It’s time to resurrect the Tour Mini-Blog. This year it’s being renamed “On the Road Again,” because of this iPhone wallpaper I happened to stumble across a while back.
It’s still almost two months before we begin rehearsals for The Acting Company’s Romeo and Juliet in Minneapolis. It’s three months before R&J opens at the Guthrie. And it’s almost four months before we actually hit “the road” and pack our as-yet-unborn creation into a 53-foot truck and start driving it around the country.
But the story of this process actually goes back much further. This tour was in the works long before last year’s tour of Henry V and The Spy concluded. The show has been picked, many of the venues were booked, and some of the roles were cast.
When the tour ended, my role on it went on hiatus. I had been spoken to unofficially during one of our New York visits and was given a sneak peek of what was in the works for this year and was asked to come back. I indicated I was definitely interested but my schedule and lack of time at home were things I wanted to think about.
In early summer I started talking again with the office and gave my committment. They were having meetings with all the returning people to talk about how things went last year, but as I was out of town I couldn’t attend, so I was asked to submit something written. I sent in my manifesto, but was pleased to learn that while I was philosophizing about team-building experiences, Nick was meeting with the new production manager and talking about practical stuff like the need for a wireless broadband card for stage management and/or working Internet on our bus. Nick deciding to return was also a great relief, and when that happened (maybe around August) I started really looking forward to getting to work. For a while I was getting concerned I might end up the only returning person on the crew bus.
Also in August I went through some drama figuring out what my fall show would be. I had kinda committed to Inventing Avi pending my final decision a few days later, when I got a call from a well-known Off-Broadway company looking for a PSM. That dragged on for at least a week while they waited to find out if their regular PSM could clear her schedule. The problem was that the show closed on November 29th. November 30th was supposed to be the day we’d fly to Minneapolis to begin R&J. Since I had more options for the fall than I knew what to do with and the tour is my biggest job of the year, I wanted to clear it with The Acting Company before pursuing the job. They thought I was crazy, but gave me permission to take the job. In the end the job went to the other person, so I was spared the stress of having to go right from one to the other. With Avi, I got a month between gigs, which is why now, a month before we begin rehearsal, I consider this the real start of my process.
When I got back in town things had calmed down again and I began a new show, which is currently in previews. Today The Acting Company had their annual flu shot scheduled, which is part of the program offered by the Actor’s Fund to provide free on-site flu shots to shows and theatre companies. Due to the cramped quarters on the tour buses and the fact that we travel with no understudies, it’s something that we are especially encouraged to take advantage of. I wasn’t especially looking forward to being stabbed in the arm, but I was very much looking forward to seeing everyone that I haven’t seen since the tour ended in May.
The best thing that happened to come up was that I got to meet the new general manager, Nancy, who I soon discovered is awesome. A-freaking-mazing. I had a single theoretical question for her, but we were soon joined by my assistant, Nick, and our company manager, Steve. I lost all sense of time, but we must have spent about an hour in an impromptu meeting, discussing a variety of topics.
My initial request was about the possibility of Nick and I traveling to Minneapolis a few days ahead of the company so we could do our preproduction at the Guthrie and get our supplies in order, tape out the floor, and generally settle in before being thrown into rehearsal. It looks like that should be no problem and our apartments will be ready. It’s currently planned that we will have two days there not counting the travel day, which should be plenty.
We also decided which days we would take off in the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year’s, we talked about a shared Google calendar among the various management departments, concerns about the buses, and the possibility of getting the stage management road box sent to Minneapolis ahead of the set, or at least getting access to it and shipping part of the contents. We also all left with a tentative performance schedule.
I’m very excited to get more into the process, especially after my current show opens. I have been doing a lot of work on my stage management database during Avi but it still needs a lot more work to be ready to begin rehearsals for the tour, and I think the month of having no job will go by very quickly.
