Political Theater

The crowd at the Bernie rally and a still of the show we attended. Directly behind the arch.

Leave it to Jessica and me to plan on seeing the opening night of a show yards from where a presidential candidate is speaking. Yup. That happened last night. I had even expressed interest in seeing Bernie speak via facebook, so I KNEW the event was last night in Washington Square Park and I KNEW that was right next to NYU, I just didn't put it all together until I was sitting at the bar in Greenwich Village mere blocks away from both the hoopla and the theater.

And boy howdy, was is a shit show! There were so many people there, that at one point, Jess and I had to turn around and head back where we came from to go around the block. The crowd just stopped moving.

We also realized that Bernie was supposed to speak for an hour and the show was an hour, so... we were a little nervous about getting home, as well, but everything worked out. Unfortunately for the show, it all worked out because they not only held the house for 15 minutes, but then about a minute into the first piece, they suffered technical difficulty and had to hold for another 10. This meant we left the theater around 930 instead of 9, which was great for avoiding Bernie traffic, but meant that the audience was restless and unempathetic. Jess and I both agreed that it wasn't as if the audience was hostile exactly, just not necessarily on board with her. And it's tough material. And she's up there all alone. AND it was her opening night of her final run. It was all just rather unfortunate.