Nick has been seeking revenge on me for some time for some alleged misbehavior on my part. When we were in Tyler, TX, he executed his plan to get back at me, and then made a hysterical video about it. There have been many tour videos, but I think this one will stand out as the best. He made it in iMovie ’09 in about four hours on the bus.
April 13, 2010
Week from Hell, Part 2
We are in the middle of our infamous overnight load-in. We had a show in Wallingford, CT this morning at 10AM. Immediately after load-out we began driving to Keene, NH. After a stop for some fast food, we got to Keene with about 15 minutes to spare.
The Colonial Theatre is very small, but really cool. Everything is really old but beautifully maintained, which is fun. There are even wooden catwalks up in the flies. I’d really like to get to go up there. The theatre is so small that Nick and I have evacuated to the bus just to get out of everybody’s way.
We had a bit of negotiating to do when we arrived, as the measurement we decided on for the placement of the set would have prevented the entrances from being used the usual way. Since Florida, we have an option for getting actors from our “hobbit hole” entrance to the up-right door without any room upstage of the set, but it involves building the hobbit hole backwards, which does weird things to lighting, as well as just plain not being the way the set was designed. It is nice, though, to have gathered an established set of options along the way that we can quickly consider when we encounter challenges. In the end, we placed the set another six inches downstage, which makes lighting a little more difficult downstage, but it was already way farther down than it should be, and with much less frontlight than usual, so gaining a few more inches upstage that allows us to move around the set properly was the better deal.
Nick and I are blogging while watching an old episode of Star Trek: TNG, as I wait by my radio for Devon to call me in to start focus. Nick is done, having put up the signage with his new Tactical Signage Deployment Unit. You may recall that he has a Signage Purse. Well we didn’t pick the Signage Purse, it belonged to the previous stage managers, so the fact that it was pink wasn’t really a choice. But Nick has wanted to have a more manly signage folder for a long time, and in light of certain jokes I’ve played on him, I felt it was my duty to provide him with the manliest signage folder imaginable before the tour was over, and that he could take with him to future jobs. I’ve been working on it for about a week, and here is the result:
It has some advanced practical features like a clip on the side for a dry-erase marker, but the best part about it is that it’s got little army men glued to the front cover. Nick seems very happy.
April 11, 2010
Week from Hell, Part 1
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.
April 6, 2010
Last Leg Begins
Well we’re back! Our five days of vacation are over. The overall verdict was that they were very welcome, not long enough, and yet we all missed each other a lot.
Today we all flew to Shreveport, LA from wherever we were (I was with the largest group, from New York), where we all boarded the cast bus. The crew bus needed some last-minute repairs, so we found out a few days ago that the cast bus would take us all from the airport in Shreveport to our first destination, Ruston, LA — about an hour and a half away.
I’m not sure if this is the first time ever — I can’t imagine it is — that the company has had the entire traveling company (22 people) all traveling between cities on the same tour bus. The bus is designed for 12 people to live on comfortably, but between the large music singalong party going on in the back lounge, a few people in bunks, and a few in the front lounge, apparently nobody was bothered by the overcrowding. It was actually kind of a nice bonding experience between cast and crew, especially since we haven’t seen each other in almost a week.
I had a rough day — I started out with a headache, and flying always messes my body up, so it just got worse throughout the day. By the time we got on the bus I just wanted to sleep it off. I borrowed one of the actors’ bunks (my first time sleeping in the coffin-sized bunks the 12-person configuration creates) and attempted to sleep the whole time. It was nice to be able to close my eyes, be in the dark, and lay horizontal, but I don’t sleep well on a loud bus when I don’t feel well, so I don’t think I got more than 10 minutes of actual sleep.
We just had a crew room here, but because of how awful our schedule is this week, I had a plot that depending on how I felt, if the hotel had some rooms and could match the company rate, I might want my own room, just to store up as much comfort and sanity as possible before the craziness begins.
