I saw “King Lear”! Ha!
Everyone told me it was impossible.
They said, “Amy, you’re out of your mind.”
They even said, “Barbra Streisand can’t get a ticket, or so we read online.”
All I heard last week about UCLA Live’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of “King Lear” was that I had no chance of seeing it. Absolutely none. So, naturally, I really wanted to go.
The UCLA Live show had been sold out for months, and half an hour before curtain, I still didn’t have a ticket. But at 2 p.m. this Saturday, I was sitting in Royce Hall, row Y, for the matinee performance.
So how did I pull off this amazing feat?
I knew from past experiences that getting into sold-out shows is not impossible. It’s hard, and you can look like an idiot, but it’s been done before.
The key to trying to buy tickets to sold-out shows is to just show up. It also helps to go by yourself, but if you go with others, be sure to have a priority list ““ like if you can only find two tickets and there are three of you, set out in advance who has to go the nearest Starbucks and read for two hours.
For example, two summers ago I was in Los Angeles for the weekend and my friends all had tickets to see “Rent” at the Pantages Theater. I didn’t have a ticket, but I had never seen “Rent,” so this seemed like the time to go. So I went with them and brought cash and a novel.
The first thing I did was ask the box office if they had unsold tickets. Even at sold-out shows this can happen. Maybe someone called in and said they couldn’t make it that night, so the theater can release those tickets. Or some theaters say they are sold out when they can’t sell two seats together, but maybe they have single seats scattered around.
At “Rent,” though, nothing came from asking the box office ““ they only had seats that were out of my price range. So the next thing to do is hang out near the box office and scope out the crowd. Is anybody on the cell phone with a friend who seems to be stuck in traffic? Is anyone walking up to groups of people to see if they need an extra ticket? (This actually happened to me in London ““ I saw “Spamalot” with Tim Curry for only 5 pounds.)
For “Rent,” there was a woman standing off to the side by herself, holding two tickets. There is always the risk of being wrong, but I asked her if she was selling tickets. She was ““ her friend couldn’t make it. The ticket was for the fifth row and she offered it to me for half the price. She said there was another man who had approached her about buying the ticket, but he wanted her to just give it away for free.
Now you can sometimes get in for free, but that is rare. I do have to say that in high school I saw Neil Patrick Harris in “Romeo and Juliet” for free because some guy had an extra press ticket that had cost him nothing. And it was front row. But that was lucky.
There of course have been times when I’ve shown up and not gotten in, when I’ve asked people if they were selling tickets and then gotten snooty stares. But then I also saw the world premiere production of “Jersey Boys” at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2004. It’s a trade-off.
So I had seen the highs and the lows; I knew there was a shot at glory and the possibility of dejection. “King Lear” was going to be long shot, but seeing Gandalf and the Royal Shakespeare Company live on stage seemed like a good reason to show up.
I set a price limit ““ getting into “King Lear” was worth $60 to me, and I took only that much out of the ATM so that I wouldn’t be tempted if someone offered me a pricier ticket ““ though, after seeing the show, I must say it was worth more.
So I asked the will call line if any tickets had been returned, and they sent me to the box office. I was about to get in line when a man who was standing a little to the side of the box office asked me if I was trying to buy a ticket. Yeah, I was.
The price that was printed on the ticket was $58, and that was all he wanted for it. So I gave him the cash I had just withdrawn, which wasn’t hard because I hadn’t grown attached to it yet.
And that is the moral I got from “King Lear”: Don’t listen when people call you crazy.
If you were left out in the rain this time, e-mail Crocker for more tips at acrocker@media.ucla.edu.