Read Excerpts from Stage Manager Richard Hester's HOLD, PLEASE: STAGE MANAGING A PANDEMIC
Hold, Please is a memoir chronicling March 2020 to April 2021.
By: Team BWW Apr. 16, 2022
Veteran Broadway Stage Manager Richard Hester (Jersey Boys) has just release "Hold, Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic," a memoir of the year Broadway went dark.
When COVID struck and the lights went out on Broadway at the start of 2020, Richard Hester went from stage managing Jersey Boys to sitting at home watching the news. In his habitual way, he organized his thoughts, and began sharing them on social media. At once artists from his four decades of Broadway and international theatre began to do what they had always done: listen to their Stage Manager for guidance.
Weeks turned into months. The virus spread, the death-count rose, and 2020 became a year unlike any other, filled with incomprehensible events: an election underway, millions out of work, racial divides exposed, economies shut down, all culminating in an attack on American democracy itself.
Through it all Hester maintained a daily run-down of events, both global and personal. He contextualized what was happening, providing perspective from both historical and theatrical perspectives. Recounting tales from fabled Broadway stars and directors to his own family and friends, Richard became a clarion of clarity for those in his broad social circle.
One year later, Richard has collected his daily posts into a memoir from March 2020 to April 2021. With a Foreword by Jersey Boys scribe Rick Elice, this gripping real-time unfolding of events, with running observations and the looming sense of discovery, dread, despair, eventually turns to cautious optimism. Written with humor and compassion, this book will be essential reading for both theatre enthusiasts and those still grappling to make sense of the events of that tumultuous time. With Hold, Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic, Hester provides a unique perspective, culminating in the most important message of all-Hope.
BroadwayWorld is very excited to share two excerpts from the book (Richard's entries from April 16, 2020 and April 16, 2021), plus an exclusive extra entry for today, April 16, 2022. Check out all three below!
April 16, 2020
230,506 Total Reported Cases in New York. 17,137 Deaths.
In March of 2014, WHO reported that there had been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, West Africa. It spread and case numbers continued to grow mostly in Guinea and nearby Sierra Leone and Liberia. By summer, there were 1,000 new cases every day.
The international community felt that the US was slow to respond, but by August of 2014, the US under President Obama started to pay attention. By December of that year-now nine months later, Congress appropriated $5.4 billion in emergency Ebola funding-most of which was spent outside of the US. By the time the breakout was contained, 28,000 cases were reported with 11,000 deaths.
President Obama led a coordinated US effort. What he did was oversee the work each of these different agencies did. Each of these agencies was empowered to do the job that they were qualified to do. 3,000 DOD, CDC and USAID, and other health officials were sent to the affected region. At the end of the outbreak, twelve people were treated for the deadly disease on US 40 soil and two died. There was no pandemic. It was stopped. It could have gone global. It could have been devastating.
Using what they learned from battling the Ebola outbreak, the Obama Administration created a color-coded 69-page National Security Council playbook on how to deal with a pandemic. It was officially called, The Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents. The current administration was apparently briefed on it in 2017. The playbook was kept by NSC officials in the global health security directorate which was disbanded by the current President in 2018.
Departments that had been created by past administrations to solve specific problems remain unstaffed and all but abandoned under this Administration. Resources like the Pandemic playbook lie forgotten on shelves in empty offices. Instead of relying on people who have dedicated their lives to the study of a specific topic, the President, instead, makes up facts that suit him and his immediate needs and then sometimes, hours later, denies he ever said them. He often sends out conflicting messages or no message at all.
The trade embargoes against China put in place by the current administration are preventing basic supplies like swabs needed for testing from being able to enter the US. We are fighting ourselves rather than working together to combat this. We have already learned valuable lessons from the past. The cost of us having to be taught them again is too great.
Meanwhile, here at home, it is yet another stunningly beautiful day in New York City. It is a little chilly maybe, and breezy, but it is sunny and bright, and the sky is indescribably blue. The building across the way from us on 97th Street has a patch of green grass in front of it. This morning we woke up to the sound of a lawnmower being run over it. It took me back to being in the 'burbs as a kid.
