It should be said though that in my time, BAM was incredibly slow, dark most of the time, due to the massive failure of a BAM repertory company the season before which had eaten up all of the money.
A typical day would be relatively boring, and on many weeks upon end I attempted without success to consolidate my boss's three roldexes. I became expert at solving the New York Times crossword puzzle. The day ran from 10 to 5, unless either my boss or I had performance duty, but performances were few and far between.
BAM was adjacent to the wonderful clock-towered Williamsburgh Bank Building which contained the best diner I ever found in twenty years in New York, Hansen's. There en route from subway to work I would stop for my sausage and egg biscuit. Later, like every other day, I would have their meatloaf for lunch. Hansen's was very small and quiet which was good because I was usually hung over from a night of fine partying. My simple goal was merely to leave my bed and appear at my production office desk, armed with breakfast, which my boss allowed me to eat before we spoke.
On only one day was my routine broken, and it was because we were doing a show. Well, not a show of course, but the Opera House stage was being used to tape an ABT special for PBS. This fact was far from my mind as I entered the office to discover with dismay someone using my telephone, thus blocking the path to my long-awaited chair. That someone, wearing a full-length baby blue terrycloth bathrobe was facing away, so I froze and impatiently awaited his departure. He finally hung up and turned to me: it was fucking Mikhail Baryshnikov! I almost dropped dead! For Misha, my desk could be his, my food, my... ah well.
The other celeb that BAM brought me was Kitty Carlisle Hart, with whom I was granted a trifle more time than with the dancer. I knew her not only from "To Tell the Truth," but much moreso because she played the evil countess on the Decca 78RPM record album "The Song of Norway." Because I eagerly volunteered and owned a tux, I was allowed by the upstairs people to be her escort of Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Gala in the LePercq Space. What a dame! She could not have been more a Lady. Kitty Carlisle for God's Sake!
I assisted her a couple of more times when she came to see perfs, which had begun to increase in my second season. She asked me once to go out and tell her driver (in a beat up old Chevy) the running time of the show. Her courtesy was in stark contrast to that of the then House Manager of BAM, John Miller.
I recall my first day at BAM, me an Atlanta boy who had three Rhode Island summer seasons under my belt and who had finally landed a job in NEW YORK CITY! Alas, it was only three hours into the day when my boss instructed his runner to go procure something. "Here, or in New York?" the runner queried, and I was crushed.
John Miller the House Manager, like me and a few other BAM employees lived in Manhattan a/k/a NEW YORK CITY. Miller's contempt for Brooklyn and the whole damned thing he could not been made more plainly obvious. Here was a house manager who hated patrons, and despite the fact that he was required to roam the Lobby in his high-dollar ATPAM job, he rose above it, literally.
He was extremely tall, fit and proportioned to his height, but he didn't stop with God's gifts. He wore a cowboy hat, cowboy boots (another three inches), and he was never not smoking a large and offensive cigar. Thus Miller was a head above most, and under no circumstance would he be forced into eye contact with the "unwashed."
I liked him of course, and I once asked him to tell me a good story. He related a tale when one night there were shows in both Playhouse and Opera House with staggered curtain times.
Miller: "The fucking show in the Playhouse was so bad that there were more patrons exiting the Playhouse than were entering the Opera House, a half-hour after the Playhouse curtain. A small and belligerent lady who had rushed out of the Playhouse began to harangue me, on and on, you know. Finally she caught wind of my utter indifference. 'Sir, I'll have your job!" she railed."
Miller then removed the cigar from his mouth, looked down, made the dreaded eye-contact, and said, "Madam, if you had MY job, you'd have to watch this shit every night!"
Another personage deserving equal attention was Marty Green, the IATSE stage steward, with a resident house crew of nine. Through a fluke I held an IA card, so from the start I was on better terms with Marty than my boss who had been there ten years. Toward the end of my time at BAM, I was finally allowed to supervise an Opera House show. My futile attempts to get the crew to work more rapidly greatly amused Marty, and at the end of the day, he asked me, "Bob have you ever heard of the TV show, 'Your Show of Shows'?" Yes, of course I replied, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.
"Well I worked that show, Bob, which came out of an old theatre in Columbus Circle, and one afternoon a guy, and an NBC Vice-President-- who reminds me of you-- comes in to 'increase our efficiency.'"
Yeah, so what, I replied. "A sandbag fell on him," grinned Marty Green, I loved that guy. He got me tix to Saturday Night Live!
Marty greatly enjoyed the week that the Dance Theatre from Harlem (DT) came to the Opera House. The DT was to play at City Center, but owing to good planning, that house was not available for their technical or dress rehearsals. Thus they rented our very available facility. However, because DT needed to replicate exactly the performance light plot, virtually all of the house repertory plot (or "saturation rig," as Taffy called it) had to be struck, to the tune of 400 lighting instruments. Making Marty Green even more happy was that everything had to done in a rush.
