on the bottom sheet thanks to the carbon paper in between. You could also thread a couple sheets into a typewriter with carbon paper in between to type two copies at once. If you were writing with a pen, you had to make sure to press hard to ensure that what you were writing would transfer onto the lower sheet. This was often used on contracts so you only needed to sign one sheet (and not again on other copies), and then you would keep a copy and the person you were doing the contract with would keep the other. It is still sometimes used with checks. These days, the word is generally used when you "cc" (carbon copy) someone in an e-mail. You can also "bcc" (blind carbon copy) people if you don't want your recipients to know who all is getting the e-mail.

Photocopier

In my lifetime, photocopiers have changed, but not as much as other machines. They generally produce higher quality copies now than they used to (especially with pictures), and some can now copy in color. They have also become more digital over the years. In my experience, they have always produced better copies than mimeographs.

Image by Nomad_Soul on Adobe Stock

Bookshelf

I covered books here, so probably don't need to repeat myself too much, but with ongoing automation and the internet, books aren't as common in offices as they used to be. The same goes for bookshelves. Someday I dream of having an office with a bookshelf that opens on a secret passage. I've never been in an office like that (as far as I know), but I love reading about them and seeing them in movies!

Filing Cabinet and Rolodex

I covered filing cabinets and Rolodexes here, but you don't see them in offices nearly as much these days as in the past, with computers, electronic files, and more people trying to conserve paper in an effort to help the environment. The Rolodex has largely been replaced by Microsoft Outlook on the computer, as well as cell phones.

Telephone

I covered telephones here. They were in just about every office in the past. Most offices still have them, but these days they are often built into the computer as software, rather than a physical device. It made the transition to working from home when COVID hit a lot simpler. It's also nice to be able to use headphones with a mouthpiece attached, rather than having to balance the receiver between my head and shoulder if I want to type with both hands!

Fax

I remember when we got our first fax machine (short for facsimile) in the Philippines. My mom was the secretary for our mission agency. Our office was in a Manila highrise, and while my brother and I watched the new machine in our office, the adults went to an adjoining office for another mission agency on the same floor. Pretty soon the fax machine came to life and a paper came out of it with a handwritten note saying something to the effect of "Hooray! It works!"

It was nice when we could fax things from our office for free. Most places charged per page, and that could add up. I'm kind of glad we don't use fax much any more, but it was pretty nifty. Early in my career, I had to fax timesheets at the end of each week. It was a challenge on the occasion where the person who approved the timesheet signed in red ink, which doesn't transmit well by fax.

Elevator

Storey time! (Get it? I'll see myself out.) While the elevator isn't exactly equipment, they have changed over the years. During my lifetime, they haven't changed much, but I once had a temp job in Seattle's Smith Tower, which still had the old-fashioned elevator with an attendant. (I hope they still do. It's an experience that I recommend.) Rather than pressing a button by the door, you would tell the attendant which floor, and they would turn a large crank to take you there. When I was younger, all elevators I used had buttons beside the door (inside the elevator) that you could press for the floor where you wanted to go. Outside the elevator, they have a button that you press to tell it whether you want to go up or down. (Side note: A fun conversation that sometimes happens in the Philippines: "Bababa ba?" "Bababa." ["Is it going down?" "It's going down."]) Most elevators are still like that. However, some of the newer ones have a bank of elevators, and the buttons are outside the elevator on the wall. You punch in the floor, and it tells you which elevator to go to when it arrives. It then whisks you where you need to go. As always, the elevator is a very uplifting experience, unless you're going down, which can be a bit of a downer!

Elevator Attendant, 1917
Martha Washington Hotel
Public Domain

These days, most of the above things can be done on a cell phone and/or computer. My phone has a scanning feature and a camera that often works really well for sending documents and other things that I would have photocopied, mimeographed or faxed in the past. With my Kindle and Audible apps on my phone and tablet, I can read and listen to books. I can file documents on the computer (and on my cell phone, though the computer is generally more efficient for that). While I still use pens (though not generally quills or fountain pens), I don't use them as much as I used to, though my phone has a stylus that works similar to a pen when I write on my screen. Not all phones have that. However, I have yet to see an elevator that operates by means of a cell phone. I imagine someday there will be an app for that.