In the middle of this global crisis, the virus, the economy, and the terror there are still many moments of utter simplicity and genuine beauty. It's time to open windows and look out and up at them. And breathe the day in, deeply
April 16, 2021
1,986.681 Total Reported Cases in New York. 51,270 Deaths.
There's a trace of desperation that's becoming noticeable in Michael's voice when he says, "so what should we have for dinner?" A week or two ago, he made artichokes for the first time and got excited. They were a wonderful novelty. They'd caught his eye in the store and he bought some on an impulse. They were something that we hadn't had before. We've had a rotating cycle 491 of asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts, green beans, cauliflower, and other vegetables but as we are now 400 days into this pandemic, that cycle has repeated itself more often than either of us can count.
Michael has always been a very good cook and I think he enjoys it. At least he used to enjoy it. I am guessing that at times he does and at times he wishes that he didn't have to do it. Over this year, he has gotten to be very good at it. 400 days into this pandemic there are very few parts of New York City that I have not walked in now. I readily admit that I've covered downtown far more thoroughly than I've covered uptown, but I've done a pretty good job of hitting most of it. I often tune out as I'm walking and find myself drawn to familiar paths so when I'm alert, I will purposefully try and veer off in an unlikely direction.
In August of last year, I was desperate to travel somewhere. Anywhere. I'm not feeling that kind of pent-up energy now. I'm just ready to be doing something else.
Having been vaccinated, there doesn't appear to be anything more that we can do other than wait for everyone else around us to catch up. After lagging behind the world in everything having to do with containing this virus, we seem to be ahead of most other places when it comes to getting inoculated against it. Countries that were beating down their curves seem to be struggling to distribute enough jabs for their citizens.
I don't have a sense yet of what my industry is going to look like when we start going back to it. I don't think that I am going to be doing exactly what I was doing before. Part of it is that I simply don't want to do everything that I was doing before we stopped. I'm not sure what it is that I want to do, but I am looking forward to finding that out. So far, everything penciled in on my calendar is something that I want to do. Most of it is either new or a fresh variation on an old theme. Some of it will get canceled and rescheduled and some other things will pop up and only some of it may happen. Even so, I have a sense of anticipation about it all that I haven't felt in quite a long time.
I'm not sure that we will fully know what we've lost this past year until we are back up and running without it. When you start something new, the first day is always nerve-wracking. You don't know what to expect and you don't know who all the new people are. You look out at a sea of strange faces and you think that they won't possibly ever be as good or as fun or as close to you as that last group was. Then you realize that you thought the same thing about that group when you first saw them.
We are, all of us, the sum of our choices. It's often the time when you least want to do something or change something or repeat something, that you break through into something new. Often, in my experience, the best choice is just to say yes. Before it all starts up again, how many walks can we take and how many meals can we possibly eat?
All of them.
April 16, 2022
About a week ago as I was crossing 57th Street without paying attention, I stepped into a hole next to a manhole cover and rolled my ankle what felt like halfway up my leg. The pain was excruciating and blinding. I got to the other side of the street and stumbled into a subway entrance and sat down on the ground for a few minutes to catch my breath.
I was meant to be meeting Michael and a friend of ours for lunch in what used to be the Edison Coffee Shop which was about 10 blocks down from where I found myself sitting. After the major wave of pain and nausea had passed and I felt slightly more back in my body, I stood up to go. I could put weight on the foot which convinced me that it wasn't broken, it just hurt to bend it.
Taking my time, I limped down 8th avenue towards the restaurant. I was truly amazed by the reactions of the people I passed. They recoiled from me. As if my sprained ankle was contagious, my fellow pedestrians skirted around me often with looks of, well I would have to say, revulsion, on their faces. Minutes before I was anonymous and invisible, now with my exaggerated limp, I was an obstacle to be avoided at any cost.
I got to the restaurant and Michael got me a Tylenol from a nearby newsstand. After lunch, we took a cab home and I moved onto the couch for a day or two. My ankle swelled to twice its normal size. We iced it and I waited for it to get better. On Friday, two days after this happened, I decided to go to a reading in midtown of a new show that friends of mine were involved in. I tried to find a cab, but none were around, so I limped to the subway station only to realize that I would never make it before curtain. At the last minute a taxi appeared, and we sped downtown. I got to the space just in time for it to start and hobbled into my seat. The people sitting in my row were annoyed that I couldn't just get to my seat naturally but needed to hold onto the backs of the chairs.
