My first encounter with Mikey was the fall semester of my freshman year of college. I was still trying to break into the Theater Production/Design program at the school and after going back and forth between two people who didn’t know what to do with me, one of them finally set me in the right direction and gave me the contact info of the costume design professor. A few nights later, I was up in the costume shop where she held her interview with me. That’s when I first met Mikey. He was in the back room of the costume shop collaging for a show he was assistant designing on in which an angst-ridden teenage boy throws a baby into freezing cold water. We said hello and that was about it. It wasn’t until the following fall that we really got to know each other.
One of the best things Mikey ever did for me was go into Greenwich Village in search of red thongs for the boys of The Full Monty. Technically, this was something I should have done since I was the costume designer’s assistant but Mikey didn’t want me to have to do that. Why? Because I am tiny and afraid of all the shops with the questionable things in the windows where the red thongs were to be found. When he returned that evening and plopped down the bag of g-strings is when I learned he had spared me this experience on his birthday. Having been in the costume shop since 10 AM that morning trying to sew snap tape along the side seams of uniform pant after uniform pant, I started hysterically laughing. But I didn’t mean to laugh. Crying is what I meant to do because I felt bad he did that for me. So I exclaimed, “I want to cry, but I’m laughing. I have no control over my emotions!” Thus creating what I think is our favorite memory of each other. Another favorite of mine is how he and another girl, Steph, used to refer to my friend Hannah and me as “the kids.”
That production closed in November of 2007. It is now January 2011 and dad is all grown up and a good year and a half into a stint as wardrobe supervising/puppet wrangling Avenue Q Off-Broadway at New World Stages. Having looked up to Mikey as an underclassman, I was ecstatic when he said I could shadow him backstage one evening and see exactly what it is he does at work.
Before the show I got to watch him do his puppet prep, part of which involved combing the human hair wigs attached to each of the puppets. Once theperformance began he, remembering my fear of wigs, decided to shove the back of one of the puppet’s heads in my face. But he combed that girl’s hair so well I was not afraid. (However, I was afraid during the show when he used the puppets to either caress or punch me while waiting to hand them off to the actors.) Mikey, still being the professor-like man that he is, also let me be a little hands on and help in doing such tasks as velcroing rods in Rod’s hands (ha!) and explained to me how they are constructed. Did you know that puppets have brains?!? They’re made of foam, but still… There is a lot about puppets and puppet wrangling that I neverknew or even thought about.
One thing I never noticed about Mikey while we were still in school together is just how fast he walks backstage. Trying to keep up with him reminded me of a high school friend I used to walk from class to class with. She was 6’3” and I had to speed walk alongside her just to keep up with her normal pace. Mikey is 5’10” and in my attempt to keep up with him during his track I was slightly jogging throughout the entire show and still barely able to keep up. On numerous occasions, I almost ran into the same stupid pole. One thing I did manage to notice while we were still in school, though, is that Mikey constantly showed up ready and raring to run wardrobe without having eaten at all that day. The only difference is that instead of bumming pretzels off of me, he is now asking fellow crew members to pick him up something with lots and lots of protein while they are out to get something for themselves before the show anyway. Upgrade!!!
Having just worked on a straight play that discussed life and death, I forgot what the backstage atmosphere on an upbeat, fast paced musical could be like. Despite the differences in these types of shows, though, it seems as if the backstage chatter amongst the actors is always the same- the level of the audience’s responsiveness that night and Facebook seem to be universally popular topics. But aside from listening to the actors rant about that night’s lackluster crowd, I got to see Mikey in all his puppet wrangling glory. The night was a constant state of motion, running puppets up stairs, down stairs, from stage right to stage left, handing off puppets in a manner so that the actor could dive right into their next scene, pinning the puppets' hands to their neutral spots before handing them off again. It’s really aperfectly planned out routine at this point and the track sheet Mikey put together for the show is better than any of the directions MapQuest has been able to come up with for me recently. But having witnessed just one night of the madness that is Avenue Q, I can’t really describe what it is that I saw. I know there were puppets, and people, and singing but it’s all such a blur to me now. Oh, and did you also know there were so many different types of gray? Well, apparently there are. Who knew? Let’s hear more on that from Mikey…
So exactly how many types of gray are there?