Illustration Self Portrait

Our first assignment in our illustration class was to do a self portrait. This was not that self portrait. As that was my first attempt, I was not thrilled with the result. So here I present my SECOND illustration self portrait. I'll mercifully spare you the first one. :-)

Self Portrait
Steven Sauke
Illustration

I was happy with this one. As with my self portrait in the style of Aaron Douglas, I have used this one as a profile picture as well. I have on occasion even used it for my profile picture at work.

Days of Yore: Navigation

For millennia, humans have suffered from, or reveled in, wanderlust, that tantalizing pull from the cosmos to travel and see the world. Back in the day (long before my time), it was mainly on foot, sometimes riding horses, camels, chariots, boats and other animals and vehicles. Over the years, people have used a variety of ways to keep track of where they were and how they planned to get where they were going.

Image by Pavel Timofeev on Adobe Stock

The Bible tells of wise men who came from the east to visit the infant Jesus following a star. For centuries before that (and since), people studied the stars, and they used stars and constellations to keep track of where they were. The star the wise men followed led them to Bethlehem. I don't know how they found it with such precision based on the star, but they were the experts. I do know they studied prior to leaving, and asked around during the journey, as the experts on prophecies advised them on the general vicinity, and King Herod tried to get them to rat on Jesus.

As the years went on, explorers set out on ships, camels, horses, wagons and other means to learn more about the planet and find what was out there beyond the horizon. As they learned more, they made maps. Astronomers mapped out the stars as well. Leif Ericson and other Vikings landed in present-day Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. Columbus tried to find the Indies and landed in the Caribbean (and did some horrible things in the process). Magellan set out from Spain and made it to the what is now the Philippines, where he was killed. His crew was among the first to make it all the way around the globe. Cortez and Pizarro landed in the Americas and caused mayhem and destruction among some of the great peoples there, who themselves had made great strides in astronomy, timekeeping, and other fields. Lewis and Clark made it across the North American continent with the help of Sacajawea and others. Explorers drew up maps and kept journals, and even though those journals often reveal unspeakable things that they did to the people who already lived there, they also included observations on the landscape, the vegetation, the animals, and a lot more. They also often followed the stars. Eventually, the Wright Brothers would invent a plane, and later others got rockets into space, bringing a whole new view of the earth we live on, from above. Neil Armstrong and his crew would land on the moon. More recently, unmanned rovers have landed on Mars and shown us some of the sights there.

In their explorations and travels, people used a variety of kinds of equipment:

• Compass. This was generally based on the magnetic pull of the earth's poles, and the needle pointed toward the north. It helped people to keep track of which direction they were going, or needed to go. The down side was if there was a strong magnet nearby, it could throw the compass off.
• Sextant. This was a device that was used on ships to determine the angle between the earth and the stars or other celestial bodies, which helped to determine latitude and longitude. That's a sextant on the right side of the picture at the top of this post.
• Telescope. This was a long tube with a magnification lens that allowed people to see things at a distance. They were sometimes on stands, but could also be held in the hand (depending on the size...some of the more powerful ones were too massive to hold). They were used both to examine stars, planets and other things in the sky, and to see things that were more earthbound, such as a ship looking for land. Some modern telescopes also include cameras.
• Map. Over the years, these were on papyrus, parchment, stone, paper, and other materials, most recently electronically. They have been used for millennia in various ways.
• Globe. This is a spherical model of the earth, generally with countries, oceans, landmarks and other things marked, sometimes with mountains and such in relief. Though they vary in size, they are often around the size of a basketball. I have a smaller one.
• Atlas. This is a book full of maps. Our atlas when I was little was huge, and sometimes heavy. Named for the Greek titan doomed to hold up the sky and think about what he had done, atlases were a place we could look when researching a place, often arranged by country, state, or whatever the specific focus of that atlas was. [Side note: It seems the Greek gods were big on giving the epically torturous eternal time-outs...Prometheus very uncomfortably tied to a rock (understatement), Atlas with the world literally on his shoulders, Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down and have to push it back up, Tantalus being tantalized by the fruit in the tree that he could never quite reach...I mean, they often deserved their punishments, but still...]

Image by Freepik

Growing up, especially when we were in unfamiliar areas, we had to carry a map. They folded up, but once you opened them, they were much larger. Sometimes folding them back up was a challenge! A car trip sometimes looked like the above picture. Best to pull off the road if you needed to consult the map. Of course, the person in the passenger seat could look at the map (partially folded so as not to take up the whole cabin of the car) and tell the driver where to turn next. Sometimes it helped to draw the route in pencil. When asking for directions, people sometimes drew more crude maps on a piece of paper. Alternatively, some people just described how to get there, and hopefully you remember what they told you!

