Last Unicorn Showing!
Sep. 28th, 2014 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogThe Last Unicorn showing last night was a lot of fun. I arrived half an hour early, and the other volunteer (it turned out there were just the two of us) arrived twenty minutes or so after. I used the time to take a few shots of the theatre on my phone and oggle the lobby. Once the tour crew showed up, we started helping unload boxes. There was a span of time prior to that when the author, Peter Beagle, was outside the theatre with the van and we had a chance to go talk with him. I did go out and kind of stand near the group of folks, but was a bit too self-conscious to say anything.
My jobs during the event turned out to be twofold. First, I handed out free fraffle tickets to everyone coming in for the event. Or tired to. It was a bit difficult to tear tickets off of the roll as fast as people were coming in, and some folks didn't want to wait. Others, who possibly were not listening closely to what I was saying, turned down the tickets. I don't blame them; people in the city try to hand you stuff all the time, and it can become pretty instinctive to say no. In the end, just before the raffle, the event staff had everyone without tickets raise their hands and they handed out more as the Q and A with Peter was winding down.
I thought briefly about taking a ticket for myself and elected not to. In situations like that I can't help but think of a raffle held at a community theatre organization I was involved with where the president of the organization won. Of course, that kind of thing can happen legitimately. But it makes the organization look bad. I think the proper thing to do would have been to refuse the prize and draw another. But he did not, and it really made a mark in my memory. It would have been much lesser a thing for a volunteer to win a raffle prize, but I decided not to be in that position anyway.
My second job was running the iPad on which sales of media were being down after the show. After seeing it done a couple of times, I picked up the process and the price list pretty quickly. There were a lot of large sales; it made me happy to see how much people care about this story.
My parents and youngest brother came down to see the show. I feel bad that I didn't get to spend more time with them, but I was constantly busy before and after the show. It would have been nice to sit with them during the movie. My dad, during his turn to ask a question in the Q an A sesssion, talked about his now-35-year-old son was volunteering for the show that night. He described how he and I, when I was a child, sat and watched The Last Unicorn on a daily basis, over and over and over, and how that had affected my dad and even helped put him on the road toward his current career. I'd never heard his take on that, and it was really touching. I would have liked to sit with he and my mother and see it again. But I was in the back so I dash out near the credits to get thing set up for the lines of fans. Maybe we can watch it again at home some time.
In the end, after all the books and movies were bought and the fans had left the building, the other volunteer and I had a chance to have our own things signed. I would have loved to buy the huge graphic novel version of the story, or the lithographed art with a unicorn made of the negative space created by the arrangement of the entire text of the book in tiny, tiny print, or Peter Beagles short story anthologies and novels, or other things that all made me wide-eyed with wonder. But I didn't. I am a poor college student. I made one purchase, and Peter was kind enough to sign both that book, and my own copy of The Last Unicorn, which makes me very happy to have. I'd actually forgotten to bring it with me to Chicago, and my family were kind enough to bring it down with them and get it to me. My family is wonderful.
I kept debating whether or not to tell Peter a story about how the movie had affected me personally. It's a story that feels very private and, I suppose, more than a little embarrassing to think about sharing with people. I didn't. It was partly because I still wasn't sure if I wanted to open myself in that way, and partly because the only real chance I had to do so was after the event was over and it was two in the morning and Peter and I and everyone else were exhausted. It's ok. Maybe I'll write him or something some day. Or maybe I won't. I still have my story.
Getting home was complicated. I had originally thought we were leaving the theatre around eleven o' clock. In the end, as I noted, it was more like two. The Purple Line to Danae's place stopped running at midnight, and the Red Line would only get me about two and a half miles away. Originally I decided I'd just walk the rest of the way. As I thought about it more though, and about my experiences living near the Howard Red Line station, I started to wonder whether walking through the neighborhood on the north end of Chicago and the south end of Evanston was the best idea. I texted Danae to see if she was up. Then I texted Lisa. With no responses from either, I debated my options. I finally decided that, rather than being grumpy with me for calling them, they'd probably be grumpy with me for not doing so. I figured I'd either ask Danae to pick me up or, failing that, would stay with Lisa at her transit-accessible place in Chicago, depending on who picked up. Neither one did, so I continued on my way. I was very fortunate though; about a block into my 2.5 mile walk from the Howard Station, Danae called me back. She finally got me back to her place around 4 in the morning and I collapsed into bed.
