I was in Manhattan, it was the early 70s, and I was 22 years old, walking down Broadway on the Upper West Side, when this woman approached and asked me if I’d like to see a play. She said they needed or wanted a bigger audience for their new production. So I went in, with no expectations. And I sat in that 2nd floor loft theatre with a dozen strangers, totally mesmerized, and frightened, and moved as I watched an early performance of Mark Medoff’s “When You Comin’ Home, Red Ryder?”. I had previously gone to a few big Broadway musicals with my family and had no idea that theatre could be so real, so immediate, so powerful. That began a theater-going practice of mine, first in New York (thanks in part to TDF which sold FIVE tickets for $4.00 – really) and currently in Los Angeles, a practice of seeing on average two plays a week, or a hundred plays a year, for the past forty years. That’s a lot of theatre. And I’m thrilled to have discovered it.
Gary Gilbert
