Malabar's, for shame, not so actor-friendly, and if an actor supply house isn't, then who do you expect is.so sad..i go there today, the tech day, of the play I open in on Thursday night, that's two days away, I purchase the white stuff to put in my hair, to age me rapidly to play Ruth Steiner in Collected Stories.. www.meaculpaproductions.ca and the sons of guns won'tgive me the 10% actor discount because my Actra card is last dated Feb '07 - which makes me ineligible for the deal. So I guess a lot of actors who's cards aren't up to date have been scamming the place, also Actra had a problem on their site for dues paying by credit card, and I had to call in to Actra to make the payment on my card, and just arrived home to my new sticker tonight that goes to March 08..now this may all seem like so muchstupidity on my part, maybe technically they are in their right, but I tried to explain that this was a dues paying time and Actra was having trouble on the site so there was a delay in my sticker, but they weren't having none a that and there was a whole other thing going on too.
They were very uninterested and I have always enjoyed as an actor visiting Malabar's, or Hiscott's, which is where I should have gone, because while they're a little cranky, they do take an interest. The fella who sold me the hair-whitener was very professional, but actually perfunctory, yes you were, maybe I wasn't famous or interesting enough, but there it is, in theold days, people working in the 'applied' arts were more into it. He was casual about the applicator, they didn't have it, I was crest-fallen, after all I had no time to go elsewhere, and I needed to try the stuff out. And he found one..which was good but I thought he was a little quick to say he didn't have one, a little cavalier. Did he not know how much it meant to me.
The girl who stared at me blankly and said "what are stay ups, could barely spend a second on whether or not the thigh -highs (excuuuuseee me) came in basic black, and one of my lines from the play surfaced loudly in my head: "you wouldn't be where you so smugly sit, if it weren't for us (feminists), our dirty work made your arrogance possible".
Oh yeah, and she made a real pount and carefully took the time to tell me it was a fINAL SALE..and stamped it so.
Well, it seems to me, that my real beef is how un-theatre-y they all were..oh they were theatrical, but maybe the influx of 'real people' and reality TV has produced an altered state in the market place and in the art!
What fellow theatre person, would not have honoured an actra card dated feb '07, along with a flyer to the show I'm opening in, not that they deigned to look at it.
Policy..of course they were just following orders, it's not their job to be supportive to, just an actor coming in to prepare for her show.
Too bad. That's always been part of the joy, solidarity, the industries that service ours and live off us, should maybe be a little more actor-centric as I experienced them in the past. Have times changed? has the pervasive money is God and Donald Trump delivering an employee dismissal, is history in themaking really taken over.
Not even a 'break a leg.. with those thigh highs', or lets see how we can make this work.. Ahhhh.I just feel bad that the 'American business is business' mentality, that Mamet describes so well in his work, had changed my old pal Malabar, the actor's friend.
Alright, I have no more time to waste on this..dress tomorrow and opening Thursday. And the white stuff, isn't that good, it's ucky..it turns my head into an unmovable helmet .I could have used a heads up instead of a thumbs down.