Given how rough the day was, I decided to go for the room even though we didn’t have the best discount here. It’s a colossal waste of money, but the room is nicer than I expected, and I’m lying in a big fluffy bed watching what I want to watch on TV, able to use my computer comfortably on a lap desk, I can sleep in quiet and darkness, with access to a bathroom, and in the morning I can take a shower easily. I think I stand a much better chance of waking up feeling fine and being useful at load-in.
And in answer to the bus question, we have a different bus, not either of the two we thought we were getting, but it’s so close to being identical to the one we just had that when we first saw it in the dark, we really weren’t sure. Even after we walked inside, I looked around and thought the sconces in the front lounge were a different shape, which is the only reason I was able to say, “This is a different bus, right?” The artwork is also different, but also cool, which is a tall order, because I loved the art in the last bus. I didn’t even get as far as checking out the accessories in my bunk before checking into the hotel, so that’s the big thing that to me increases the comfort level. Little details like where the outlets are located, a hook, and a pouch or pocket of some kind to hold the TV remote, headphones, your phone, wallet, etc. make a huge difference.
So I think we’re all ready to begin the final leg. We have two weeks of hell and then what should be a nice sit-down in Philly to finish it off. I’m going to be sad when it’s over, but it will also be nice to be home for at least a month.
March 28, 2010
Choo Choo (Chattanooga, TN)
I feel like I haven’t blogged much. That’s because our usual breakneck pace has slowed down these last two weeks. Today we did our first performance in a week. In the last two weeks, we’ve only played one other venue.
I wish I could say more about our hotel, the Chattanooga Choo Choo (yes, seriously). It’s a converted train station (well the lobby and shop area is), and some of the rooms are actual period train cars parked on the remaining tracks (not ones we can afford on our per diem, not that we were given the option to splurge — I’m afraid I might have!). Behind the tracks are more buildings where the normal rooms are. As a hotel, it’s a little bit run-down feeling, but comfortable. The internet was amazing the first day and has pretty much sucked thereafter. Curses!
And I should say, I’m the kind of person who once spent the better part of a week showering in the dark (Tuscon last year) because I didn’t feel it necessary to bother the maintenance people to change my bathroom light. I have had to call the front desk almost every day. Admittedly one time it was to order a fridge so I could chill the cache of energy drinks I was given by our company manager. Otherwise it’s been for problems. I’m debating whether I’m going to mention the fact that I came home from the show to find my door had been left ajar by the cleaning person. I’m just kind of tired of hotels right now, which should be great because on the next leg we’ll be sleeping most nights on the bus! I’m just ready for vacation.
Today was a really nice day. We loaded in yesterday (well, other people did — Nick and I did our 8AM load in and then spent the rest of the day at rehearsal for Alice in Wonderland, so it felt like we missed the whole thing), so all we had to do today was show up for show call. It was a 3PM matinee — not too early, not too late — and we left the theatre, not having to load out, while the sun was still shining and the weather just perfect here on the picturesque campus of the University of Tennessee. Because everyone has to be shuttled to the hotel in vans, it normally takes three trips (the buses were released when we got here because we’re about to go on vacation). A bunch of us, cast and crew, walked the 15 minutes back to the hotel, which was a nice change of pace.
Tomorrow night we have a show, and then in the morning it’s vacation time! Having never actually taken a Vacation with a capital V in my adult life, I’m going back to New York, where my activities will consist of sitting at home, surfing the internet, playing video games, sleeping, probably visiting Phantom, going to Stage Manager Drink Night, and visiting my parents’ house on Easter. Basically exactly what I would be doing with five days off any other time. And I can’t wait!
March 22, 2010
Loading Out
Today we played our last performance in West Palm Beach. We went up 25 minutes late because a school of 200 (out of 300 seats) was late, but they ended up being a really great audience — very much like what the “groundlings” of Shakespeare’s time are assumed to have been like: rowdy, fans of the bawdy humor, talking back to the stage at times, but completely engrossed in the story. It was a great way to end our run here. It’s a shame we were so late, as it would have been fun to have a talkback with that group.
