Bob Martin
|
About the author: London-born, Toronto-bred Bob Martin received 2006 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his book fpr
The Drowsy Chaperone. He also won a 2006 Theate World Award for his Broadway debut in the musical. He was nominated for Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his performance. His other theatre credits include
An Awkward Evening With Martin and Johnson, The Good Life, Alumni Cafe and
Skippy's Rangers (national tour). His film and television work includes
Last Night, Torso, Made in Canada and
Burnt Toast. He has won many awards for his writing, including the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award and five Canadian Comedy Awards.
I’ve been asked on many occasions to comment on what I have learned from the extraordinary journey of
The Drowsy Chaperone, the little musical that started as a bachelor party lark, went on to win five Tony Awards on Broadway and is now a multimillion pound West End production. Well, the greatest lesson concerns perspective. Let me explain…
One of my earliest memories is watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on our black and white television set in Toronto. Toronto is in Ontario. Ontario is a province in Canada. Canada is America without handguns. I followed the space program very closely as a child, building models of the Saturn 5 rocket, the command module and the lunar module. I had landed on the moon in my bedroom many times, crumpled bed sheets simulating the lunar surface, but this was 20July, 1969—this was the real thing. We were watching it on TV so it had to be real. You could trust TV in 1969.
I remember sitting on the floor in my living room, my nose inches from the screen, watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and deliver the “one small step” speech. I remember being impressed that he didn’t screw it up; the speech, I mean. After all, you can’t call for a line in space. No one will hear you. And I remember wondering at that moment what was going through his mind. Was he thinking, “I’m on the moon! I’m on the freaking moon here, people!” Or was stepping onto the moon just the last in a million small steps the he and hundreds of other people had taken over the last decade? Just another task to be checked off the list. After all, he still had to get back. There was no time for perspective. Perspective could get you killed.
Bob Martin in The Drowsy Chaperone
|
Anyway, we were watching the whole thing unfold in my living room in Toronto. We all knew this was a significant event in the Martin household, so my father did the only thing a man could do in those days to record it—he photographed the TV set. We still have the photos and they are fabulous, in their own way. Black and white; Neil Armstrong’s shadowy figure framed by our television set, with a bit of the living room wall and the curtain in the background. A little Diane Arbus portrait of my childhood.
OK, so why am I talking about the moon landing? Bear with me. In 1961 President Kennedy challenged NASA to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade and they did it in 1969. Eight years later. Eight years; exactly the same length of time as the development period of The Drowsy Chaperone. From conception to Broadway—eight years. Pretty typical for a Broadway musical, I’m told. Along the way, like the NASA scientists, the creative team of The Drowsy Chaperone was problem solving, rewriting, checking tasks off the list, and in the early days we knew that landing this show on the Broadway stage was about as likely as landing on the moon. I‘m sure the NASA scientists had their doubts, too. I’m sure, at some point, Neil Armstrong said, “I’m never gonna walk on the moon. I can’t even sing!” Sorry, I’m confusing the analogy, but you understand what I’m trying to say. In a process as complicated as landing a man on the moon, or creating a Broadway musical, there’s no time for perspective. Perspective can get you killed (metaphorically in the case of a musical).
Even when that day finally came and against all odds I stepped onto the Broadway stage on opening night, I was not thinking, “I’m on Broadway! I’m on freaking Broadway here, people!” I was just moving from moment to moment, hitting my marks, keeping perspective at bay. And at the Tonys—when I actually won one, another incredibly improbable event—I wasn’t standing at the podium thinking “I won a Tony!” No, I was staying focused, trying to breathe, trying to remember my wife’s name.
Perspective came days later when I found out that my family was watching the Tonys at home and that when I stepped onto the stage, they photographed the TV.