Sleep Some More
I’ve been thinking a lot about rest this week, so I’m sharing a piece I wrote years ago about Actors’ Equity-mandated cots for the Wall St Journal. A bit of theater history and backstage life. Enjoy!
In the basement green room of the Barrow Street Theatre in the West Village, beneath a line of drying laundry and next to a coffee maker, sits a standard fold-up cot. Thanks to Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union that represents American actors and stage managers, every professional theater has one, and though it’ll never make it to the stage, for many performers it plays a central role.
This particular cot belongs to Nilaja Sun, at least for the duration of her one-woman show, “No Child…” Since 2006, she has performed “No Child...” more than 700 times internationally, but with the proper amount of rest, she said, “it always feels like the sixth time.”
Luckily, the theater offers what could be called the Rolls-Royce of Equity cots. “Extremely firm and taut,” Ms. Sun said, which is good for “muscle issues.” Thanks to her stage manager, it comes with a soft white fleece and a fresh, clean pillowcase. Plus, the actress reported, “No bugs. I’ve been at theaters where it’s taxing to even look at the cot.”
The little-known history of Equity cots dates back to Jeanna Belkin, who danced in shows on Broadway throughout the late 1940s and ‘50s, and currently lives in Gramercy. One day, while performing in the 1946 touring production of “Call Me Mister” starring Buddy Hackett, Carl Reiner and Bob Fosse, another dancer had what Ms. Belkin referred to as “a menstrual pain attack” and had no place to lie down. “It happens to all of us,” she said by phone. “I mean, not all of us…”
Ms. Belkin decided to take action. “I got mad,” she said, and pursued negotiations between Actors’ Equity and the company manager. There was some predictable push-back over the expense of the cots and where they would be kept. But the union worked it into the contract for that show, “and now it has expanded into every single contract Equity has.”
That is why, further uptown on 42nd Street, actor Todd Lawson was resting on his Equity cot on the afternoon following the opening night of “One Arm” at the off-Broadway Acorn Theatre. His metal, folding bed was not taut, nothing matched, and the pillow was stained with make-up. But with its striped, dorm room-esque mattress, two fluffy pillows and a folded blanket at the foot, the cot looked cozy—at least as inviting, if not more so, than Ms. Sun’s.
Mr. Lawson, who estimated that he’s performed in 50 to 60 Equity productions, said that the finest cot he’d ever used was a four-poster bed “in a little nook” in a theater in Cincinnati. Asked if it wasn’t a bit indulgent for a union to be looking after the napping needs of its constituents, Mr. Lawson said no, the cots are a necessity, particularly on matinée days and during 12-hour-a-day tech weeks, but also during the normal run of a show.
“I’ve heard that one hour onstage is the equivalent to four hours in real life,” he said. “It’s euphoric but it’s also exhausting. And sometimes we have illnesses.”
Among the eight performers in the “One Arm” cast, the cot is used frequently, and has been relatively conflict free. “I don’t know that there are hoggers,” Mr. Lawson said.
But what happens with cot competition on a bigger show? Ta’Rea Campbell, who has performed in Broadway productions of “Aida” and “The Lion King” (with a cast of nearly 50), and is now in “The Book of Mormon,” said her current ensemble shares five or six cots, and that there are no real rules for who gets one: “No sign-up. You get it or you don’t.”
The backstage area is cramped at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, the home of “Mormon,” so much so that one of its appointed cots lives in the standing of a stairwell. If spectators were to wander in between shows on a matinee day, Ms. Campbell said, they’d likely see various performers splayed out in the theater’s upper lobbies, balconies and box seats.
When told of two Off-Broadway houses where the cots had sheets and pillows, Ms. Campbell said, “See? Fancy. Broadway shows? No pillows.”
So the box-office bounty doesn’t trickle down to the lavishness of the resting areas? “No,” she said, “it doesn’t influence the cot choices.”
Finally, when each of the actors was asked if the cots are known to spark or generally play roles in “showmances,” Ms. Sun said she’d never heard of it. Of course, she stars in a one-woman show. Mr. Lawson said: “What happens backstage stays backstage.”
But Ms. Campbell reasoned that it was logistically unfavorable. “It’d have to be some really tiny people—no bumping, no grinding,” she said. “Stranger things have happened, but I’ve never seen it.”
I’m all booked and busy this week but if I were not, I might check out one of these literary events, which I found through Tyler Wetherall’s excellent Substack, Reading the City:
Monday. Dave Eggers, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle and The Eyes & the Impossible, launches Contrapposto, a sweeping novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art. Moderated by John Hodgman (Judge John Hodgman) and featuring a reading by Josh Hamilton (The Last Thing He Told Me). From $19; 7pm; Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, Manhattan
Tuesday. Andrew Sean Greer (Less) joins The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz for the launch of his new novel, Villa Coco—a sun-soaked mystery and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who we’ve always wanted to be. The evening will open with a special performance by Jason Robert Brown, offering a preview of Less: The Musical. From $50, including the book; 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, Manhattan
Tuesday. The New York Times journalist Carlos Barragán launches his debut The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers—born out of Barragán’s personal experience, and grounded in his extensive reporting in Lagos, The Yahoo Boys is the story of four young men struggling to get by in one of the world’s most unequal cities, and their victims on the other side of the globe—in conversation with staff writer for The New Yorker Gideon Lewis-Kraus. Free; 7.30pm; Greenlight bookstore, 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Wednesday. Sara Nović (True Biz) celebrates the launch of Mother Tongue—in this emotionally rich memoir, she retraces her path out of the hearing world and into the deaf community and seeks to understand what it means to raise children who are different from her—in conversation with Ruthie Ackerman (The Mother Code). $10, redeemable in-store; 7-8pm; Books Are Magic Montague, 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, and livestreamed free
Saturday. Another mass community reading event from Reading Rhythms. Read a book of your choice, and enjoy the intervals of guided conversation and live music amongst hundreds of participants. Free; 2-4pm; Abolitionist Place, 110 Willoughby St, Brooklyn
Paintings by Christina Dobbs.
I will leave you with this gem.
xo Lizzie
PS - Want to write? My summer memoir and personal essay writing class on Zoom begins July 1 and runs Wednesdays from 1 to 2:30pm EST. For more information and to register, check out my website.