Obviously, you love plays.  Where did this interest develop?

I wish I had a good story for this. I don’t. I started seeing plays because my uncle took me to a few Shakespeare plays every year in D.C. starting around 2002.  And that’s just it -- until…

Fast forward to 2015!  I’m bored.  I’m a baby lawyer, just learning the secrets of the “occurrence” in the CGL.  It’s my first real job and for once I’m finally not broke and have some money to do things I’d like.  And I have free time.  (Yeah… I won the lawyer lottery and I’m not just saying it because my boss reads Coverage Opinions too.)  And yet I’m bored. So…

I decided to beat boredom by seeing a play!  Baltimore’s got to have at least one theater, right?

Fast forward again! It’s 2019. I’m a little bit older, a little bit less deep in debt, and seeing three shows a week (sometimes more).  Turns out some slippery slopes are real.

How is it possible to see so many plays in one year – in Baltimore?    

There’s enough shows to do it, although I doubt anyone else sees as many as I do.  I’ve wondered about why for a while.  I see four necessary causes for my play habit: (1) a willingness to see non-Broadway plays, (2) a solitary nature, (3) tons of spare time and (4) fiscal irresponsibility.

I see shows most people pass up.  Most people fear they won’t like a show unless it’s a Broadway tour with seats they can’t afford, and thus talk themselves out of seeing shows.  Here’s a secret for you: Broadway tours have terrible price to quality ratios.  Lesser Secret: As journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken famously said: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  I, however, try everything.  It turns out Baltimore has a Broadway Tour theater, two regional theaters, at least nineteen non-fully-professional theater organizations, an annual Fringe Festival, and at least two indie theater spaces.  All I did was try them.

I see most shows alone.  I see almost nobody else doing that.  But if I waited for friends to go with me, I doubt I’d see even 40 shows a year.  My friends lack appetite for non-professional theaters.

I spend 2.5 days/week seeing shows on average.  It fills my evenings and weekends. My friends won’t go. They want to “be with their families” or “watch Netflix” or something…

I pay over $3,000/year for theater tickets, not counting incidental expenses like parking, drinks, etc.  [It sounds like a lot, but look at how many hours of entertainment I get from it.  It’s much less expensive, on an hourly basis, than many other hobbies.]  Paying off my student loans instead would be “wise” and “fiscally prudent” (or so I hear). I prioritize short-term gratification instead.  YOLO, right?  [Editor’s note: You only live once.]

What are some of your conclusions about theater after seeing so many plays in such a compressed period of time?   

Hot takes!

Ticket price and theater size only loosely correlate with quality. Take “Eulogy,” performed and created by Michael Burgos. It’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.  But Michael Burgos isn’t famous or anything. I paid $10 at a Fringe Festival on Charles Street in Baltimore.

People are too pessimistic about the quality of theater.  In my experience, (1) less than ten percent of shows are bad (1-2 stars) and (2) most shows are good (4-5 stars.) Therefore, I take chances on shows, especially on cheap tickets. Odds are I’ll enjoy myself.

Seating matters.  Aim for front and center seats, especially if there’s no markup for them.

Jukebox musicals (showcases for an artist’s hits (e.g. “Smokey Joe’s Café”)) are the worst.

Dark comedies with insane bureaucratic systems are the best. (That’s my inner lawyer talking.)

Unpopular Opinion: “Classic” or “Important” plays are often “bad” or “incomprehensible” plays.

Unpopular Opinion number 2: Shakespeare is overrated (even though I love him.) Hamlet is double overrated. If most people can’t understand the words, the problem’s the play, not the audience.

Tell me a few of your favorites?

Counting plays that aren’t obscure indie theater, in no particular order:

Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood
Lauren Gunderson’s Revolutionists
Stephen Sondheim’s Company
Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights
Irene Sankoff & David Hein’s Come From Away
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

You recently saw Hamilton in London. What’s your take on it? Is all the hype justified?      

London was hard to leave.  Hamilton tickets —Orchestra Row C, less than ten feet back in the center, were only 100 pounds, and that’s expensive for London tickets.  A-list stars like Tom Hiddleston act in plays.  Oh, and Brexit is killing the pound, so everything’s de facto ~30% off.

Oh?  The play?  All the good stuff people say about it —it’s an understatement.  The soundtrack didn’t do it justice. London gave it a standing ovation, and those are rare over there.

What’s your theater plan for the next year?

I have to cut back. I need to make time for my other hobby: writing sci-fi / fantasy short fiction. (I haven’t been published.  I’m not good at it. I just do it. There’s a difference.)

For context though, I saw 20 plays in May 2019.  That included a play-binge in London, but that won’t be my only play binge.  So I say this like I say I’ll cut back on froyo.  I say I’ll do it and I sometimes mean it and yet somehow I still eat froyo.