The time I directed A Clockwork Orange the musical in a Times Square peepshow

In 2001 I was recently returned to NY from Austin, Texas where my partners and I had closed our theater company, the Fabulous And Ridiculous Theater (FART) with a hit production of the musical A Clockwork Orange, cross cast with Alex and the Droogs played by women.

Back home, I met a small time producer who wanted to remount our production of A Clockwork Orange and he knew a guy who had been handed the keys to Show World, one of the girlie clubs recently shut down during Guiliani’s clean up of Times Square.

The guy now running Show World was trying to figure out how to turn the former dance space into something else, he let us use it for free. We would have our rehearsals in the old live peep rooms and had to start rehearsing behind a locked door because the old timers kept coming upstairs to try and find the ladies as downstairs was still allowed to show videos.

There was a Show World employee who stayed on and kept his schedule, no matter what was going on, he’d show up and start cleaning. Rehearsal, performance, didn’t matter, he’d pull out his mop bucket and mopped the stage every night at 9p.

One night we hosted a fundraiser at Show World for our musical and hundreds of people showed up. We were collecting cash hand over fist. Until these three guys showed up, said they owned the place and took the whole door. All the money we raised. They said it was because we weren’t paying for the space. But we hadn’t ever seen them before. And never saw them again.

The show was a lot of fun and got some good press. We got shut down after only a couple of weeks because of some sort of permit violation.

Eventually the space turned into a performance venue, and maybe now it’s a party space. But before we left for the final time, as they were literally taking the walls down around us, I grabbed a couple of mirrored tiles from the dressing room and still have them today.