Many, many different types. The term, "shades of gray,' I was using refers to what happens to the puppeteer gray's under the stage light, in some light cues they tend to go green, or brown, or sometimes navy and the designers of this show, want them to stay GRAY so we find costumes that are gray's that lean towards a deeper richer gray than a lighter gray.
In your own words, what does your job at Avenue Q entail exactly?
I am responsible for the care, organization, maintenance and other day to day aspect of the puppets. This means fixing arm rods until we have to order new ones, re-tacking the clothing to the bodies when the tacks fail, getting new hair accessories when they break, schedule a wig maintenance call when it's time to restyle the girls.
However, I am also in charge of the care and maintenance on the costumes including the light up wedding dress for the actors during the course of the show. This includes steaming, pressing, laundry, presetting and repair, as well as the quick change for Christmas Eve, into her wedding dress.
How does your job on Avenue Q compare to other shows you've wardrobe supervised?
It doesn't really. I was hired when someone was leaving the show and they needed to find someone. I was told I'd be Puppet Wrangler and said,"Oh I've never done that" and was told, "We'll teach you." And so they did. I started work on November 9, 2009 and I don't think I had a handle on the puppet portion of my job (which is a big big portion) until mid-December. Clothing is simple in it's way. If it's ripped, you patch it or replace. With the puppets if something is wrong, they need to be sent to Rick Lyon to fix, and that means scheduling a pick up with Rick's availability. Now, usually this can happen as soon as our next off day, but sometimes it can't and then it's a matter of switching out pieces or parts from press puppets to tide us over 'til they get fixed. That kind of thing wouldn't happen with clothing. So it doesn't really compare, it's a whole new beast.
What's the craziest thing that's ever happened to you backstage?
The craziest thing was having to run the show in an eye patch. I had scratched my cornea with my contact lenses and couldn't get a swing in to run the show, so I had to run to Duane Reade and buy a eye patch. Now, at this time, I was running some of the deck cues backstage as well and had to do the whole track without any depth perception. Needless to say there was a lot of running into walls and actors having to adjust to my being in a weird place cause I thought I was in the right place.
How did you wind up at Avenue Q?
This starts a few years before I ended up there. In the fall of 2008 I was working at the Vineyard and become good friends with the sound guy, Dave. We did another show at the Vineyard together in the winter of 2009 and then a show at The Public in spring 2009. Fast forward to the end of October 2009 and I was just wrapping up a NYMF show called The Happy Embalmer when Dave calls asking for my resume and explaining that the puppet/wardrobe guy has given notice and that Dave wants to give my resume. I got a call the next morning (a Saturday) had an interview on Monday and was told to come back in three weeks to train. So it was very fast and most certainly made my head spin.
What's your favorite memory of wardrobe supervising a show?
I'd say it has to be Wig Out! at The Vineyard in the fall of 2008. The cast was amazing, the show was amazing, it was my first BIG show out of college and I got to work with a designer I looked up to and really see how she worked. It was a truly eye opening experience that let me know this is most certainly what I want to do with my life.
How does working on Rock of Ages compare to Avenue Q? Is there that same type of upbeat, familial atmosphere backstage like the one I noticed on Q?
It's hard to compare. At Q I'm one person doing three jobs and at Rock of Ages I'm one person on a team doing the same jobs. But they are both amazingly interesting and filled with great people. That atmosphere is doubled at Rock because of the size of the crew, we have nine crew members at Q and I believe it's twenty at Rock of Ages, so it's more people and they've always got swing crew members (like myself) in, so they're always joking around to make them feel welcomed.
What type of advice would you give people who want to work backstage in wardrobe themselves?
Grow a thick skin, but retain a good sense of humor. You will work with people, most likely an actor who is mean to you, or with a stage hand who doesn't do there job and it affects how you do your job, or with bad company managers, and when you work with any of those people, if you do not have a thick skin, they will beat you down and you will not want to go to work anymore. But if you go in feeling strong, and ready to laugh at the whole situation and just know you're doing the job you've been hired to do right, than you'll be fine.
What's the best advice anybody has ever given you?
My Scenic Design professor in college, J. Wiese, once told my class, "If you ever wake up, and don't want to do this anymore, just think it's too hard and you won't succeed and you just can't do it. Then quit. Because someone with a better attitude deserves the job you're ungrateful for."
Above is a picture of Mikey, Princeton and Jonathan Root.
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