Eventually, GPS came along and (on the whole) simplified things, eliminating the need to pull out a massive map and then struggle to refold it. Of course, GPS (Global Positioning System) can be temperamental at times, and has been known to tell me to turn right onto a stairway (and then not be happy when I opted not to follow its advice that it thought was so sage). It has improved over the years, though. For a while we used GPS units, which were a bit larger than your average cell phone and were relatively expensive. Now I have apps on my phone, and I also have GPS in my car.

Many planes have maps either in their app or on any screens available in the seat backs or ceilings (which are becoming less common). That way you can tell where you are as you fly over. Of course, if it's on the app or website, that generally only works when you aren't ascending or descending and have to have your phone in airplane mode. Friends and family can also sometimes follow your progress on a map on the airline's website if they know the flight number and airline. Air traffic controllers help pilots take off and land safely, and pilots can communicate with each other.

Navigation has changed a lot over the years, and advances in modes of transportation have sped up the process considerably. A journey that once took months or years by boat now takes a few hours by plane. Shorter trips that took hours or days on foot or horseback can take minutes or hours by car. As with so much else, a lot of the navigation part of the journey can now be done on a phone or as an electronic feature in vehicles.

Sosa Trek

In 2013, I had the honor of being involved in Canvas Trek, a campaign to introduce Edmonds Community College to the new Learning Management System (LMS) called Canvas. They were phasing out Blackboard, the old LMS. We modeled our campaign after Star Trek. We fought and defeated the evil Blackborg to bring the new Canvas to save the day!

Following are designs I made of our intrepid leader Steve Sosa as various Star Trek folks. We ended up not using them in the campaign, though I was pretty proud of how they turned out. Had we used them, I would have made more. (For example, I would have been interested in seeing him as a Ferengi.) The top one is one I made at the end of my internship to thank Steve for his inspirational leadership.

Sosa Trek
Steven Sauke
Illustration and NASA art of the Carina Nebula

Klingon Steve
Qapla!

Steve was assimilated. Resistance was futile.

Capitán Kork
"I am the Captain of the Enterprise
And a right good Captain too!
You're exceedingly polite, and I think it only right
To return the compliment!
We're exceedingly polite, and he thinks it only right
To return the compliment!"

Vulcan Ambassador Steve
Live long and prosper!

Steve Sosa
in his office
This was the original illustration, which
I tweaked for all subsequent versions

How Have Things Changed on Broadway?

For today's installment in the "Days of Yore" series, I'm excited that my friend Michael Kape has graciously agreed to share from his extensive experience onstage, behind the scenes, and as a Broadway critic, to recall ways Broadway has changed over the years. He also founded an amazing group (I may be slightly biased) called Broadway Remembered that he has allowed me to join him in adminning, along with three other fantastic admins. 

So without further ado, here's Michael:

-----

How Have Things Changed on Broadway?

Nearly 70 Years of Watching

 

Michael Kape

It begins by settling into a cramped seat—taking your time or rushing because you showed up after the show started. And not much has changed—with the seats, that is—in over 100 years. But what about the shows we’re seeing on the stage? Ah, there, at least, we’ve made some progress.

It is nearly impossible to encapsulate everything we’ve seen change over the past several decades. My own time in the theatre extends back only 70 years or so. I can only offer my observations and opinions (and I definitely do have some opinions). So, let me begin by offering a bit of heresy. The 1950s and 1960s were NOT really the so-called Golden Age. Those were good years, of course. But things have changed and improved. It can even be argued shows are better now than they’ve ever been, and they continue to improve. Yes, this is coming from someone who is considered an old fuddy-duddy. We’ll come back to this.

Oddly enough, this all came into focus by viewing a 35-year-old musical recently, one I had always thought was a pinnacle of great direction and design (not great music and definitely not great lyrics). Yeah, we all know the show—Phantom of the Opera.

After 35 years, it’s become old. What was once innovative and thrilling now feels tired and stodgy. I’m not talking about the performers (all great); I’m talking about the staging, the design, the overall feel. What once was exciting seems old hat. Maybe if I hadn’t been exposed to it multiple times when it debuted, I might still be thrilled by a slowly falling chandelier (like really, that can’t be considered a crash, can it?). Oh. Look. That. Chandelier. Is. Creeping. Down. To. The. Stage. In. Slow. Motion. (Cue the quasi-rock music.)