After the show we began our load-out, which took a little longer than it otherwise would have with such a good crew, because of how tight the stage is, but we could hardly complain on the truck crew because the rain had stopped and the dock was equipped with a couple benches and the most beautiful weather one could ever want while being forced to be outside doing nothing.
Emotional Bus Rollercoaster
Pioneer Coach has been toying with our emotions this past week. On our drive to West Palm we found out that our current bus, which we love about as much as one could love a bus, will not be back with us on the next leg. Despite the initial rumor that it was going on the Jay-Z tour, the current story is that it’s going to some boy band none of us are pre-teeny enough to have heard of. We also haven’t been sure if we’re keeping our driver, Jim. Jim and the bus are not a permanent pair, but when the tour goes on hiatus, there is always a chance that driver or bus could be sent out on a different tour.
Anyway, that has been something of a black cloud hanging over our stay here, knowing that it’s our last week with the bus, and presumably our next bus will not be as cool, or else the boy band wouldn’t be taking ours, right? See the thing is, Pioneer is really nice to The Acting Company, and generally will give us nice buses if they can (especially for the crew, as we really live on the bus), but if somebody with deeper pockets really wants the bus, any time the bus goes home we are at risk of losing it. So it was really no surprise to hear that when we go on vacation we’re losing the bus that’s really better than we deserve.
Today when the show ended — I swear to God, this is how it went:
ME: Electrics 135 and the house lights… Go.
(Booth door bursts open)
DEVON: We’re keeping Jim, and we’re getting a brand new bus!
ME: What? You’re bullshitting me.
DEVON: No.
ME: Seriously.
DEVON: Bobby just heard it from Jim.
ME: Then Bobby’s bullshitting you.
DEVON: I don’t think so.
ME: I refuse to let myself get excited until I hear it from another source.
Well out on the dock, Jim was hanging out waiting for us to load out, and while we were waiting to load the truck, he confirmed that it was true. The bus is a 2009 model with a slide. I asked what color it is, and he said brown. We later went on the Pioneer site on my iPhone and looked up the pictures and specs of the brown 2009 bus, and found that the interior layout looked very much like ours. The color scheme wasn’t as cozy as ours, but we were very happy. We flipped through the pictures of a couple of the other new buses, including one Devon really liked that had a granite floor in the front lounge.
Then a while later Devon came back to the truck and mentioned the bus number — 9616. I said, “Wait a minute, 9616 isn’t the brown one — that’s the red one with the granite floor!” Well apparently that’s the number, so once again I’m not letting myself get too excited (there’s still two weeks for them to change their minds), but if true, that’s the absolute newest bus. Some pics:
This view looks almost identical to our current bus, except that it doesn’t look like the couch has fold-down armrests (with cupholders), which is a shame. You can never have too many cupholders.
Fancy sink in the kitchen! Our current kitchen is more practical.
Fancy floor! Devon also has learned a little something about the bunks on these newer buses, which you can kind of see in this photo: they apparently curve out at the upper-body end, so you have more room by your head/arms and it narrows by your feet. We’re not sure what we think of this idea, but I’m excited to try it.
Anyway, we’re spending one more night in the hotel in West Palm (Per Diem Vortex: activate!) and then tomorrow evening we’ll be doing a 13-hour drive straight to Chattanooga. It’s been great to be able to settle into a hotel for more than two days, but tonight I packed up (not that I really unpacked anything more than I usually do). In the time between when we check out and when we leave, I may go for a walk around to see the parts of town (like the beach) that I never got to, just to say I’ve seen more than the theatre and the City Place shopping area. There’s a commuter train that goes right past our hotel that goes to cities all along the coast for dirt cheap — I thought about taking a ride just to see some more of Florida, but not sure I’ll have time or energy. Anyway it’s been fun being here, but now it’s time to move on and get even closer to our vacation!
West Palm Beach: Vortex of Per Diem
We are now in the part of the tour that was, for a lot of us, I think, the big selling point of this whole adventure: a week-long sit-down in Florida. Let’s take a look at the budget:
Per diem: $90/day
Hotel room: $99/daydamn.
