We are just now finishing our hardest week of the tour. We think it is, at least. Next week is awful, too, but in different ways, so we’ll see.

Nick has been trapped on the actor bus for much of this week, and thus has had time to make very accurate venue summary posts for each of our stops. I will link to his as well.

Ruston, LA

Nick’s venue post
We performed on the campus of Louisiana Tech, which has quite a large theatre. The booth is definitely farther away than any we have had before (actually I can’t say for sure, since there were a couple huge venues where I was able to call from backstage). The actors looked very tiny. Matt, our sound supervisor, remarked that it was fun to imagine that they were actually that small. That amused me for the rest of the performance. In my mind, they were about the size of the G.I. Joe action figures of the 80s. Some other people were picturing them to be the size of the larger G.I. Joes, or Barbie dolls.

The people in Ruston were very friendly, perhaps especially so since we were one of the best-selling shows they had ever had. We never know what to expect as far as attendance (and it almost never corresponds to assumptions one would make about the population or cultural sophistication of the area), so to be told that first thing in the morning was nice. The audience seemed to really enjoy the show. As I was leaving the booth I was stopped by a theatre major who wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed the show. Others on the team had similar encounters.

Nick and I had a big surprise when we arrived: a stage management intern! One of the stage management students, Kate, was assigned to us to assist with whatever we needed. Of course we were happy to have her trailing us all day. She was with us for literally all 17 hours of our work day, helping us set up backstage, watching us hang out on the bus during our downtime (which we spent discussing our careers and trying to give her an idea of employment opportunities). She watched me call focus, and a couple hours into that, I ran to the bathroom because the Genie stopped working. When I came back, the Genie was fixed sooner than I had expected, and Kate had resumed calling focus in my absence. That was pretty funny. During the show she had one of our spare wireless headsets, and was with me in the booth during the first act (which is more interesting to call), and with Nick for the second act (which is more interesting to deck). As I had hoped, Nick let her cue a couple actors towards the end of the show. At the end of the night, she loaded the truck with us. It was great to have some extra help, and to make a new stage management friend. It’s great that her teacher (who was also the presenter) thought to give her that opportunity. It would be nice if more schools that we play would do that.

One aspect of the tour that I think gets completely overlooked is that in addition to providing workshops and talkbacks for students to get to ask professional actors about interpreting Shakespeare, vocal work, stage combat, working on new plays, etc., when we play college theatres that have student crews, we are providing a lot of the same kind of education to the technicians as the acting students receive from our actors. We don’t sit in a circle and talk about where we went to college or anything — it’s all in the process of doing the job — but our show often gives students a chance to work with a bigger set than they usually see (and made of steel and aluminum rather than wood), and to encounter different lighting and sound equipment than what their school has, which makes them more valuable technicians if they’re proficient in multiple brands and models of gear. Sometimes we even teach them features that their own equipment has that they didn’t know about, and they can continue to use on future productions. We love any good crew, but it’s especially fun when they’re students who are excited to be part of the show.

Baton Rouge, LA

Nick’s venue post
We returned to Baton Rouge Community College, where we had an evening performance. Corey and I had been requested to do a seminar with some theatre students to talk about careers in theatre. Naturally we spent most of it talking about directing and stage management. It was nice to have a session that was about us, rather than about acting. It was only a half hour long, which always seems too short when you first have to get through the basics of where you came from, where you went to school, and how you got into theatre. But a couple of the attendees stayed behind and we talked for a while longer. Nick had to get out of his nice warm bed to run focus while I was gone, and the whole thing went to hell. It was like Murphy’s Law of focus, and pretty much as soon as I got back everything was fixed. I felt pretty bad about that.

Orange, TX

Nick’s venue post
As soon as we finished in Baton Rouge, we began the drive to Orange — without Nick. The cast had a morning show of the 1-hour R&J in Baton Rouge.

Orange was fantastic in every way. The Lutcher Center is a beautiful theatre that is maintained like it’s brand new, though it’s actually 30 years old. The TD, David, has done many little projects that are pretty ingenious, including one (using strips of different colored rope light along the rail as cue lights) that I am totally stealing someday. The crew were lots of fun. The set was finished amazingly early. I think lighting would have been finished even earlier than it was but we were having so much fun chatting. It was a great day, and I decided to buy a shirt to commemorate our day with the men and women of Local 183. They also have a really cool logo.

In this case Nick also had a 1-hour the next morning, and again travelled with the cast to our next venue.

Tyler, TX

Nick’s venue post
Coming off Orange, we were afraid our expectations would be too high, but Tyler was also a good experience. They had the set finished by lunch, which is insane, and they broke the load-out record set in Orange the night before. We were very excited to have an easy time there, as it was the end of our hellacious four days of constant work, and we were looking forward to some time to relax on our cross-country drive to Connecticut.

Driving

We’re currently on the last few hours of our drive from Tyler, TX to Wallingford, CT. There we will see a hotel for the first time in a week. We’re driving through Pennsylvania right now. We’re not accustomed to extended daylight driving, but the trip is so long that some of it is inevitable. We’re spending it flipping back and forth from Deadliest Catch and the Masters, and of course using our computers.

We don’t get a day off when we reach our destination, but we do have a load-in day, which at least means we only work about 8 hours, and we have the night off.