Theater stage manager and production supervisor Richard Hester chatted about his “Hold, Please: Stage Managing a Pandemic” book and “Broadway Barks.”
What inspired you to write your book “Hold, Please: Stage Managing a Pandemic”?
At the beginning of the shutdown – the first day, actually – I noticed that all of my friends on social media were losing their minds. Nobody knew what was going on and everybody was posting all sorts of nonsense.
People were panicking. I started writing as a way to bring together what everyone was posting, pointing out what made sense and what didn’t. I tried to put it into some sort of order. In the beginning, I did it to help me understand it all as much as I did it for everyone else. Before I knew it, people started expecting it to appear, so I ended up committing to writing daily.
Was it a cathartic process?
Yes, definitely. The more I wrote, the more I found I had to say. Early on, I posted a few things that I thought were a bit too personal. Those turned out to be the ones that people liked most of all, so I kept going in that direction. It turned out to be extremely freeing to “put it all out there”. I started going in deeper, trying to get past my own internal editor and I think, in the process, became a better writer.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
I learned that a lot of what I am scared or anxious about, everyone else is too. Something I knew but was really hammered home for me over these past two years, is that having a plan is one of the best things any of us can do to keep the terror at bay. Even if you change it, make a plan. I scheduled my days around the writing which gave me a purpose and a kind of job. It was hard to be anxious because I had a task to do.
You are also a producer of “Broadway Barks”… what can we expect from that?
Bernadette Peters and I came up with the idea of Broadway Barks during a casual conversation in her dressing room one day during ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. That was 23 years ago and we’ve been doing it ever since.
During the shutdown we decided to try and do it virtually and much to our surprise, we got tens of thousands of people to watch it. So we did it again and we did one with London shelters that we called West End Barks.
We are very much looking forward to coming back in person with it this year on July 9th in Shubert Alley in the heart of the theatre district. I think, though, that we will continue to do a virtual version (that we call Broadway Barks Across America) because we were able to include so many shelters in other states. I am probably as proud of Barks as anything that I have been a part of in my career.
My co-Producers Patty Saccente and Scott Stevens from Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS are truly amazing. Bernadette Peters and for many years the late, great Mary Tyler Moore are (and were) two of the most amazing people I have ever had the honor of working with.
What motivates you each day?
I like telling stories. Whether it is writing or photographing ( I also published a collection of city photos each week online (Substack.com) and still do) or working in the theatre on shows – it’s all storytelling. There is always something new to see or do or write about.
What do your plans for the future include?
I am about to start rehearsals for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Karate Kid: The Musical for Stages, St. Louis. We’ve been working on it since before the shutdown and did a wonderful workshop on it this past summer.
This is our first chance to do a full production of it and work out the kinks. After that, I plan to start writing again. I have an idea for a new project that I’m looking forward to figuring out how to do. Stay tuned!
Were there any moments in your career that helped define you?
It seems to me that the moments that have truly defined me the most during my career, have been the moments where I realized that we are all expendable and that the show isn’t mine. That sounds maybe a bit bleak, but I find it just the opposite. I often describe my job in terms of how a big manor house in England used to run (Think Downton Abbey).
As the stage manager, my job is like that of a head butler (Mr. Carson). I care very much about running the show (house) efficiently and well, but when push comes to shove, it isn’t my house. I just work there. I tend to get very involved in a show and am continually in danger of losing myself in it. It is never my show, it belongs to someone else.
When I remember that, at night, I can go home and let it go. There have been incidents all throughout my career when I have had to be reminded of that. I was maybe taking things to personally or feeling the burden of events that weren’t really mine to carry. I always feel better after those moments of being reminded, however difficult those actual moments, themselves, might be.
Writing the book is the exact opposite. Now it’s my house and my show. There isn’t anyone that I need to answer to, really, except for, of course, the Reader. I very much feel a responsibility toward everyone who helped me put it together. I want it to do well for the publishers’ sake far more than mine. It is an interesting feeling being on the other side of the equation. A good one.
What does the word success mean to you? (My favorite question)
Completion. Achieving what you’ve set out to do. It rarely has anything to do with reviews – whether it is a show or a book or whatever it is. It is getting to opening night, and getting there well.
My goal for the book was to finish it and hold a copy of it in my hands. It felt amazing to finally do that. Anything that happens to it from here – good or bad – will not change that feeling of success. That the reviews have so far been very positive is wonderful but they wouldn’t be what I measure its success by.
It was successful because it exits and everybody who contributed to it, did so at the top of their games.
What would you like to tell our readers about your book? (What’s the one thing you want them to get out of it)
I never understood why the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 became the “Forgotten Pandemic”. A couple of months into this current one, I understood. We are likely going to forget this one too. I think that we will remember that there was a gap, but I think that we will all start to forget just how long it was.
An hour, a day, a month a year, two years – it was just a gap, and our memories, I have found, tend to compress time when that happens. It wasn’t an empty period of time. Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest plays when London was in lockdown from the Plague.
The last two years have been traumatic, scary, and difficult, but they have also had moments of great joy and celebration. I hope that reading through what happened will remind people that we are making our way through it.
We learned so much and I truly hope that some of those lessons stick – many were learned at a terrible price. More than anything, though, I hope that the book allows people to remember the good parts too – the connections made or strengthened and the successes achieved however big or small. In the end, I think that’s what really matters.
“Hold, Please: Stage Managing a Pandemic” by Richard Hester is available on Amazon by clicking here.
