He’s Not Only Off; He’s Off-Off-Off-Off-Off
New York always has the best and the latest so it’s no wonder that they have nourished the off-off, off-off-off, and for all I know, off-off-off-off craze.
It is not enough for these fine people to have Broadway.
It is a big city, and it cannot be supposed that it can treat the entire 11 million citizens to a night of theater all at once.
No, they have designed a structure that starts at the top with Broadway, sporting the best or at least the most likely to succeed offerings, and then descending from there to off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, off-off-off-Broadway, and as I have suggested, off-off-off-off Broadway.
The system, as an outsider understands it, lets each succeeding ‘off’ serve as a testing ground for the newer or more experimental plays, and if they garner success there they can move up the ladder to one fewer off.
By this light, it is in the nature of a baseball’s farm team system, with hopeful talent hoping to make an impression in the Upper West Lower Midwest League, where the players stage pole vault competitions and sing country and western duos between innings to keep the thinnest of crowds engaged, while doubling as hot dog concessionaires when they are not actually on the field and sometimes when they are.
Hope springs eternal among athletes and actors, and the devout wish of each player is to attract favorable notice at the lower levels and be lifted up into the stratosphere of professional play, or in the case of theater, onto Broadway.
Off.
Off-off.
Off-off-off.
Off-off-off-off.
That is a lot of offs, and it is to be supposed that there in the swamplands of the multi-off rankings the plays are getting pretty danged innovative and modern, not to say exploratative of the cutting edge of perception and the total uncertainly of heretofore unquestioned verities of the human experiment, which I take to mean that things get pretty weird up there on stage.
A theatergoer in these circumstances never knows:
If the potted plants, which to date he has taken as mere pleasant elements of the staging will rear up and start chanting like a Greek chorus;
If the playwright, run entirely dry of inspiration or ink about two thirds of the way through his intense family drama, jots down a direction in the script that the players – and this includes not only the ones on stage but those in the playwright’s other compositions, as well as the people in the diner next door – are to wing it from here on out and let the drama take its natural course.
Or if she will be pulled up on stage to represent Pride or Intemperance and be suitably scourged for a pleasant hour or two.
You can see why the theater-goer is promised an adventurous evening here in the Lower Depths of Off.
And there is nothing to say that it is over.
If you can build a system that accepts off-off-off-off-Broadway, what is to keep our edgy and talented writers, directors, and actors from simply packing up their gear when the scene gets too predictable and setting up shop in off-off-off-off-off-Broadway, or even off-off-off-off-off-off-Broadway?
There is always a beckoning frontier for these creative types and if the philistines don’t go for the scene where the dead ancestors rush from the side aisles and storm the set and carry away the leading lady and man, then they know that they can always take their talent somewhere else where it is appreciated.
We can all use this off-off concept in our own lives.
The next time you are sitting in your tax preparer’s office and he turns to you and smiles, gesturing to the tax form on the screen, and says, “say, have you ever filled out one of these things before?” don’t panic and erupt with fury. It is only that you are dealing with an off-off tax preparer. He will get better as the years go on! He is polishing his act right now, practicing on you! Why, the next time you see him he might even know what a deduction means, and what the difference is between gross and net income..
The same is true of the mechanic recommended by your brother-in-law, who seems to have mastered the art of repairing small motors of the push lawnmowers, go-carts, and Christmas lawn ornamentations that reenact Santa going down the chimney line, but for whom everything beyond that is a mystery.
Well, my friend, why would it not be?
He is simply doing his job in the off-off-off-car mechanic world, honing his skills and making his mistakes so that someday he might move up to the next tier of Mechanic World!
You too are fulfilling a vital function in the process. Every performer needs an audience and the arts rely on you, the patron, to see them through.
The whole process is a bit like being a member of the local public broadcasting community. Your dollars are leveraged throughout the region giving a needed lift to our young people who hope one day to be any good at their profession.
Take a look in the mirror at that mop-like haircut you just received and know that you have done your part in furthering the off-off-off barbering community.
Can we say that we have had off-off-off and off-off-off-off-off friends at various times in our lives? Hoo boy, can we.
Some would say that it is best to draw the line at off-off-off-off surgeons and dentists, but where are they to perfect the tools of their craft if not on people like you and me? Or at least on people like you?
It is, my friend, an off-off-off-off-off-off-off-world, and we are only the supporting cast.
