Every job is different; all jobs are the same. That’s the axiom borne out by Claudia Shear’s gripping whirlwind of a monologue, Blown Sideways Through Life, currently presented at New York Theater Workshop.
Though seemingly in her mid-30s, Shear has already held 65 jobs of every color collar imaginable (66 if you count writing and appearing in this production—by far her most promising career choice). She’s scrubbed toilets, made deliveries, crewed on a ship, modeled, clerked for a scam business, acted, and, perhaps in all 65 of those cases, answered phones, phones, phones. What’s most impressive about Shear’s piece is her knowledge of when to offer fascinating, extended anecdotes, and when to turn her entire resume into a collage of phrases and attitudes that everyone who’s ever held a 9-to-5 will instantly register with rue. A barrage of put-down lines by various bosses is delivered with so much resentful anger, there’s a catharsis in the mere cataloguing of such horrors as “the customer is always right” and “on my desk at nine AM.”
The most captivating sequence involves Shear’s stint as a “phone girl” at a midtown brothel. Though unflinching about the sadness and occasional sordidness of the place, she also presents the hilarious camaraderie among the prostitute (not to mention a few trade secrets bound to make any sexually active male wonder what his partner is really up to). And, as if to hammer home the point that sometimes the worst job is just a rung or two away from your dream job, Shear recounts her excitement at being hired by Carlo Ponti for a movie role, only to discover she’d been tagged as an extra for an extremely bizarre Italian soft-porn flick.
The slink dance with which Claudia Shear closes Blow Sideways Through Life is the dance of a woman who has found peace with her body (Shear was once obese), her past, and her future prospects. One guesses, and hopes, that most of her next 65 jobs will be in the theater.
