As your Friend, I thought I’d take the time to tell you why solicitations like this aren’t good:

Hey There,
Hope you’re doing wonderfully.  Only a week left before [insert name of show here]. I haven’t heard from you yet and I’d love to see you at the show. There’s a half price preview on [date].

Here’s the thing. I don’t know you. I know we’re Friends, but I don’t know how we became Friends. I just checked my Address Book, and you’re not in it. I looked at your Facebook photo and I don’t recognize you. So it’s little surprise that you haven’t heard from me yet — you aren’t going to. I don’t know you. And I don’t owe you. Deep down, I think you know that, because you addressed me as “Hey There.”

Sending me a message through Facebook? That’s okay. No harm, no foul. We’re Friends, but not every Friend knows everyone else. I’m not on Facebook often, but I’ve got 624 Friends, probably a good 10% of whom elicit a “Who?” from me when I see their picture. You’re one of them. “Who?” But the other “Who?” Friends aren’t berating me for not responding to an invitation I don’t remember getting, to an event I’m being asked to buy a ticket for (even at half price). That’s kinda rude. I know you’d “love to see me at the show” — with my twenty bucks or so — but not everything’s about you. I know it didn’t occur to you, but maybe I wouldn’t love to see the show. You’re just presumptuous.

No, I haven’t heard of you, or your show, and even though we’re Friends we aren’t friends (my real friends don’t need the “f” capitalized; those to whom this applies know who they are). You don’t know it, but your tone is demanding and insincere and insulting.

As a Friend, I thought you should know.

Your Friend

p.s. I am doing wonderfully. Thank you.

I’ve been talking here about my friends losing their newspaper jobs, and all of us losing newspapers. It now occurs to me that I should also note the theatres we’re losing and, more importantly, the theatre people:  the people who really are the theatre (not, to paraphrase Mike Daisey, the buildings in which they work). Because we just lost one of the best. Having been laid off by his theatre, he’s now leaving “the theatre.” When we had him here in L.A., the impact was immeasurable. This isn’t just Portland Center Stage’s loss, this is a loss for everyone who cares about new plays.