Afterwards, I made my way to the subway and headed home determined to not have to pay for yet another expensive car ride. Again, I was given an impossibly wide berth by my fellow pedestrians until I got on the train. There nobody moved out of the way at all or even so much as considered giving me a seat.
This past Saturday, Michael and I started our two-day drive to St. Louis to begin work on The Karate Kid musical. Since both of us would be working on it for some months, we decided to bring the cat with us. Given everything that we were dragging along with us, driving seemed easier than flying, so we made a road trip of it. We spent the first night in a Hyatt Place somewhere near Columbus and then arrived the second afternoon into the town we are working in on the outskirts of St. Louis. Thankfully, over the course of his life, the cat has been on almost every mode of transportation there is, and he is a good traveler. We left his carry case open inside the car, but except for one foray out at a truck stop, he never left it.
St. Louis and Missouri have no mask mandates at all. Our union, however, still has masking and testing protocols in place, so we will be following them for a while. Unlike many of our friends, Michael and I have both gotten more and more comfortable going mask less. Sometimes, I still do it out of habit, but I find that I am starting to forget to do it. When we got to the rehearsal studios and offices, everyone masked up for our arrival, but as our pre-production day wore on, more and more of them came off.
We had all tested negative so as we were working around the table, we started taking off our masks to sip coffee and then forgetting to put them back on. Notably, our director and associate producer, both of whom are Japanese with a long history of mask-wearing, kept their masks on the entire time.
The actors will join us in a few days and then, because of union guidelines we will all stay masked for at least the next two weeks at which point it appears that they will become optional depending on the national recommendations.
My ankle got to about 85% of its former self over about three days but the last 15% is taking longer. With each day, it gets a bit better, and I can now more-or-less walk without a limp. I'll forget about it and then be suddenly reminded when I try and move it in a way that it doesn't want to go yet. The swelling is down but there is a rainbow of stormy bruises around it. I have gotten used to the slight stiffness and ache. It's strangely not all that unpleasant. Someday, I am guessing that it will suddenly dawn on me that it is now fine and has been fine and I won't be able to remember the exact point at which that change happened.
There is still active thought happening around the pandemic, but I think that the same thing will suddenly occur to us one day - Oh, it's over. We are probably about 85% through it but there is still that lingering, nagging 15% that continues to occupy our daily lives. Masking notices, testing places, and general signage have become so ubiquitous that it is hard to notice them anymore. A few months ago, coming to a state without any mandates at all might have worried me, now I am far more concerned about the fact that we are here in tornado season. Nobody here seems overly concerned about the fact that a big storm is coming so I am sure I will gradually get used to that idea too.
COVID-19 seems to be lingering longer than our ability to get excited about it has. Half of Broadway is shut down. Both Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker have it, so Plaza Suite is down until one of them is better. The new musical Paradise Square is down for a week - something that I am sure that they can't afford. We are starting rehearsals here in St. Louis on a show with 27 cast members and four stage managers. We have just so many days that we can rehearse. If we need to shut down because people get infected, we can't make that time up. I am far more concerned that I will catch it and be forced to stay away from the work than I am about what that might mean health-wise. I got my second booster shot just moments before I blew out my ankle. Missouri and St. Louis, however, have no mask or distancing mandates at all. As far as anyone here is concerned, we are on our own.
Like the cold I got two weeks ago, all of this is going to peter out so much slower than any of us wants it to. We will mostly recover quite quickly, but those last few percentage points until we reach full health will take forever. At least it is going to seem that way.
I am choosing not to worry about it. I am grateful to be limping into rehearsal, even with a slight residual cough, and stuck in a mask all day. Eventually I will be able to leap into the room with carefree abandon, but for now, I'll just muscle through. I've got things to do and people to see.
Wow, does it feel good to be back in a rehearsal room with great people, working on something new and potentially wonderful. I wouldn't trade that for anything. Of course, I am now trying to picture exactly what damage I could do to my body by leaping into a room with carefree abandon. Hmm.
Standing by, everyone. Here we go.
Click here to purchase Hold, Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic
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