I guess this is the first edition of Season 3 of “On The Road Again.” Click that picture at the top to see all the posts in this series. It follows my progress on tour with The Acting Company. This year we’ll be remounting Romeo and Juliet and rehearsing a new production of The Comedy of Errors. The tour will exist in two phases. First we’ll rehearse R&J at New 42nd Street Studios in New York, which is an awesome place to work, and conveniently allows me to live at home through production. We’ll tech R&J here in New York at Pace University (where Nick worked this summer and says it’s nice). Then we take it on tour, focusing on the west coast, where we didn’t really spend any time last year. After almost a month of that, we return to the Guthrie in Minneapolis, where we go into rehearsal for Comedy. Then we open Comedy at the Guthrie. During the tail end of that run, we will start playing in rep with R&J. For the rest of the tour we’ll play both shows in rep, until we end our run back in New York in mid-April.

So that’s what lies in store this year. The big news is that I’ve created a big page on the site called So You’re Going on Tour, in which I describe everything that I take with me on tour and why. As much as I love you, my anonymous readers, I’m also doing it for a more practical reason: I have a new ASM, the awesome Meaghan, who you heard a bit about during Season 1 of “On the Road Again” (before it was called that, cause there was no “again”). Meaghan was our indispensable stage management intern at the Guthrie during the first year there. With Nick getting married this coming year, and being all grown up and stuff, he’s not going on tour. Meaghan has been the heir apparent for a long time, and I’m really excited that it worked out for her to do the job. She’s also getting her Equity card, which I’m totally psyched about. I like it when the business works like it’s supposed to: you start out small and prove that you’re capable of better things, and you will be rewarded with better jobs.

Anyway, this is Meaghan’s first tour, so naturally like all good stage managers should, her first reaction to getting the job was to head over to HeadsetChatter and read up on what she should be prepared for! The only thing is, while I’ve done some posts about how I’m preparing or what I’m packing, there was no definitive place on the site that says “these are the things you need on tour.” Until now.

I just got home from the summer season, and we start rehearsal in a little less than a month. Meaghan and I exchanged some emails today, and I’m starting to seriously pull together the information I need. So stay tuned for another busy season!