Richard Hester, author and producer of Broadway Barks, joins Cheddar News to discuss his new book, 'Hold, Please: Stage Managing a Pandemic.' He also talked about the 24th annual Broadway Barks event.

Between Bells

Producer of the 24th Annual 'Broadway Barks' Talks the Star-Studded Event

between bells and baker machado in new york. After the pandemic caused broadway to go dark, many were impacted from the stars on stage to the stage managers behind the curtain in the new book. Hold, please stage managing a pandemic. The new memoir takes readers on a journey of the year. That broadway closed down all through the lens of someone who experienced it firsthand. So joining us now to discuss is Richard Hester, author and producer of Broadway Barks. Richard. Such a pleasure to have you here. So, before we discuss Broadway barks, by the way, the 24th annual event of that, which is impressive as itself. Let's talk about the memoir, this is actually a book of a collection of blog posts, which is so incredible to think about that. You started back in March of 2020 was it difficult to sort of go back and relive all that time. And then also the process of editing all that down? Well, I started writing it because everybody was losing their minds and I thought that I could actually put it into some sort of order. And I originally did it for myself and then people started reading them and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I ended up writing 1400 pages over the course of the year. And so then I had to go back and edit it down and as you say, relive all of that. And one of the things I found hilarious is about the third or fourth post in I said well, we're gonna be closed for two weeks. I don't know what we're gonna do, we're gonna have to figure out something to do. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because you know, look, every industry on the planet was impacted by Covid, but few were as impacted as heavily as broadway was I mean to have this basically shut down for as long as it was, what was your sort of initial reaction when broadway was sort of shut down when you were only thinking maybe a couple of weeks, but when it turned into a longer term thing, what was sort of going through your mind at that time? Well, there was nothing sometimes if you lose a job doing one thing, you can find a similar job temporarily doing something else. But there was literally nothing to do. There was truly nothing to do. And so in some ways that was a bit freeing because I made writing the book wasn't a book when I started, it was just blogs, but I made that my job for the day and it gave from structure to the day, but there was literally nothing to do. It was the strangest feeling. But how did you turn it into a book? Like what gave you the idea of saying this would work for a book here? Well, one of the people who read my book or read my blogs every day when they came out is broadway fight choreographer rick. Sordellii rick. Sordellii has a publishing company called Sordellii ink that he started with a novelist, friend of his David Blixt and he actually said to me, I think this would make a good book and this is maybe 30 40 posts in. And I said okay, I sort of didn't really think much about it and then I thought about it and said, well okay, and I didn't know if I could keep writing, but if you remember that year, 2020 there was a lot going on. So I was really never at a loss for anything to write about and I stopped it at the end of a year thinking that that would be sort of when I go back to work and everything would be back to normal. And that seemed like a good book end. And then of course it kept going, wow, wow, how interesting sort of like how the world sort of changes obviously for the better, but at the time, who would have guessed going from being the stage manager of Jersey Boys, you'd now be a published author, let's talk about the other amazing thing that you do. And it's called broadway barks. It is returning this saturday for the 24th year, which is incredible to think about, tell us how this all got started 24 years ago and a little bit more about what happens here we were every year. Broadway cares equity fights AIDS does fund drives to raise money for their programs and all the broadway shows joined together in a kind of competition to see who can raise the most money that year. And I was doing Annie get your gun with Bernadette Peters that year, The Great Bernadette Peters and we were bound and determined to win. And we were literally putting jewelry on Bernadette, sending her out to do a number coming off, putting them on a card, getting her to sign it and then auctioning it off at the end of the show. And we won that year and we were on a high and I was just happened to be chatting with Bernadette in her dressing room and she said, well, what do we do now? And I knew exactly and I knew she loved animals. She's a long time lover of, she's had dogs and cats. She always has a couple of enormous dogs around. And she and I said, well, why don't we do a dog show? And she said, what do you mean? And I said, I don't know, let's see what that is. Let's see if we can get some shelters to come down and we'll just present the dogs and that's what happened. We Created this thing and 24 years later, it is still going on thinking and how many thousands of animals lives you have saved in the, and I'm saying this is somebody who has rescued my own animal. And I and I cannot even imagine a day or or world without him in it. But think of how many animals you have saved in the process. What other celebrities are also backing this. I mean it seems that if broadway is behind this, you've got to have a lot of star power of people that are behind this. We we early on weren't sure if people would be interested in participating and we started inviting people. And the first year it was largely the cast of Annie Get Your Gun and friends of Bernadette's people like Joel gray all came to Andrea McArdle came who was the original Annie on broadway along with Bill Berloni who trained the original Sandy and now everybody comes. We this year, mary Tyler moore was the co host with Bernadette for years and when she passed away, we've had special guest hosts. So our special guest host this year is the Fabulous Sutton Foster from the music man and Mr Hugh Jackman. I mean that that list of the people that were on there is like incredible. You can't get bigger names in this industry than those people for, for viewers who are really fascinated by this. How can they get involved in? And what sort of this, what what when is this all happening? It's happening this saturday july 9th in Shubert Alley, which is between 44th and 45th street by the schubert and booth theaters it the show itself will be from 5 to 6, 30 The shelters will show up with all of their animals. We have 21 shelters I think this year. And they'll show up at about 3:00 and you can walk through the alley and look at the dogs and look at the cats. The cats will all be in air conditioned vans to take care of them and the then we will introduce them all and hopefully they'll all find home. I hope so too. I'm so happy that you do something like this, congratulations and all your success. Richard Richard Hester, author and producer of broadway barks.