1. She never felt threatened while riding the L from Morse in Chicago to Davis in Evanston at 5:10 in the morning: “The only people on the train at that hour are Polish women on their way home from cleaning office buildings all night. They share plastic containers of pale Slavic food that you know is buttery and delicious.”
2. She applied for a waitress job and was rejected: “I had never waited tables, and my attempt to lie about that to the manager of the Skokie, Ill., Ruby Tuesday was unsuccessful.”
But according to Matt Williams, a longtime employee at the Skokie eatery, in the early ’90s there was no Ruby Tuesday in that village. Fey likely applied to the one in neighboring Lincolnwood, which has been there for more than two decades. (Admittedly, we’re splitting hairs here.)
3. She applied for a night box-office manager job at a small theater in Lake View and was rejected: “It was between me and another girl for the job, and [the artistic director] needed to know what I had to offer the Tiny Pretentious Theater Company because ‘We like to think of ourselves as the most exciting theater company in Chicago.’ I tried a joke. ‘I like to think of myself as the most beautiful woman in the world. But where will that get either of us, really?’ The other girl got the job.”
4. She landed a receptionist job at the YMCA in Evanston and was dejected: “[It] was a great mix of a high-end yuppie fitness facility, a wonderful community resource for families, and an old-school residence for disenfranchised men. It may also have been the epicenter of all human grimness.”
Ruth Stern, a former YMCA co-worker, responds with a laugh: “I shouldn’t say if it rings true, but it rings true of her.”
5. Fey is guilty of misdemeanor theft: “I found myself pocketing the occasional guest-pass money and treating myself to some Gigio’s. What was happening to my moral compass?”
“I’m shocked, absolutely shocked!” Stern responds. “I’m so sorry you’re telling me this about her because she just lost some points. Nervy broad, she is!”
6. She learned several life lessons from studying improvisation, such as: “There are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident. I mean, look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.”
7. Though her rule of thumb was to cancel any show where the cast outnumbered the audience, one night she made an exception and went through with the two-woman drama “Ironmistress” for a crowd of two at the Heartland Studio Theatre in Rogers Park.
8. She had a blast working at Second City, which is ... where? “The most fun I ever had was working at a theater in Chicago called the Second City. If you’ve never heard of the Second City, it is an improvisation and sketch comedy theater in Chicago. … There’s a Second City in Chicago and one in Toronto. …”
9. She worked some totally lame gigs as part of Second City’s touring company: “Brightly lit hotel ballrooms with broken microphones. College shows where the kids were all drunk. Charity buyouts where the audience was very, very sober. Corporate gigs at 8 a.m. for employees who were there to be told about reductions in their health care benefits.”
10. She was none too fond of Second City’s “institutionalized gender nonsense”: “For example, a director of one of the main companies once justified cutting a scene by saying, ‘The audience doesn’t want to see a scene between two women.’ Whaaa?” When producers eventually cast a show with as many women as men, Fey was thrilled to be a part of it.
Second City CEO Andrew Alexander responds: “Tina’s not wrong. The Toronto casts were gender-equal since the late ’80s, but when I moved to Chicago in the mid-’90s, misogyny was certainly part of the culture there. Happily, we were able to fix that. Women and men have shared the stage equally in almost every cast since Tina’s time.”
The next mainstage show, opening next week, stars four men and two women. What would Tina say?
