Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Shannon Deep

When Shannon Deep asks me to go to the theatre, I always say yes. Not just because she is a beloved friend of nearly 12 years, but because she is a theatre person--one who is passionate and knowledgeable and practiced in work that appears on the stage.

For several years, Shannon worked as a freelance dramaturg, and in that time also became a Script Reader for the Roundabout Theatre Company, responsible for evaluating scripts for potential development and production. But she also morphed those interests into a new career in communication strategy, brand strategy, and copywriting that she also loves. Currently, she is the Senior Copywriter and Communication Strategist at Dashlane, a startup dedicated to protecting digital passwords and finances.

In her spare time, Shannon is also the co-host of the podcast Song Salad with our friend Scott. Song Salad is a delightful “edutainment” podcast where she and Scott write and perform a song every week based on random genres of music and topics generated by their “salad spinner of fate.” One of the many fabulous things about Shannon is that she has kept her interests alive and well since I’ve known her, constantly forming them into new spheres of experience for herself and those around her.

Tonight, that experience is seeing Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” at the American Airlines Theatre in Times Square. Shannon has been given tickets by Roundabout and been kind enough to invite me along. I have been delighted to accompany her to several Roundabout shows over the years, each one a positive experience. But while I have read Stoppard’s plays before, I have never seen a show of his onstage--it will be a workout, Shannon tells me, but I look forward to exercising my brain. We meet at the theatre early and instantly decide to leave because it’s in the middle of 42nd Street in Times Square, a rapacious capitalist hellhole if there ever was one, plus it’s seething with tourists. Instead, we toddle up the street (rather, I toddle because I am in heels) to a bar and Shannon orders a piña colada. She is wearing what she calls her “art director outfit,” chic black culottes with a minimalist white shirt of clean lines and yellow flats. We gossip, she brushes her hair, I take pictures--“This is good because I really do brush my hair in bars,” she laughs.

Soon we will head back over to “Travesties,” and I will not-so-covertly take more pictures in the theatre even though I’m definitely not allowed to do that. Shannon tells me about another podcast she contributed to recently, for which she wrote a 25-page script about Mark Twain. It’s not something she’d do again, she says, but it’s cool how she continues to branch out. The play begins and at first it’s slow but soon we are both laughing like crazy. In intermission I try to take more pictures by crouching in the aisle. “You’re insane,” Shannon says, laughing. But really, she’s known that all along.

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