Food: NY prices
Martinis: NY pricesdamn.
Despite the fact that we’re spending a lot more money here than we would pretty much anywhere else, I think the sunshine and warm weather (remember this is a company that spent the first two months in Minneapolis in winter), combined with the free time and calm routine of a sit-down, has been well worth it.
We’re playing at the Kravis Center, which is a large complex of two indoor theatres and an outdoor amphitheater. Our neighbor across the hall is one of the tours of Jersey Boys, which is in the middle of a three-week run.
Our theatre is a large black box that apparently also gets converted into a dining room for other kind of events. The stage is made of temporary platforms 40 inches high. The tricky part is that all the access to the space is at floor level, meaning that the wingspace is at floor level and the actors have to go up stairs to get to the set and the playing space. Which wouldn’t be such a problem if there was some extra room on the stage platform. But as it is, the set barely fits on the platform, so the moment they get off the physical set they have to deal with stairs. Getting from one entrance to another usually involves exiting, going down stairs, walking along the narrow floor-level space that is crammed with prop tables, and then back up another set of stairs to access a different part of the set. It is cr-a-zy. But it has been the subject of frequent conversations on the crew bus, at venues, hotels, restaurants and bars across the country for months now, and we worked out with the venue staff the best way to prepare the space for our arrival. It’s weird, but the fact that it functions at all is a miracle.
The backstage area is a veritable obstacle course (one actor actually had to vault onto a platform and under a railing because he forgot he had to set himself in a different place for his entrance until the last minute). However, onstage the set actually fits really well into the space. It’s very intimate, but the Rinker has a very high ceiling and an openness that matches the scale of the set well. Sometimes our set is a tiny speck in a house with a 60-foot proscenium, and then there was Baruch where the audience literally had their feet on the stage. The subtitle for the show among the crew and staff during the Baruch load-in was “Shakespeare… IN YOUR FACE!!!” This is a little bit like that because the edge of the marley is only a couple feet from the front row, but it all feels a little more in proportion.
We actually are doing a lot of the Baruch staging for the fights, because the actors are close enough to the edge of the stage, and the audience is lower than where the swords swing out downstage, but still very near, and Corey felt the impending danger would distract the audience from concentrating on the story. Since we did all the legwork at Baruch, we have a bag of tricks that we can pull from selectively when a venue requires a change in staging, and can mix-and-match to only alter the show as much as we have to.
We also had to change some entrances (which we do to a small extent in a lot of venues), many due to the fact that our only stage left entrance is about 18″ wide and down a flight of stairs in view of the audience. Directing traffic through that entrance late in the second act was a bit of a puzzle.
I must say the cast has done a great job of justifying the presence of the onstage escape stairs. It’s not easy to take a show that was staged on a flat surface and suddenly make everyone enter and exit on stairs for no apparent reason. Before the first performance they had a quick discussion of how to handle it, and the basic idea was just to start acting before you get to the stairs. They’re doing a great job making it make some kind of sense in every situation.
We’re doing six performances while we’re here, including two school shows that were originally scheduled to be the 1-hour R&J, but just a week or two ago were changed to be full shows. It required a large flurry of emails among the departments to make sure that could happen (including delaying the load-out for a day), but I’m very happy they made that decision. The 1-hour is a great intro to Shakespeare for groups who for some reason can’t see the full show, but it’s no comparison to a real production with sets, costumes, lighting and sound, and since we’ve got the show loaded in anyway, we might as well go whole hog. It’s more work for us, but the payoff for the audience is exponentially higher in my opinion.
There have also been a number of social events, from birthday parties to free dinner and drinks for the cast and crew at a local restaurant, to a fancy benefit for the cast to mingle with board members and other donors. It’s definitely a change of pace from our usual breakneck pace at which we roll into town, do a show, and roll out.
After this we head to Chattanooga for another sit-down, which includes only two performances of R&J and two days of work on our Alice in Wonderland development process. After that it’s vacation time! So the West Palm stop has been kind of the gateway to our vacation. It won’t be easy when we come back, so we’re enjoying the cushy part of the tour while we can.
