Picture this: the audience rolls into a seemly delightful birthday party
filled with bright colors and balloons. The sounds of children laughing
with glee are heard as Pixie rolls onto center stage. With her sweet
smile beaming, she pops a balloon with a hint of murderous rage: "Awwww,
may it rest in pieces". This begins the rock 'n' roll ride through
outlandish personal stories of working as a party clown in NYC and
Hollywood.
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I had tried to see "Welcome to Clown Town" the other day, and got to the theater too late to get in. So I suggested to RQS that we go to see this play before I had to go home at the end of the weekend.
But first....
The day before, we went into Manhattan to see a film at the Quad Cinema. Due to the weather and weekend subway schedules, RQS and I had a hard time reaching the theater from her place due to the rain and the subway's weekend schedules. (The subway's weekend schedule usually terminates the M Train's service at Essex street, a location not convenient for most of the connections we needed to make.) So we took a bus to catch the L Train to Union Square (where service terminated due to maintenance work), then walked the rest of the way to the theater. Once we reached the theater, we found that we arrived too early and needed to kill an hour before the showing. So, it was off to get something to nibble on to ease the rumbling in our stomachs before walking back to the theater in the rain to see the film. And then, we ended up walking over to the West Village for dinner before going home.
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Sunday came, and it was time to see Welcome to Clown Town. RQS had gotten some virtually free tickets (we only paid a service fee) to see the play, and we left for the theater an hour and a half before the scheduled performance time. We needed each and every minute of this time, as we had to reach 36st street and 8th avenue from an area of Queens served by (formerly) BMT lines. Like yesterday, we ended up taking the L Train into Manhattan. But, instead of walking 1.8 miles to the theater in the rain, we took a convoluted path via subways to reach the Penn Station area.
Finally we got to the theater, and had the chance to see the play. Although it was short, it was very entertaining. I can only imagine what this woman felt when she was hired out to perform for an hour at a gang member's children's birthday party, and the family attempted to use force to prevent her from escaping their clutches. (She was lucky to be able to use her to escape.) If I'm in the mood, I might go to see it again before it closes. But I doubt I'll have the chance to do so.
Next, it was out in the pouring rain and off to a diner for an early dinner. By the time we were seated, the heavens opened up, and we were lucky to get inside without getting drenched. And then, it was into the subway system to attempt getting home. For what should have been a 2 or 3 train ride, it took us 5 trains to get home. Weekend subway maintenance and the rain made a 1 hour trip take almost 2 hours, as we avoided certain bottlenecks where crowds would either force us to wait a long while for a train, or cause us to stand for an hour.
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We reached RQS's place as the rain was easing off. All too soon, I had to leave her and go home. It'll be a bit longer than usual until I see her again. But, this will give me a chance to see some people I don't usually have the chance to see, and to do some of the things I don't usually have the chance to do.
