We had been rehearsing and performing QUILTERS all over the country and everywhere we went, audiences, enchanted by the stories of our brave pioneer women and their stories told in the quilts they made, received standing ovations everywhere. Audiences adored QUILTERS.
Our producers finally decided to send it to the Kennedy Center where it received even more love….an entire day was named in the show’s honor….we were the toast of DC…and had white glove first class treatment everywhere we went.
We were flying high and optimistic about our chance for our Broadway opening coming later….and the NYC audiences came and also seemed to love it….then the NY TIMES review by the execrable critic who shall remain unnamed ( ok ok…the stupid and nasty Frank Rich) give it a bad review and we closed in a week…we sat around Sardis and moaned over the late night review…we thought we had it in the bag, so to speak and thought NYC would embrace QUILTERS like all our other audiences embraced it….
We were wrong…but mostly, our producers were wrong for not having a war chest of money to spend in case the reviews were bad….our producers should never have attempted to produce for Broadway when they had no idea what they were doing…but anyway…
Out of that misdeed of an adventure, our show did receive 7 tony nominations …and i even got one for =best supporting actress in a musical….Lelani Jones won over me for her striptese work in Grind…but i had the distinct pleasure if being an honored TONYnominee in my lifetime…
Lesson learned: life does not go the way you want it to : life cannot be counted on to go the way you want it to..in fact it rarely does…..
Life is a glorious cycle of song…a medley of extemporanea..and love is a thing that can never go wrong and i am the queen of romania…..hats off to Dorothy Parker….
The upside of outrage is learning to accept what cannot be changed.