Once upon a time, like 70 years ago, we had a Main Stem bustling with excitement. A constant barrage of new plays and musicals, many of which became classics. But let’s give this golden age some context. Amusement options were fewer. Most of the country derived its entertainment from movies or television—with theatre even then a distant third (though there were more tours treading the boards from Savannah to Seattle). For every My Fair Lady, Broadway offered up a panoply of overnight flops. On the other hand, any show running at least 500 performances was considered a hit; now it hasn’t even begun to repay its investors.

My first real exposure to Broadway happened when I was only three. My late mother, ever the Broadway Baby, bought me Rodgers and Hammerstein for Children, a boxed set of 45s with music from Oklahoma to Pipe Dream (Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music were still to be written). It was an easy way to introduce musical theatre to budding audiences. We could sing along to Happy Talk or The Gentleman Is a Dope (such a naughty word for us tots!) under the complete cooperation of theatre nerd parents (even my father got into the act by giving me his copy of the printed version of Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls—not the musical but the book upon which it’s based). So, I come by my theatre fixation honestly; I was raised that way. My first time on stage (but definitely not my last) was in the title role of The Gingerbread Boy at age six. Every cast album played on the new stereo as soon as it was released. I had the truncated version of Most Happy Fella memorized by age seven. The collection in our home also included South Pacific, Kiss Me Kate (on 45s), West Side Story (I was already a Sondheim fan), The Music Man (which my late sister Anita and I did in 1965), and many more. Of course, I devoured the liner notes for each recording (does anyone else miss those brilliantly written liner notes?) And being a devilish developing theatre nerd, I somehow “appropriated” my mother’s copy of The Complete Words of Gilbert and Sullivan (and I still have it, too).

 

But I digress. (I’m often accused of talking in parentheses to which I plead guilty.)

How have things changed on Broadway over seven decades? Simple. There’s a lot less being done (with far fewer theatres) but what is done is much better. This isn’t to say we didn’t have some great works 70 years ago. We did. The Lerner and Loewe catalog. The Rodgers and Hammerstein library (except for maybe Pipe Dream and Me and Juliet—what were they thinking?). Candide (yes, I know it was a flop but has there ever been a finer overture?). 

Then the so-called Golden Age gave way to something better. Concept. Shows like Cabaret. The whole Sondheim collection. Lloyd-Webber and Rice (when they worked together; we won’t discuss Cats). The mega-musicals. Better librettos. Much better design (have you ever looked at how cheap those Golden Age musicals looked?) and lighting (the current Phantom lighting looks so cheap and meh compared to what’s available now).

We expect (and get) more from Broadway now. Yet as the saying goes, you can’t hum the scenery. Yes, the set, lighting, and sound have all taken giant leaps in the past 70 years or so, but are the stories being told any better? That all depends on how they’re being told. Case in point (for me) is Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I know, I know, the great American tragedy. But it’s always felt like a product of its time. (Sorry, that’s just how I felt about it.) Could we really identify with Willy Loman 70 years later? I know I couldn’t—until I saw the new production on Broadway recently. The play had been reimagined, reconsidered, refocused. Now, at long last, it felt relevant again. And that’s what great theatre is supposed to do—challenge what we thought we knew and take us in an entirely different direction. On the other hand, I know many theatre companies across the country (and a few in New York City) work on slavishly recreating original productions. We can see The King and I still faithfully reproduced in any number of places (I’m not referring to the last production) as if it was a museum piece. No thought. No imagination. Even the sets are from 1951!

After all this, I’m sure some of you are wondering what could ever qualify me to write about nearly 70 years of going to Broadway? Not a helluva lot, actually (gotta be honest here). But having been given this platform to speak, I’m taking advantage of it. But in that time, I’ve been an actor, director, designer, producer, stagehand, playwright, and (much to my eternal shame) a critic (seven years on the Dark Side). And one other credit on that list—one of the brave souls administering Broadway Remembered, an aptly named group all things considered. We remember and we celebrate. And we educate because there’s still a lot of people to learn. Consider the following overheard very recently on 45^th Street and Shubert Alley: “The Booth Theatre—is that where Lincoln was shot?”

Yeah, we have a lot of educating left to do and plenty to remember.