The crew spent a day or two striking the lights and storing them in the sub-basement. The next morning the DT rental package arrived, and the crew attempted to begin a hang. I say "attempted" because it was immediately discovered that the BAM lineset battens were 2" ID not the standard 1-1/2", meaning that conventional C-clamps would not fit onto the pipe. Of course the house crew had known this all along.
"What shall we do?" asked the panicked LD. Marty revealed that all the house C-clamps had been filed down to fit. "Where are they?" "In the sub-basement attached to the lights."
So another day was spent fetching, then replacing the rental clamps with house. Another day or two was spent in the focus. When finally everything was in perfect readiness, it was announced that (for reasons never fully explained) DT had decided NOT to tech and dress at BAM. So the unused rental plot was struck, the rep plot was rehung, and Marty was a happy man.
The only entertaining stage event in my time was the filming of a COKE IS IT! commercial spot in the Playhouse. This was a class event. Seats were removed, and tracks were laid for the 35MM camera crane. The Director of Cinematography had just come off "Prince of the City," and Broadway singers and dancers were brought in for each of the several days (before their curtain time), among them Lonnie Price, late of the flop "Merrily We Roll Along" where he was the lead. He may see at the piano here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rArYMm4DHs
The Playhouse was also the scene of post-gala party involving glassware, my friend Karen Fischer and the amazing "Beaver Bither" from Development. Both have remained in the biz.
Leaving the stage, in the upper ranks of BAM there was the great Judy Daykin who would later out-BAM BAM at City Center with her Encores! series. A great gal, but while at BAM we were not at all buddies, which we later became.
The only buddy beside my boss was the Director of Operations, Norman MacArthur. He was so kind and amusing, a gentle homo so steeped in the Anglican Church (I was also an Episcopalian) that he called Fifth Avenue's Church of the Heavenly Rest the "Church of the Celestial Snooze."
And that rightly brings us to my boss, the Production Manger of BAM, Taffy Waters. His real name was Malcolm I later learned, but he was always Taffy. He was a Welshman, Taffy was.
I had gotten my job as Assistant Production Manager because I had become friends with Kay Ziff, whose husband Charlie had been a prime mover in creating the new BAM in his PR job there. Charlie coined "BAM."
So I was a shoe-in as both Taffy and I knew during my interview in the Production Office, a large open room which sat between the Stage Entrance and the dressing room corridor. Taffy was embarrassed that the pay to be offered was so low ($15,000), but to me it was gold.
"Well, it's done I guess, but I have three more questions for you, " Taff said.
The questions were (1) Do you smoke? Yes. (2) Do you drink coffee? Yes. (3) Do you drink? Yes.
"You are hired!" He and I hit it off instantly, probably owing to our mutual sardonic and ironic humor. He had worked for Saddler's Welles in London and coming here had worked for the Pennsylvania Ballet where he met Wendy who became his wife. They lived on Staten Island and had two small daughters.
John Miller the house manager held his contempt for Brooklyn under his cowboy hat, but Not Taffy. In my second season, Taff presented a four-attraction performing arts series on SI, and to promote the thing, he was interviewed by the Staten Island Advance. "What do you most like about Brooklyn? " he was asked.
"Seeing it in my rear-view mirror as I approach the Gowanus Expressway" was his hilarious answer!
Taffy was charming, handsome, a seasoned theatre pro and the only practical joker I had ever met, before or since. At this he was also a pro.
He was constantly plotting and working out in his head the sometimes very intricate revenge schemes, such as against "Moose," a terribly over-sized white Stage Door security man.
There was a teensy hidden bathroom next to our office, and it infuriated Taffy when interlopers-- such as Moose-- would use it. Taff's idea was to rig a trick wire through the bathroom wall to the office, and if Moose was "in residence, " a gentle tug on the rope would set off the sprinkler above the toilet. Alas, this drowning never came to fruition.
But others did. At the top of season two, Taff gleefully announced that there was now enough money so that we could now hire a Production Secretary, in essence an assistant to me at a time when there was hardly enough work for Taffy by himself.
Sara Stewart. Like me she was southerner, she from Virginia, smart as hell, beautiful and funny, and she adored Theatre.
I wish I had photographs of these people.
In her first week, Taffy one morning sent her upstairs on a spurious mission. "What's happening, Taffy?" I inquired. "Hand me her pack of fags," he directed. Sara, like me, had passed the test of the Three Questions.
Taffy and I then proceeded to load almost all of her "fags" with charges which would explode when lit. Taff had pulled this lame trick on me the year before.
But this scheme was not to play as planned.
Sara returned, smoked-- nothing. She, Taffy, darling Director of Operations Norman MacArthur and I meatloafed ourselves at Hansen's that noon-- still nothing. By 4:30, Taffy was a nervous wreck. "Sara my dear," he intoned with his wonderfully expressive voice and accent, "nothing's happening here, you might as well split early."
