Tucker

I met with Tucker and I can certainly see why he’s difficult to work with, and I can’t honestly say I’m thrilled to be working with him. We met at a café nearby Eddie’s theatre. I introduced myself and then grabbed an iced coffee and a muffin before coming back to our table to get down to business.

Tucker was wearing fake thick-rimmed hipster glasses, a plaid vest over a shabby blue t-shirt, and a pair of gunmetal gray jeans. He has a beard and mousey brown hair. I was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a simple black t-shirt and my hair was up in a simple pony tail. I decided to ask Tucker some questions to get a better understanding of his directing style and expectations of me as his stage manager.

“Do you prefer to take a five minute break every 55 minutes or a ten minute break every 80 minutes?”

“I don’t really allow breaks.”

“Really? Because Eddie told me that even though we aren’t a union-affiliated theatre, we’re supposed to be following union rules and those break times are fairly standard.”

“Well, Eddie doesn’t have to know.” He said whipping out his iPhone to text something.

“Actually, he does. I have to send him a rehearsal report at the end of every rehearsal so that he can be kept in the loop. He IS one of the producers and the owner of the theatre so it’s necessary that he receives my reports and he’ll be looking to see that we’re following union rules. Eddie wants his theatre to be classified as a union house soon and it’s important that we apply union rules for him to get that classification.”

I noticed that Tucker wasn’t paying attention. Or texting. He was staring at my chest. I cleared my throat and he looked up.

“Fine, whatever. Every 80 minutes, I guess.” He said looking at his phone again.

“We’ll also need to assign one day a week as a dark day where we don’t have any rehearsals or shows. When we switch to performances, our dark day will be Monday, but for the rehearsal period, it can be whatever day you’d like. The previous stage manager hasn’t been returning any of my attempts to contact her for the existing schedule so I think I’m going to have to make one. Which day would you prefer?”

“We didn’t have a schedule.”

“How is that even possible?” I said getting frustrated at Tucker’s lack of cooperation.

“I would decide whether or not I wanted to have rehearsal and all of the cast was on call.”

He then resumed looking at my chest, which, I want to point out was not on display. I was wearing a t-shirt. At this point I decided to cut the crap.

“Hey,” I snapped my fingers at him, “Eyes up here, Tucker. This is how this is going to go: I’m going to make a schedule and give you the opportunity to approve it, then I will have Eddie approve it and we will start giving the cast an actual schedule to follow. We will follow union rules. And you will STOP LOOKING AT MY BOOBS.”

Tucker looked up at me again and leaned forward.

“I like a woman who takes charge.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

“Never gonna happen.” I said sitting back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest.

“You wouldn’t regret it. I’m an excellent ride.” He said winking at me.

“Oh, I seriously doubt that. Can we please just keep things professional? You lost your fist stage manager because you were dating and things ended badly, so let’s just avoid repeating that particular event.”

“Fine, but only because the integrity of my show is more important than you tempting me away from my artistry.”

I rolled my eyes and got back to business. Within an hour we hammered out a schedule and I e-mailed it to Eddie for approval. He got back to me in five minutes saying it looked great. I really have my work cut out for me with this show when it comes to dealing with Tucker. What a skeeze.