Last night, I took in the Broadway musical, The Color Purple for the 7th time. My dear fellow-Peachtree co-worker, Ivory joined me.
I was up early and at the Broadway theater to take advantage of the show’s RUSH tickets. RUSH tickets are tickets made available the day of a performance at a incredibly reduced price. The RUSH ticket process, which a lot of theaters use, rewards patrons who are up early and really want to be apart of the live theater experience.
I’m one of those patrons. I was up early and in line dedicated to trying to see the show that evening with Ivory. We were both rewarded. We were on the second row for $26.00.
You can’t beat that.
I loved the show. I noticed some nice changes that had been made since I saw it Opening Night of Previews (November 1st, 2005). The show remains true to the novel and film and does its best to cover a lot of territory in a short amount of time.
The night took an interesting turn at Intermission.
After discussing the first act with Ivory (and her guests), I made my way to the bathroom.
As I posted last week…I recently took in Deborah Gibson’s small intimate acoustic show at the Canal Room. The show was a lot of fun (see earlier journal entry) but I didn’t hang out afterwards to say hello. The club was packed with a lot of people – most of who had had more than their fair share of drinks – were just hanging out so they could say they had their pictures taken with “Debbie Gibson.”
It wasn’t a big deal to me. I’ve met Deborah on several occasions (again, see earlier journal entry) and didn’t feel the need to hang around and wait for the crowd to disperse. That just wasn’t the kind of venue I wanted to talk to her in, there was just too much going on in too little space.
Now…back to Intermission at The Color Purple.
As I was walking up the aisle…who should be sitting just off the aisle flipping through her Playbill but…yep, Deborah Gibson. She was sitting side by side with her mom, Diane. We spoke briefly before I made a mad dash to the bathroom and then back to my seat for the Second Act.
After the show, I took Ivory around to the theater’s stage door so she could meet up with the actor who plays “Harpo” for a quick photo (see below). As different actors left the theater several stopped to say hello, including LaChanze who plays the lead role as “Celie.” She and I took a quick photo (again, see below) and she mentioned that she’d seen me sitting down front. We talked briefly about the show’s pre-Broadway run in Atlanta and LaChanze’s last show, Dessa Rose that I saw the week after I moved up to NYC.
Ivory also snapped a quick photo of Deborah and I freezing in front of the Broadway theater. As my friend Jeremy said, “How cool is it that you live in a city where you can run into Deborah Gibson at the theater?”
It’s very cool.
