NewDayNews Recovery Forum

est: Part 10: Taking the Show on the Road

Posted By: Joseph <Send E-Mail>
Date: Sunday, 21 May 2006, at 3:26 p.m.

From the moment I heard about the est training from Barbara, my life seemed to shift into overdrive. Probably every 21 year old, just out of college has the same type of experience. Moving out, finding a job, getting new friends, etc. But the timing of when est came into my life gave me the impression that what I learned in the training had everything to do with what est called “miracles”.

A “miracle” in est could be anything from getting to work on time, to having a healthy baby. While assisting at the center, I was constantly called upon to share my miracles every day with groups of people who would applaud.

My friends either took est, or they didn’t. But, it seemed that all of my inner circle was taking it. At this point, I couldn’t hold a conversation with anybody without bringing up something about est. I was completely obsessed with it, probably more so than Barbara had been.

I remember talking to Barbara at one point, and telling her how well things were going for me in terms of sharing the training with our friends in the Valley. She said that one of the staff members had acknowledged her for “Trim Tabbing”. I told her I had no idea what that meant. She said it was a navigation term that had to do with using one small part to take control of the entire ship. So, by enrolling me, she had, in effect, enrolled dozens of people. In Barbara’s world, she created me, and created all of my positive results.

At home, Jane’s youngest child, Gretchen was getting sicker. It turned out that her twitchy movements were actually small seizures. She was put on medication, but, other than the seizures, she seemed like a normal baby.

Teri and Nick were now a couple, living with Jane and myself who were a couple. None of us had any kind of commitment to be exclusive, but we were all living together.

One night, Nick had gone to bed early, and I was in the living room with Jane and Teri. They kept whispering to each other and giggling. I had no idea what they might be cooking up, but it appeared that I was somehow involved, because they kept looking over at me.

A bit later, they approached me asking if I wanted to have sex with the two of them at the same time. Now, this is supposed to be every man’s fantasy, but I was caught almost speechless by the proposition. To this day, I’m not totally sure why I did this, but I turned them down. I guess if one looked back only a few months before, I was going through a two year period of wanting nothing at all to do with women. I had suddenly sprung back to life, so to speak. But, something like this was absolutely outside my comprehension at the time.

Of course, Jane was fresh from The Family, where this kind of thing was common place. I would find out later, that Teri was sewing her wild oats after her young marriage had just broken up.

Not knowing how to handle this situation, I remarked that I had never been with Teri, so perhaps it would be better if I just slept with her alone that night, and see how that went. So, Jane decided to go wake Nick up, and that night we swapped partners.

I was completely uncomfortable with being in bed with Teri. Mike and I had been friends forever, and I was the best man at his wedding. Now I was about to sleep with the bride. True, they had broken up, but est talked so much about integrity, I knew that this had to be wrong on some level. I went through with it, but I remain uncomfortable about it to this day.

The next day, Nick and I carpooled to work together. We hardly spoke on the way to City of Commerce. I stopped at a Denny’s restaurant so we could get some breakfast. We sat facing each other, but not saying anything. We were both really embarrassed about what had happened the night before.

When I got home that night I told Jane that I thought that what happened had been uncomfortable for me, but I was afraid it might have done some damage to Nick. He had never even had sex until a few weeks ago, and now he was swapping partners.

Jane seemed very distressed by this news. She hadn’t done what she did to upset anybody. Of course, she had come from an environment where this kind of thing happened all the time. She seemed genuinely sad about it, and with both of us negative over the situation, we began to talk about making a commitment.

I was surprised that I was talking about this with Jane of all people, since she had come from this very sexually free background. I wondered if she would be able to hold her part of the bargain. I had been running around the last few months having sex with anybody willing as part of my new “take what you get” est persona, but I really didn’t feel right about it. I knew that deep down, I was the kind of guy who wanted an exclusive relationship.

Jane and I agreed to be in an exclusive relationship. An agreement that we have continued for 26 years.

Teri and Nick didn’t last. Teri seemed interested in nailing as many of her old friends as she could get, and a bunch of new ones as well. Not long after, she moved out to briefly share the same garage apartment I had moved out of with Jane’s brother. I never discussed the matter with Mike, but I know that Teri talked to a lot of people about it, and Mike and I never seemed as close after that, even though he and Teri never reconciled.

At Roadshow Players, we were starting a new show. Several of the players had now completed the training. I called a meeting of cast and crew in the backyard of Kevin’s house. We set the space similar to an est seminar. I walked down the center aisle to applause, and welcomed everyone to a fantastic experience that we would all create together. After going over the ground rules for being in the show, I asked who wanted to “share”. Hands went up, and my est groupies gushed over miracles. The people who had not taken the training either got sucked into the “space” or sat looking confused.

After the meeting a girl named Sidney, who had acted with us on a few shows, called me and quit. I asked her why she was quitting. She told me that Roadshow Players had become nothing more than a platform for me to “propagandize est”.

If told her that nobody was going to be forced to take the est training, and that I had decided to incorporate some techniques I had learned into managing the group because I thought it would be good for the group. She shot back that est was a cult, and she didn’t want to be associated with a cult, or any group that supported a cult.

I was shocked, and told her that I “got it”, and that I respected her choice, and I was sad she wouldn’t be in the show.

