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The leaves on the tall oaks had turned from green to red, and from red to yellow. In parks citywide, gusts of wind blew these leaves from their branches, each one dancing like a golden snowflake as it fell to the grass. In Astoria Park, the one just a block from my apartment, workers in red jumpsuits raked these leaves into piles then scooped them into large black trash bags. I watched as I ran by, headphones in my ears, a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants covering my body, my breaths releasing puffs of steam into the chilly morning. Dog walkers, maintenance men, mothers pushing babies in strollers, joggers and old Asian men doing calisthenics– we all populate the park’s black paths as the seasons change and we begin our Monday.

In this case, Monday means the beginning of my workweek. With my first novel finally written, and with most of the editing work done as well, I’ve been able to fall into a more typical weekday routine; exercising and eating breakfast, taking a quick shower before dressing and heading for work. ‘Work’ currently means taking the subway into Greenwich Village where I am a freelance employee on the production staff of an off-Broadway theater. This is my second month of employment there, where I was hired specifically to drive a twenty-four foot truck, shuffling around lighting and sound equipment as well as the occasional stage prop. It’s a nicely paying gig, and each weekday morning, getting up to jog or to practice yoga or to lift weights, I’m glad that I’m not digging ditches for a living.

Working at the theater, we receive free tickets. We meet the actors from the shows. We meet the writers and producers. Occasionally we meet a big star of the stage or screen – a household name. We do our part to set the stage with lighting, sound, and scenery. The other freelancers here are actors mostly (some of them are painters) working as stagehands or stage carpenters to keep themselves fed while building careers. We’re all paid somewhere around twenty dollars an hour. We work approximately thirty-five hours per week. Winter is the slow time or so I am told and because it’s slow, we have hours of free time every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The theater needs us around in case anything needs to be done, so they keep us for the full seven or eight hour shifts each day and we never complain. We are young artist building careers and we need all the money we can get. The theater knows it too. They hire us because we’re good workers, but also because we – just like the producers and playwrights and actors we facilitate – are passionate about art and willing to do what’s necessary to make theater happen.

So in our dead time we entertain ourselves. The other freelancers and I play gags on one another. We speak in funny voices. We sing songs. We invent short comedy sketches. We walk through the prop closets, playing with the swords or the fake weapons. We’re combating cabin fever, trying to shake the doldrums of boring days with no tasks to complete. The admin staff that oversees us watches as we speak in our phony accents. They watch us have pillow fights and play keep-away games. They must think we’ve all gone certifiably nuts. One day, picking up toll fare from the secretary who handles the petty cash, I pulled a prop revolver from my pocket and staged a hold-up scene. Another day I pretended to be a cadet at a military school and spoke to the admin assistants as if they were my ever-demanding instructors. As freelance employees, our winter schedule was slow.

There were plenty of things to fill my time, however. The theater has four venues, plus a live music hall that attracts mid-level touring bands from around the nation. Everyday, off-and-on from noon to six they have sound checks and often I watch from backstage. Other times, I hang out in the dressing rooms or lounge on the chairs in the storage room where they keep prop furniture. I read. I write on my laptop. I scribble my thoughts in my notebook. I talk with my co-workers.

While I spend my time after work writing or reading or taking pictures or exploring my inspirations, my co-workers rehearse for auditions or act in small productions. They paint murals or show their work at exhibitions. We are all lucky just to be employed, let alone in our cushy positions at the theater.

With my growing contacts between actors and painters, I’ve been making sure to go out to shows at least once a week, sometimes seeing plays where I work, sometimes watching my co-workers in their productions, sometimes just going to the concerts and bar shows of my roommate, Dave McKeon, or his musician friends.
Listening to Dave’s songs and to the bands of his friends, I’ve been learning to recognize the layers each instrument adds to a song; similar to the way each character adds to a story. Watching the musicians’ setup and takedown of each gig is interesting to me too. Sometimes I help. There’s a certain professionalism to the actors and musicians that’s been rubbing off on me.

As all of this has been going on, my father, three thousand miles away in San Francisco, has been gearing for a legal battle against America’s top corporate concert promoter. The company has announced plans to convert a temple in my father’s neighborhood into a five-night-a-week concert arena, filling the neighborhood with band tour busses and eighteen wheelers hauling sound equipment, plus truckloads of lighting supplies, catering vehicles.... My father and his neighbors fear their property values will plummet. For most of the doctors, attorneys and other professionals in his neighborhood, their expensive condos are their retirement funds. My father may be turning his attention to it as an attorney, and as a man with a few albeit limited connections to city hall, to taking on the case. An interesting predicament, I wonder if every theater or music hall must face this from time to time. I don’t feel like I have much at stake in the fight, but in some way, my father and I are both values in the same equation, players in the same game: he on one side, fighting to protect his investment in a neighborhood, and me on the other, benefiting from my employment at an entertainment establishment. After all, for what I knew, the theater where I work in New York may have faced similar opposition when it was established decades ago. Or perhaps its location was chosen to avoid such controversy.

In either case, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just busy watching it all happen, watching nature take its course, watching the seasons change as I continue down my path.