Patrick Stewart and The Pitman Painters

Evening all, just a quick update about my evening seeing The Pitman Painters and an interesting encounter I had with a celebrity.

I suppose I'll start with the celebrity. We saw The Pitman Painters at the National Theatre, and while we were in the lobby waiting for the show to start we saw Patrick Stewart at the bar ordering a glass of whine. We all had the requisite moment of freaking out, since Patrick Stewart was about five feet from us, and then calmed down enough to find pens and things for him to autograph.

While we were waiting he walked past us and kind of stood against the wall, drinking his wine and examing his playbill. We stood there for a moment, and I was deliberating what to do. Clearly he was absorbed, and I didn't want to disturb him because that would be obnoxious. He's allowed peace when he goes to the theatre, just because he's a celebrity doesn't mean we can approach and bother him all the time. All of these thoughts flashed through my mind and were immediately superceded by another thought: you only live once.

I stepped forward with pen and paper in hand, and he looked up at me. By the way, I swear to you these are almost the exact words spoken, I'm not joking or exaggerating in any way.

JOEY: Hi...I'm sorry.

PATRICK STEWART: For what?

JOEY: Well, you're obviously not here for this, and I shouldn't bother you just because I recongize you.

PATRICK STEWART: [smiling] You hit it right on the nose.

JOEY: Yeah, well...it was really nice to see you and talk to you.

PATRICK STEWART: You too. Have a good evening.

JOEY: Enjoy the show.

I then slinked back into my group of friends and began, not for the first time that night, to retell the words I just wrote for you. Most of the professors were pretty impressed I had had the guts to talk to him, and most of my classmates thought it was pretty funny. At the time I was so starstruck I didn't really register that I had gotten brushed off, but now it's kind of obvious. But he was polite about it, and I like to think I was too, so I'm not too embarassed. Life is too short, and I had a mini conversation with Patrick Stewart.

I made it so.

The show was very good. It's all about the coal miners that became painters and exhibited a lot of outsider art. It was a little sad, but also very funny. The pictures were very good, as were the performances. Those sentences are the reason I will never be a theatre critic.

Anyway, I'm very busy with midterms (it's only a 9 week set of courses, so they came up pretty fast), and my computer is broken and I'm getting it fixed(I'm using a computer loaned to me from the program), so I'll leave you. Night.