Last Thursday, Stephen Colbert starred in the first of a four-night engagement of Sondheim’s “Company.” 

Thursday’s show at Lincoln Center was followed by an exclusive dinner with the artists for New York Philharmonic board members and guests, all of whom paid thousands to mingle with the stars. When I’d called a month before to inquire about attending, the woman on the other end all but scoffed. Though tickets were open to the public, a board member’s invitation was encouraged. It was strictly New York society elite.

Aside from not having the money, I didn’t have the connections.

My best bet, I thought, was to wait at the stage door and hand Colbert a bouquet of congratulatory flowers with a note about 100 Interviews tucked inside. Maybe I’d try to get in a few questions.

Last minute, I invited my friend Elyssa to come with me. She’d asked if I was free for dinner and I’d sheepishly texted back that I had made my first plans to meet Colbert outside of going through his publicist or manager. She was in.

We also decided to change out of jeans and sneakers into fancy black dresses and heels. The logic was that Stephen might be more willing to speak to us if it looked like we’d also seen the show.

Rule #1 of Crashing: Dress the part.

On the ride over to Avery Fisher Hall, my stomach lurched along with the cab. I didn’t want to bother a celebrity or come off like some kind of Mark David Chapman-lite. I thought giving him the note and flowers was a simple gesture that wouldn’t take up too much of his time. It’s tradition to give someone flowers after they perform in a show anyway. No big deal.               

Inside, a snappily-dressed young man in a silk tie sat at a desk with a printed paper reading “Press” behind it.

“Hi,” I said, producing my press badge for work. The man smiled skeptically. Meanwhile, other members of the press were gathering by the booth and the man was addressing them by first name. Even the press had special invitations.

“You’re not on the list,” he said, without even looking at the list. “Sorry.”

“Really?” I asked, faux-incredulous. “I should be.”

He shook his head, again not even turning a page. “You’re not.”

Attempt one: Failed.

“Maybe we can hang by the side and see if he comes out the stage door?” Elyssa suggested. It’d probably be a few hours before Colbert would be done with the dinner and the option of waiting for him outside sucked. But what choice did we have? So we walked around to where there were two glass double-doors. Elyssa stopped. “I bet they’re open,” she said, hit with divine inspiration. She walked up and grabbed the handles. When the doors swung open, she looked back at me.

Both of us gaped. Was it really this easy to get inside the building?

It was.

Rule #2 of Crashing: Try every door.

Inside, we were directly behind the man in the “press” booth, near a staircase where he couldn’t see us. There was a man in a suit beside the stairs, guarding the entrance. “You go first,” I told Elyssa, worried that the first guy would see me and throw us both out. “If you get passed him, call me and I’ll follow you.”

Minutes went by. I paced by the coat check until my phone vibrated.

“Walk up,” Elyssa whispered. “I’m in the bathroom. Just walk like nothing is going on and pass the guy.”

With my ear pressed to my Blackberry, I nodded at the man, who didn't question me. Once I reached the top, I was greeted by a long line of beige catering booths and tables with white table clothes, flowers and glass candles.

Oh shit. I was, all too easily, inside the gala.

Lighting a fire under my ass before anyone could see me, I found the ladies room and Elyssa sitting in one of the stalls.

“Uh, holy shit,” I said, my heart beating wildly. “Why was that so easy?”

Rule #3 of Crashing: Confidence.

We spent the next half hour huddled silently in the handicapped stall waiting for guests to filter in. We figured once people were around, we could slide in like we just came from the bathroom.

People eventually entered and we thought we were in the clear, but it turned out there were a set of maroon velvet ropes guiding those invited to the gala into the glass-enshrouded room where the dinner would take place. Walking quickly, I slipped over the ropes and into the crowd of black tie, fancy folks, Elyssa following. No one in the group seemed particularly worried about stopping us.

At the gala, most of the guests were older than us by two decades and very obviously wealthy. Society photographers mixed in with the crowd taking posed snapshots of different groups. Everyone was kissing each others' cheeks and laughing weirdly, while holding wine glasses. In front of us, Elyssa excitedly noticed, was Hamish Bowles, the European Editor at Large for Vogue. I thought he looked like a foppish ‘Saturday Night Live’ parody in comically large glasses and a purple bow tie. Fashion!

Snagging a program from a random seat, I pointed out the chairman of the New York Philharmonic, Gary Parr.

“I’m going to introduce myself,” Elyssa said.

“If you do that, you have balls of steel,” I replied.

Rule #4 of Crashing: Mingle.

“Mr. Parr,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Thank you so much for the lovely evening. The show was just fantastic.”

Gary, a young-ish guy with a beard, smiled, dutifully polite to his guests. “Oh, wasn’t it just wonderful?” He said, shaking our hands and asking our names. As soon as he’d turned back to his friends, I reached out and squeezed Elyssa’s arm.

“Turn around,” I said through my teeth. “Turn around. Turn around.”

