Alice in wonderland

Today was my dress rehearsal for tomorrow's concert with ASO in Avery Fisher Hall. I have performed once before in Avery Fisher, but I didn't really get the lay of the land during that concert for some reason, and today I got really lost. I knew how to get from the stage door to the stage itself, but I arrived rather early and wanted to go sit in the house and watch some of the rehearsal. The orchestra was completely filling up the entire stage, so I asked the stage manager if there was a way I could get to the house from backstage, and she told me that if I went up one flight of stairs, I would be able to enter a box and then could come down to the orchestra level through the lobby.

I figured that part out okay, and was sitting in the audience enjoying the rehearsal when I realized I had drunk a ton of water today and that I really had to find the bathroom. I tried going out in the lobby to use the restroom out there, but the doors to the outside lobby where the bathrooms are were locked, so if I went out there I wouldn't be able to get back in. I figured I could find some restrooms backstage, so I went back up to the level in the lobby to go through the box into the backstage, and I I swear to you, the door was no longer there. That's when I started to feel like Alice in Wonderland - I was standing in the box staring at the wall where there should have been a door, and I was totally dumbfounded. I went back outside the box to see if it was somewhere else, but there was no connection to the backstage. I went into the lobby on that level and saw that there were some restrooms I could access but they were locked too. I was seriously scratching my head.

I went back down and sat in the orchestra section again, but my bladder was really starting to be angry with me, so after fidgeting in my seat for a minute, I decided to try again. I went back up one flight and looked around for more doors, and when I couldn't find any, I decided to try going up one more flight just to see what happened. Well guess what? That's where the magic door was. I just didn't remember how many flights I had come down to enter the orchestra section. What a blonde! When I got through the magic door, I was backstage on the level above the stage where all the dressing rooms are. I figured there must be a public restroom somewhere on the floor so I walked to and fro several times but couldn't find any such thing. There was one dressing room that looked really fancy - like maybe the star or the conductor dressing room - and the door was wide open and I could see that there was a bathroom in there. I didn't want to go in there though, because I just imagined coming out of the bathroom with the sound of the toilet flushing behind me just as the conductor was trying to come in and have his quiet time during the break. I walked around a little more and couldn't find anything, and the situation was becoming more desperate. I checked the monitor to see that they were still rehearsing on stage, and I figured even if they finished I could make it in and out of there before anyone made it upstairs. 30 seconds later, I was quickly exiting and glancing from side to side to make sure no one had seen me.

I went down one flight to the stage level and found the orchestra administrator who is in charge of wrangling me. I made some silly joke to him about how I was getting lost in the building looking for the restrooms, and he said "Oh, no one has taken you to your dressing room yet?" "Nope," I replied. So he had me follow him. We walked up the stairs and down the hall, and he motioned around the corner. It was the dressing room where I had just used the bathroom in such a hurry and made sure no one saw me. I had been sneaking into my own dressing room. I'm pretty sure these sort of things only happen to me.