Today I went down to The Business Office at The Cleveland Play House and interviewed/talked to/hung out with Pat Eversole.She started at CPH as the night shift switch board operator in 1971 and is now the Business Services Supervisor. She told me about working the switch board and how dialing 9 was a signal to the operator that you want an outside line. Even though we don’t use operators anymore, that’s something that has carried over.

I asked her the biggest difference between when she started and now. Her answer: “Everybody was closer then. We all did things together.”

That was a time when CPH had a resident company. They hired actors for a whole season, they all lived a few blocks away, and everybody was working in the same building. CPH has since moved into beautiful new buildings, and in the mid 80s started hiring actors by the show instead of by the season.

Pat also talked about technology and how much that’s changed, but isn’t it interesting that the first thing she thought of was people and relationships. That is, after all, the most important thing.