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I think a healthy perspective makes all of us better people
and certainly more flexible colleagues.
There were times my life that I was off working somewhere,
and somehow, I mean, practically it
would have been a difficult-- I remember the one that really
got me was someone-- it was not someone in my family,
but a family that I was very close with,
grew up next door to.
And I remember when the mother, at a certain point--
she was in, I guess, her early 70s or late 60s--
but she died unexpectedly.
And I was, of course, somewhere working
in the middle of techs and whatever.
And at that point, I was like, you know, you're so focused,
and you think, oh, I can't-- I can't miss this.
I mean, I have to be here.
And I didn't go to her funeral, and I still regret it.
And that was an important moment for me.
It was like a watershed moment, where I said to myself, now,
wait a second.
Wait a second.
Actually, Zelda Fichandler, who is very famous
woman-- I don't know if you know who she is.
She founded with her husband the Arena Stage
in Washington, DC, which really was
kind of the first of the regional theaters
as we know them.
And I got to know Zelda really-- she was a director.
And I got to know her when I was at graduate school.
She was running the graduate acting program at NYU.
And it's a long story, but we got to be friends.
And I remember sitting in her apartment one night,
having drinks with her.
And Zelda said to me-- I don't know what I said.
And she said to me, Allen, you know,
a really important lesson is to realize--
and she said, and I know.
I was there myself.
And she said, then I realized.
But the important thing to realize-- it's
drummed in you from day one when you're involved in the theater.
The show must go on, the show must go on,
the show must go on.
And she said, I remember specifically
when I learned the show did not need to go on.
And I said, really?
And she said, yeah.
She told me the story about-- I think
she was doing-- I think it was Three Sisters, maybe?
They were doing it in the early days of Arena.
She was directing it, and she got a call.
It was maybe a preview or getting close to opening,
or maybe it was opening.
I don't remember.
During the day, she got a call from her husband
that her son was in a terrible car accident
and was in the hospital.
And was really, like, touch and go.
He was, like, clinging to life, as they say.
And she said the first thought that
went through her head was not, oh my god, my son
is going to die.
Her thought was, what about the show tonight?
And she said the next thought was, Zelda, you got a problem.
This is a problem.
This is like on her way to the hospital.
Because she said, I realized that the last thing that
had to happen that night, that had to go on, was the show.
And she said, it shocked me into something
that's affected the rest of my life.
And I thought, wow, this is a really important story.
And she said, you know what?
That shouldn't have had to happen.
You know what?
They found out what happened.
Someone's on the phone calling people.
They gave them tickets for another night.
It so didn't matter that that show didn't go on.
But my son was laying in a hospital,
in an emergency room, almost dead.
He recovered, I'm happy to say is the punchline of the story.
But I thought that was really-- you
know, stories like that from people who really know,
really had an impact on me.
And so I think that it was easy for me,
as it started happening, that I already
had the warnings from Zelda.
So when I realized that, I thought, OK,
time to regroup, Allen.
This is not the way an adult, a human being,
goes about conducting a life.
This is a job, and I know it's easy to become your life.
But it doesn't make you less of a theater artist
by wanting to do things like leave a rehearsal
and go to a funeral.
That's not-- you shouldn't worry about that.
So it's a big-- but there are people
that don't have that sort of epiphany.
And I think at a certain point in their life,
they become-- it's hard.
It's hard to be at a certain point in your life
and then have all those-- realize you--
because I think then you start resenting what you do,
because you think all the things you've been cheated
out of because of that.