My jobs during the event turned out to be twofold. First, I handed out free fraffle tickets to everyone coming in for the event. Or tired to. It was a bit difficult to tear tickets off of the roll as fast as people were coming in, and some folks didn't want to wait. Others, who possibly were not listening closely to what I was saying, turned down the tickets. I don't blame them; people in the city try to hand you stuff all the time, and it can become pretty instinctive to say no. In the end, just before the raffle, the event staff had everyone without tickets raise their hands and they handed out more as the Q and A with Peter was winding down.
I thought briefly about taking a ticket for myself and elected not to. In situations like that I can't help but think of a raffle held at a community theatre organization I was involved with where the president of the organization won. Of course, that kind of thing can happen legitimately. But it makes the organization look bad. I think the proper thing to do would have been to refuse the prize and draw another. But he did not, and it really made a mark in my memory. It would have been much lesser a thing for a volunteer to win a raffle prize, but I decided not to be in that position anyway.
My second job was running the iPad on which sales of media were being down after the show. After seeing it done a couple of times, I picked up the process and the price list pretty quickly. There were a lot of large sales; it made me happy to see how much people care about this story.
My parents and youngest brother came down to see the show. I feel bad that I didn't get to spend more time with them, but I was constantly busy before and after the show. It would have been nice to sit with them during the movie. My dad, during his turn to ask a question in the Q an A sesssion, talked about his now-35-year-old son was volunteering for the show that night. He described how he and I, when I was a child, sat and watched The Last Unicorn on a daily basis, over and over and over, and how that had affected my dad and even helped put him on the road toward his current career. I'd never heard his take on that, and it was really touching. I would have liked to sit with he and my mother and see it again. But I was in the back so I dash out near the credits to get thing set up for the lines of fans. Maybe we can watch it again at home some time.
In the end, after all the books and movies were bought and the fans had left the building, the other volunteer and I had a chance to have our own things signed. I would have loved to buy the huge graphic novel version of the story, or the lithographed art with a unicorn made of the negative space created by the arrangement of the entire text of the book in tiny, tiny print, or Peter Beagles short story anthologies and novels, or other things that all made me wide-eyed with wonder. But I didn't. I am a poor college student. I made one purchase, and Peter was kind enough to sign both that book, and my own copy of The Last Unicorn, which makes me very happy to have. I'd actually forgotten to bring it with me to Chicago, and my family were kind enough to bring it down with them and get it to me. My family is wonderful.
I kept debating whether or not to tell Peter a story about how the movie had affected me personally. It's a story that feels very private and, I suppose, more than a little embarrassing to think about sharing with people. I didn't. It was partly because I still wasn't sure if I wanted to open myself in that way, and partly because the only real chance I had to do so was after the event was over and it was two in the morning and Peter and I and everyone else were exhausted. It's ok. Maybe I'll write him or something some day. Or maybe I won't. I still have my story.
Getting home was complicated. I had originally thought we were leaving the theatre around eleven o' clock. In the end, as I noted, it was more like two. The Purple Line to Danae's place stopped running at midnight, and the Red Line would only get me about two and a half miles away. Originally I decided I'd just walk the rest of the way. As I thought about it more though, and about my experiences living near the Howard Red Line station, I started to wonder whether walking through the neighborhood on the north end of Chicago and the south end of Evanston was the best idea. I texted Danae to see if she was up. Then I texted Lisa. With no responses from either, I debated my options. I finally decided that, rather than being grumpy with me for calling them, they'd probably be grumpy with me for not doing so. I figured I'd either ask Danae to pick me up or, failing that, would stay with Lisa at her transit-accessible place in Chicago, depending on who picked up. Neither one did, so I continued on my way. I was very fortunate though; about a block into my 2.5 mile walk from the Howard Station, Danae called me back. She finally got me back to her place around 4 in the morning and I collapsed into bed.