Taffy held his breath until we heard the dull thud of the Stage Door closing.
"They cannot all have been duds???" he exploded. "Or could they?" I too was in a quandary. Although this was a Tuesday, Taffy opened the mini-fridge and brought out his Friday after-work Vodka. "Shit," we both agreed.
The next morning was uneventful until when, back at Hansen's, Tafffy, Norman, Sara, and I had finished dining. Except for Normie, we all lit up. Immediately Taffy and my cigarettes BLEW UP!
It's impossible to describe the hilarity which followed. Obviously Sara was the clear victor, and me and Taff were immediately and summarily demoted to dumb schmucks! Norman looked on with great amusement.
Sara explained that when she had gotten home the night before and was watching TV, her cigarette had exploded. "Those sons of bitches," she put it kindly. So that morn, she had sent us out on spurious missions and loaded our fags!
Sara was terrif, and she typed all my specs for the theatre I was renovating and was to leave BAM for. Lost touch with her years ago, sad to say.
Of course after that meal, Taffy became Sara's subject, and when I left she became the first girl Assistant Production Manager.
My last encounter with BAM was a while later when I was introduced to some young chick who had been chosen by the upstairs people to fill Sara's former Production Secretary slot. I asked the new girl what she thought of BAM. "Oh I don't know, what with cable and all." She was wearing designer jeans, and I knew she was soon to receive the Kiss of Death.
Taffy and Sara, like in the Inquisition, took their time with this one. Each day, after Dumbino departed, the Vodka would reappear, and Taff would saw a 1/2" off of all four of her chair legs.
This they did each day for about three weeks.
Said chick was forced to quit the Brooklyn Academy of Music, owing to chronic and inexplicable back pain.
Taffy Waters. There's no better way to say it.
--(c) 2015 Bob Foreman
In-house telephone directory, 1982
Program book excerpt, Fall, 1981
My resignation letter:
The card was given to me upon my departure, a product of BAM's resident surfer adonis dude a/k/a Jon Crow, graphic designer.
DUDES! The things that happened to TAFFY SHOULD NOT HAPPEN TO A DOG!!!
I was recalling another of his hilarious tales.
He was a teenage apprentice at Saddler's Wells Opera House (having rapidly escaped WALES), and they were playing the straight version of PETER PAN.
This of course involved "flying," so already I started to laugh, and he hadn't even finished the first fucking sentence!!!
He explained that STAGE flying is like a pendulum, and each cue only involves swinging from Point A to Point B.
A stagehand backstage on a stepladder provided the impetus for this move, and the PETER PAN set was entirely scrimmed, so he always had a clear view of the stage.
In rehearsing a given cue, the FLYING MASTER (gone after OPENING NIGHT) determines, based upon the weight of the flyer, and the weight of the specific stage hand assigned, from which step of the six-foot ladder he should jump from, with his hands securely affixed to a SPIKE MARKED position on the PULL ROPE.
The chosen hand on PAN was a slender man, and just before his first cue in the show, he could not resist the temptation of the NEAREST TAVERN, so he simply vacated the theatre!
The first cue was for PAN to leap from a standing position CENTER, up to the mantelpiece on the back wall of the BOX SET (Living Room), where there was an invisible HAND HOLD.
In rehearsal the slender (and apparently PRODIGAL) stage hand was instructed to jump down from the second step of his stepladder for THIS CUE.
But that SAD DAY, the PSM, in a fit of frenzied PANIC over the MISSING STAGE HAND, just pointed to any guy and SCREAMED (Sotto Voce, GODMANIT!) "YOU DO IT!"
THIS GUY weighed THREE TIMES more than Mr. Missing Slender, and he jumped from the TOP STEP of the ladder!
PAN flew so fast, and so hard, that when she hit the Mantelpiece, she FUCKING KNOCKED DOWN THE ENTIRE FUCKING SET!!!
The FUCKING STUNNED AUDIENCE could NOW see the BACK WALL of THE STAGE, the setting IN RUINS, and any sort of ILLUSION was, in a FLASH, SHATTERED!!!!
This was like a THREE CIGARETTE TALE for both me and Taf, and at this point, he DROPPED CHARACTER, and peered at me to make sure his YARN had hit home!
I was LAUGHING SO FUCKING HARD I fell out of FUCKING BARISHNIKOV's CHAIR!!!
He continued:
The PSM asked that the CURTAIN be "RUNG DOWN," and then the POOR SKELETON RUNNING CREW spent a "SPECIAL INTERMISSION" of twenty minutes to re-install THE FUCKING SET!!!
"When the curtain finally AROSE AGAIN, POOR PAN, seemingly stuck forever in ACT ONE, SCENE ONE, was standing on the Mantelpiece, GRIPPING THE HAND HOLD for DEAR LIFE, SHIVERING!"
Now THAT'S MY KINDA SHOW!!!
I love you, you NAUGHTY CHILDREN!!!