Behind us was Alec Baldwin. Elyssa’s eyes grew into saucers, probably mirroring my own. He turned and joked with some people beside us, his voice booming in that way they make fun of on ’30 Rock.’ Turns out Baldwin is a board member of the Philharmonic. He was with a beautiful Asian woman whom later Googling told me was his on/off girlfriend Nicole.

I looked around. Everyone appeared to be settling in and they all had assigned seats. If Elyssa and I didn’t find a place to be unnoticed soon, it was going to become very apparent that we didn’t belong at any of the tables.

“Let’s find the bar,” I suggested. “Then it won’t look weird when everyone sits down because we’ll be waiting for drinks.”

Elyssa agreed and we made our first big, big mistake.

Rule #5 of Crashing: Never, ever look lost.

“Can I help you?” a bespectacled blond woman asked. She was holding a clipboard and was wearing a too casual, floral dress. She looked like a seater.

“Yes,” Elyssa said, not missing a beat. “We’re looking for the bar.”

The woman frowned. “There is no bar. This is a seated dinner. Where are your seats?”

“Table 11,” Elyssa said, again with no hesitation as the woman began flipping through her clipboard looking for our names. “Maxx,” Elyssa supplied, giving her pen name. “Elyssa Maxx.”

The woman kept flipping. “Marx?” she asked.

“Yes. Marx,” Elyssa said. “Table 11,” I added.

The woman shook her head and looked up. “I’m going to have to ask you both to leave,” she said. “Right now.”

Rule #6 of Crashing: Go quietly.

It took them a half hour to bust us. So close, yet so far. Colbert hadn’t shown up yet. Under this woman’s gaze, Elyssa and I slinked back over to the bathroom to regroup.

“Well, now what?” she asked.

“We can’t leave,” I said. “We’re so close.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I just don’t know what we can do from here.”

Rule #7 of Crashing: Don’t give up.

Suddenly, I remembered the waiters. “What if we hang out in the back, by catering and see if one of the waiters can tell us if Colbert’s inside?”

Elyssa thought it was better than nothing and so we gathered our purses and coats, abandoned the flowers in the handicapped stall and kept the note. We stayed against the wall, out of view of the gala near the catering booths. No one questioned us being there. The gala was quieting down and a sea of waiters in black flooded into where we were. One, a petite black woman, smiled at us. I decided she was our friend.

“Hey,” I called her over.

“Are you guys crashing?” she asked, unconcerned about it.

“Sort of,” I replied. “We’re not trying to party. I’m trying to interview Stephen Colbert.”

“You’re a student,” she said and I didn’t want to waste time explaining 100 Interviews so I said I was. “Well, let me see if he’s here. I’ll come back and tell you.”

At this news, my spirits rose. Maybe she’d be able to, at the very least, deliver the note to Colbert at his table. A few minutes later, she came back over and nodded, “He’s here.”

I jumped back and forth in my ill-fitting black heels. He was here. Right across that hall, separated only by glass and rich people! It might actually happen!

At this point, another waiter, vaguely resembling Jesse Eisenberg, came over. “You guys crashing?” he asked, amused.

I nodded, “Yeah, I’m trying to interview Stephen.” He seemed sympathetic.

“My advice would be to put down your coats,” he said. “Ditch your stuff near the catering booth back there. You’ll fit in better.” It seemed like he’d dealt with crashers before.

Rule #8 of Crashing: Befriend the cater-waiters.

Elyssa and I put down our bags, taking out a ten-dollar bill and the note for Colbert. The plan was to find either of our two waiter friends and pass off the goods in the hope that one of them would give the note to Stephen.

But within five minutes, we were being escorted out by security.

I had peeked my head around to see if our waiters were coming back and was instead met with the blond woman from before and a security guard who looked like young Morgan Freeman.

“You have to go,” she yelled, pointing us out to the guard. At that point, we were no where near the gala itself, merely hanging in the hallway with the kitchen folk. We were not causing a disturbance at all.

“Wait,” I said, as the guard and woman walked us to the nearby elevator. “I just want to give this note to my friend. You can come with me while I deliver it.”

The woman continued to freak out. “No! No! Get out of here!”

Rule #9 of Crashing: Don’t give up!

“I just want to give my friend this note and then we’ll leave,” I said.

“Here, look,” Elyssa grabbed the note from my hand and took off the short distance past the woman and guard, over to where our Eisenberg-waiter was standing. She was steps from handing it over to him when the woman stopped her, her anger increasing rapidly.

“This is not something you crash for fun!” she screamed. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, because why else would you crash something, if not for fun? Unless, I thought, you’re Gaby Dunn trying to interview Stephen Colbert because of an insane project you started on Tumblr. The way I see it, an elite $2,000 plate dinner at Lincoln Center is exactly the type of event you crash for fun.

“I’m not doing this for fun,” I told her emphatically. She did not care.

Elyssa, the guard and I got on the elevator, and went down to the lobby. The guard escorted us out of the building, even going as far as opening the front doors and literally "shoo"-ing us out.

As we were walking away, the press camera crews were exiting. A few of them told me that Colbert hadn’t done the interview line and had only stayed at the gala long enough to cut a cake: ten minutes.

Rule #10 of Crashing: Know when to give up.