Emily Curtis's family wasn't big on coffee. Her parents drank Folgers with hazelnut creamer, easy and unremarkable. Her brother told her once that it was illegal for anyone under 16 to drink it, and she took that completely at face value. Two years later, in second grade, a friend pulled out coffee-flavored yogurt at lunch and Emily burst into tears, certain she had to report her.
She didn't actually start drinking coffee until she began working in it, in Atlanta, in 2021. Her order has narrowed considerably since then: a large iced Americano, single shot, weak all the way down to the last watery sip at the bottom. "I love a weak-ass cup of coffee," she says.
Before Waverly Place, Emily spent a year handing out flyers for a promotional company in Times Square, the person on the sidewalk telling tourists to come see Wicked. It was a fine job to do in the summer and a brutal one to do in January. She'd started with Joe's catering division that September, and when winter slowed events to nothing, she picked up a shift at the cafe to cover the gap. She worked that shift alongside Adam, they hit it off, and he offered her steadier hours. "I can't stress out enough: inside work," she says.
Theater is the older love, though, and has been her plan since middle school; it's a real part of why she moved to New York in the first place. This year, coffee and theater ended up in the same room. Emily and Adam had joked for a long time about staging a musical at the cafe, the kind of thing where you pick a show, draw parts, and have twenty-four hours to learn and stage it, five dollars at the door. Then, earlier this year, she asked herself a more serious question. If they actually did it, what would the show be? Ordinary Days, her favorite since middle school, slotted into place immediately. She emailed the rights holders on a whim, not expecting much. They said yes. "I applied for the rights, and they're like, 'What theater are you doing this with?' And I'm like, 'A coffee shop.'"
Ordinary Days is a small show by design, four actors and a pianist. Emily plays Deb, "the neurotic grad student trying to find direction in her life," a role that's followed her for years; one of Deb's songs is what got her into her college musical theater program in the first place. As she puts it: if you know a mezzo-soprano in your life, they know the show. It's written by and for the mezzo girlies.
Staging it inside a working cafe has meant learning to see the space differently. Emily spent a semester in London studying site-specific theater, work built around what a space already offers rather than what you bring into it. She and Adam have stayed late more than once, tape measure in hand, figuring out how many chairs fit and where. They found that the plexiglass comes off the pastry case, turning the counter into a platform. The space is small, she says, but it offers a lot: entrances and exits, windows, light, sound that carries well.
That space is the whole reason to do the show here. Waverly has its regulars, the same twenty-five or so people who come in every day and have become friends because they come here, without knowing much about each other outside these walls. Ordinary Days is about exactly that kind of accidental community: a character getting his first cappuccino here on his first day in the neighborhood, someone meeting a friend at their spot. Emily thinks the regulars will see themselves in it.
Ordinary Days runs eight performances at Waverly Place, Thursday through Sunday, September 17 through 27, with 30 seats a show. Tickets go on sale August 15. Buy one. Tell everyone you know.
