How the Other 98% Live*

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.” - John Updike

"Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and at worst, a fraud." - James Baldwin

I was not born in New York. Far from it. I lived there for five years that passed in the blink of an eye and have since moved on to a place that I love. But quotes like the ones above give me a deep sense of comfort because my short time in that brutal and magical city has ruined me, perhaps forever, for at least some aspects of life elsewhere. Two recent experiences, both involving stages, made this starkly clear, and it has been a dismal realization.

On Tuesday night, Ed and I met some friends to go to a performance put on by an organization called Truth Be Told. Anyone who is familiar with The Moth will recognize the format: Truth Be Told is a storytelling event. On ordinary nights, spectators can put their names into a hat and, if selected, take the stage to tell a five-minute true story to the audience that connects in some way with the night's theme. They usually take place at Shine, a local brewery. I've never been to one of those; instead, we started with the creme de la creme (so to speak): a grand slam event featuring only winners from the regular events. (I was a little confused about this because one of the emcees alluded to more than one winner from one particular show.) The theme was "Thwarted."

I was quite looking forward to the show, but I left the theater nearly three hours later feeling deflated. The stories themselves were fine; in fact, some of them were quite good. Ed and I attended a few Moth events in New York, and some of these storytellers would have been, if not on par, very close on the coattails of some of the performers we saw. But I was taken aback by my reaction to the hosts of the event, two local women who introduced each storyteller and performed in grating musical interludes sprinkled throughout the evening. I had no idea I'd become such a snob.

It's not that they were bad at what they did, per se. But there was an amateurish quality about every aspect of the show that I couldn't seem to ignore, and I felt deeply resentful about it. Some of the best performers in the world make their way to New York, so that even community theater productions are of excellent quality. I've seen dancers in subway cars that have taken my breath away. New York is overflowing with talented people, and I'd come to take it for granted. Still, if you'd have asked me two years ago, on the cusp of our move, whether I expected that the rest of the world would be the same way, I'd have scoffed and said that I knew it wouldn't be. What I didn't realize was how little I'd internalized that reality. It was a lonely feeling to scan the sea of mesmerized faces all around me and feel as though I was the only one who noticed that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. I left the theater, called (I'm not kidding) the Dairy Center for the Arts, with the dismal realization that any show I saw in Boulder was likely to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I missed New York suddenly and fiercely. 

Denver, I was sure, would be different. While driving 45 minutes to see a show was not a prospect I relished, I figured it would be worth it to see good theater. You can't expect too much of a town of 100,000 people, after all, but a big city like Denver would surely be different. Last night I joined some friends to see a show I'd seen and absolutely adored in New York, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. It was one of the funniest shows I'd ever seen, and I looked forward to reliving the experience with my friends.

The experience was...fine. The show was amusing. But where I'd nearly fallen out of my seat for laughing in New York (without help from any of my fellow theatergoers, who were too busy nearly falling out of their own seats to offer a steady hand), I found myself simply chuckling here and there in Denver. The show was the same, but the actors, alas, just fell short. It was a lukewarm performance, I felt, and even superb writing could only go so far.

I was astonished, therefore, to hear glowing praise in the stairwell as we made our way to the exits after the curtain call. The audience, it seemed, had loved the show. Of course they hadn't seen the original cast perform it, as I had. But would I have been as laudatory as those around me even if this were my first time? I doubt it.

I suppose I must resign myself to setting lower expectations for "local" performances (though Gentleman's Guide was the national tour, not some backwater adaptation), or to holding off on theater when I'm not visiting New York. Who'd have thought that so many wonderful experiences in New York audiences would have translated to disappointed experiences elsewhere?  

*2% of Americans live in New York City.