The Hero Is You by Kendra Levin

Author:Kendra Levin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633410268
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

If you want to flesh out your personal mythology more in ways I haven't listed here, I encourage you to do so. Either way, keep this roster of tools handy.

Turning Your Camera On

We've seen how the Shapeshifter can be a tool while at your desk. But it can also give you a lens for experiencing the world in a different way—one that can bring about a better integration of the writing and non-writing sides of your life.

Michael R. Jackson had worked at some pretty terrible jobs, but ushering had to be one of the worst. After leaving Detroit to study playwriting and musical theater writing in New York, Michael had spent the better part of a decade supporting himself with temp gigs and menial office jobs. But the nine-to-five workweek left him little time and energy at the end of the day to write. So Michael became an usher at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre, which housed the perennially popular show The Lion King.

Six days a week, at six evening shows and three matinees, Michael and his colleagues ran crowd control for 1,700 waddling tourists, screaming children, and wealthy grande dames. He saw a child run up the aisle, vomiting the entire length of the orchestra section. He saw an audience member leap onto the stage and scramble across it to find his seat on the other side mere seconds before the curtain went up. He saw the inebriated get escorted from the theater on a regular basis. When he operated the elevator to carry patrons up to the mezzanine and balcony, they would often, he told me, “fart and smile about it.”

Night after night, as the subway carried him away from Times Square, he thought about quitting. But he needed the paycheck, and the gig gave him time to write in the mornings.

One particularly hellish Sunday afternoon, he and the other ushers had just started letting ticket-holders into the theater to sit down for the matinee performance. An elderly white woman had bypassed the staff in her charge to the mezzanine, but was now struggling to locate her seat. She held up her hand, waving her arm like she was flagging down a cab, and sang out at Michael, “Usher! Usher!”

That was when, as Michael told me, “my video camera went on.” As a young black man, the experience of having an old white woman identify him by his job description and hail him like a taxi awoke something deep inside.

He'd already been working on a musical theater piece about a young gay black man in New York. It was a story about identity and family, but so far, it lacked cohesion, a framing device to tie it together. In that moment, Michael found his framing device: his protagonist would be an usher, just like him, and the entire show would take place against the backdrop of a Broadway theater.

The added component of The Lion King also fit perfectly with the themes Michael was exploring, and not just because the story of The Lion King also dealt with identity and family.

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