Minor Leaguer
Dunkirk, NY – I attended a performance of Othello last Saturday night at Shakespeare in Delaware Park. It was a cool night with a lot of clouds in the sky, and the hill seemed relatively full. I sat off to the stage left side. I was trying to go to the show without meeting anyone from the cast or crew, but the TD Scott, ever vigilant, picked me up and said hello. I have no idea if he let others know I was in the audience. I just wanted to experience the show as a regular patron, and not someone “in the know,” if you will. When you happen to be in the business and you go to shows where you know the performers, the act of going to a show becomes more than simply attending a show. It’s that lingering feeling of obligation to say hello and congratulations that I have always had trouble with. Even when I am in a show, I do my best to avoid the after-show crowd. 
Often after All’s Well I just snuck out “the back way” via Hoyt Lake to avoid seeing people. When I direct a play at Fredonia I almost never make myself available to audience members coming in and out of the theatre. You never can really tell what the sincerity level is, and having been the insincere one on several occasions, I just find it better to avoid it altogether.
I think this is because, at bottom, I really don’t consider myself much of a success overall as an actor. I can’t really pinpoint why that is. Maybe it’s due to the ironic cultural circumstances we live in where success is never defined locally or even regionally, but rather nationally via national media. I’ve never been in the national media, and I think that level of success is still out there, haunting me and probably many other theatre people like me. You wonder what might have been if we had just taken this step or that step. I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had managed to get through the hellhole that was the MFA acting program at NYU in the late 70s. What difference would an MFA from NYU have made as opposed to an MFA from the University of Nebraska? I guess I’ll never know the answer to that question.
One of my favorite movies is the baseball movie Bull Durham, starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. I love baseball, finding in the game many metaphors for theatre and for life. The movie features Costner as an intelligent minor-league catcher who has spent only 21 days in the major leagues. A sub-theme of the movie is that “Crash” is closing in on the minor league record for home runs, and by the end of the movie, when he has established the new record, he retires as an active player. He’s the new record-holder for home runs, but it’s only in the minor leagues. A significant achievement, you’d think, but it’s a minor-league record (PS – You probably know who holds the major league record for home runs by now, but who holds the minor league record? answer at end of post). Not only does the achievement go relatively unnoticed, Crash does his best to keep the whole thing as quiet as he can. He’s clearly pursuing the record, but doesn’t want the attention.
Having made the decision to more or less hang the spikes up myself (leaving the door open only for the “perfect” opportunity), I understand the situation “Crash” Davis finds himself in. My “big league” equivalent is having done two shows under an Equity contract. Thirty-two of my years as a theatre professional since undergraduate school have been in the “minor leagues.” I have easily over 100 productions to my credit, but all of them are non-Equity. Professional, yes (minor league ball is considered “professional baseball” for statistical purposes), but not “major league.” When I talk or write about theatre, what does my opinion or experience count for?
I wonder if the day will ever come in American theatre when we celebrate the achievements of our minor leaguers nationwide, or at the very least acknowledge that those careers have meaning outside of things like the Tonys and the Oscars. It may have always been this way. Who knows – maybe there was someone out there in the English countryside writing plays as good or better than Shakespeare’s, but since he or she never got to London, they were never produced. Even though we have the benefit in this era to know almost everything that is going on everywhere, perhaps it’s just human nature to admire and strive for the absolute top. Excelsior! -twl
(Answer: Hector Espino, the “Babe Ruth” of the Mexican League, with 484 home runs. For more information on minor league achievements, here’s a little read for you.)