As far as est being a cult, Ray and I had joked about that non stop, as far as people being afraid est was a cult. We didn’t think so, and we thought it was hilarious that people thought we were cultists. I didn’t think it was funny that Sidney quit the play because she was that convinced that what we were into was somehow bad and wrong. At the time, I just made up my mind that Sidney was mistaken and she would eventually come around. I never saw her, or talked to her again, and it always bothered me that losing her friendship was a casualty of my compulsive personality that had to interject est into each and everything I did.

Roadshow Players would blow into a location to do the show and rip the place apart. People were amazed when we would all show up dressed alike, and do our very mechanical setup.

If we were at a public library, we would walk in and locate the children’s section. All of our people would maintain the blank expression of an est assistant in the training.

If people were in the section we would ask them to move to another area in the library. Then designated cast members would start to stack the chairs neatly around the perimeter of the area. Next the tables would be moved out of the areas, often down book aisles one stacked with one upside down on top of another.

Next two other cast members would bring a rolled 9’x20’ blue carpet we had borrowed from Paradice Decorating’s booth stock into the area. It was placed to one side of the room, then uniformly unrolled. Next it was centered perfectly in the space. If it was too long, it would be folded over, then taped down to the floor with 2” clear box sealing tape.

Other cast members would enter then from outside with our boxes and props and put them in their exact locations while another team ran speaker wires around the sides of the carpet to the back, and taped them down.

The sound person would come in with the sound equipment and place it on a table, and the speaker wire people would present the plugs for the jacks.

Our goal was to complete set-up in ten minutes or less. There was no reason for this, except to keep everyone on task.

People would stand and watch us, and it became a show before the show. It would be hard for people to believe that these silent expressionless drones would soon be energetically entertaining their kids with fairy tale skits.

Once setup was complete, the cast and crew were to meet me outside for a clearing meeting. I would remind everyone that their job was to leave their “stuff” outside, and that it would be ready for them to pickup after the show. The word “stuff” was code for “bullshit”, since I did not allow any cursing at an event. This was hard for us, since est relied so much on cursing. I would ask who wanted to “throw something into the pit”. This was an invitation to take anything that might keep a cast or crew member from being 100% and tell us what it was and to “get off it”. Someone might raise their hand and tell us that they were fired that day. Or, they got a ticket on the way to the event. Or they were sick. Once you said it, you made this full body movement like you were throwing whatever it was into the center of the circle.

Then I would ask who wanted to share a miracle. People would tell of positive things that happened to them since the last show.

Once I felt that the cast and crew were “clear”, they had some free time to prepare and get into character.

At the Hollygrove Orphanage in Hollywood one time, the contact person watched our preparation carefully, then asked me if we were members of some kind of religion, or group. A question like that was always an invitation to share the training, give out a booklet, and invite the asker to a guest seminar.

When the show started, we would light up whatever place we were in with ultra high energy. Lots of music, yelling, grabbing kids in the audience, stuff like that.

After the show we would hold another clearing meeting and talk about “what worked”, and “what didn’t work”. It might be a blown line, or missed cue. It might be a new way something was said that drew a better laugh. We kept track of our audience reaction and fine tuned the show at every performance.

The “Tails” shows we did were a massive hit, and during a season we would draw tens of thousands of people to see us. We were performing every night of the week, except one, that was selected so that everyone who wanted to could be in an est graduate seminar. We did two shows on Saturday, and were normally off on Sunday unless we booked a private birthday party.

Demand was so great for us that there were more offers to do shows than we had days in the week. Few people in the group other than myself had any formal theatre training, so I decided to train Kevin myself to direct and run the shows.

Kevin and I had written the original “Tails” script when we were in high school. Since starting Roadshow, he and I has written a number of sequels. “Tails Too”, “Tails of Tails”, “Tails of More Tails”, “Christmas Tails”, “Tails Gold”, etc. The scripts were actually adaptations of popular fairy tales that Kevin and I would twist around a bit to modernize, or make more humorous. For example, our “King Midas” was so excited about being able to touch things and turn them to gold, that he quickly rubbed his hands together in greed, and turned himself to gold. Our “Frog Prince” was overweight, and red headed Kevin who jumped around speaking in an elegant French accent. When he got kissed by the princess, he turned into a beautiful prince (which got a laugh, because Kevin didn’t fit the description), but he could only say, in a guttural tone, “Ribit!”.

We got the idea that we could go to a double cast, with me directing one cast, and Kevin directing another. Both casts would perform the same script, in different locations, thus doubling our supply of shows, and hopefully meeting the demand.

Barbara had been in the original high school cast of Tails, and was following the progress of Roadshow Players closely. I invited her to come down the next summer and perform with us. She accepted.

I went home and happily announced to Jane that Barbara was moving back to the Valley next summer, and I thought we should invite her to live with us! Jane was absolutely against having Barbara live in our house, for reasons I now understand perfectly.

Back at my Parent’s home, my Mother had completed the training, and said it was one of the best experiences of her life. However, she was not interested in continuing on and taking any graduate seminars. I gleefully went over to enroll my brother, Jimmy, but he was having second thoughts. I became very angry with him asking if he had any idea what our Mother had to endure so he could be allowed to take est? But, he was still unwilling. I knew that if I enrolled him in that mental state, he would end up not completing the training. So, I decided to give that some time.

At work, Ray and I were still mocking est. Ray and I took the “Be Here Now” seminar together. On a break I went into the restroom and some people were snickering at something. On the wall at eye level above the urinal was a very “Paradice” looking small sign, professional printed, and with a nice border that said, “Pee Here Now”. I didn’t have to ask Ray who put that there.