March 18, 2010
iDisk Syncing for Stage Management Files
Naturally being on tour I have a lot of documents to take care of. A lot of them have to do with schedules — there’s the cast schedule, the crew schedule, and the city sheets. Somebody always wants to know something, and there are a number of individual, constantly updated, documents which contain that information. I was finding it really hard to keep up with having the latest documents immediately accessible on my phone. I found myself saying, “I have that, but it’s on my computer,” way too often.
What I came up with is a solution using MobileMe’s iDisk, though I’m sure you could cobble together some other method if you’re not a MobileMe subscriber.
I have turned on iDisk syncing from System Preferences, which I’ve never really liked because frankly MobileMe / .Mac has always been really slow, and I don’t want it to spend any more time syncing than it needs to. However, I’ve never really bothered to use my iDisk to store files that I need frequent access to, so now it seems to be more worthwhile.
For a while I’ve had an alias folder on my desktop that links to a folder in my Acting Company folder, where all the schedules and city sheets were laid out in chronological order. This gives me easy access on my desktop — using OS X’s QuickLook feature, I don’t even need to open the files to read them. But it wasn’t helping me to have access to the latest copies of those documents on the go.
I moved that folder to my iDisk, and turned on iDisk syncing. Now I have access to the iDisk-hosted folder if I’m offline, which then syncs back to the online copy when I’m connected to the internet, and I can access the files using the rather nice (and free) iDisk app that Apple provides for the iPhone.
Here’s a picture of how I have the folder arranged:
I have the available city sheets on top, followed by the cast schedules (with the yellow labels), and the corresponding crew schedules (in green) underneath. This allows me to flip back and forth at a glance and see visually what the relationship is between them.
You can’t edit documents on the iPhone using this technique, but mostly I just use this folder to reference other people’s schedules when making my own. When I get an email with an updated version of the schedule, it takes about 3 seconds to drag it to this folder and overwrite the old one, and then I’m updated everywhere!
March 17, 2010
Should I Kill Myself Now or Later?
This is April 5-10. What you are seeing here is iCal showing a selection of my calendars in 24-hour view. Those are all the hours in the day. There are no more — believe me, I have checked, and inquired into creating more. That’s it! Those little white spaces in the early morning are the only time we will not be working or driving, and I can assure you, will will most certainly be spending them sleeping!
It’s really more like one long day. I shall call it Thwiday!
Travel Days: Iowa –> Florida
SUNDAY: 6:00PM
After our 4AM load in and 3PM performance in Ottumwa, IA, we began loading out at breakneck speed.
On their way out, the cast posed for a picture before heading back to their hotel, anxious to begin their three-day trek to Florida.
The local crew was very ambitious and believed from the start they could break our record of two hours and 15 minutes. Here Nick and Jason enjoy the downtime the truck crew gets while waiting for the walls to be disassembled.
SUNDAY: 8:30PM
They did indeed break the record, by about two minutes! We then piled into the bus, on our way to the sunshine. But first we stopped at a local restaurant for dinner, where we ran into some members of the cast and production staff. We said our goodbyes, and then hit the road for real.
MONDAY: 10:00AM-ish
We awoke in Nashville, where our driver, Jim, lives. Jim parked the bus in the parking lot of a mall, for us to spend the day while he spent some time at home and slept. In addition to the bus, however, he also left us one of his own cars (!!) in case we wanted to get around town! Devon was pretty much the only one who used it, I think, to go to his favorite pancake restaurant. The rest of us were too lethargic to go anywhere but the mall.
MONDAY: 7:00PM
Jim came back to the bus at our scheduled departure time, and brought with him a present to lend us: a Wii(!!). Now a Wii on a bus is not always a great idea, but this bus does have a slide, which makes it possible for two people to swing their arms around in the front lounge without breaking anything. We also learned sadly that our very awesome bus is not coming back on the next leg — somebody else wants it. We think it might be Jay-Z. Whatever. Doesn’t he know who we are??? We are hoping that Jim will be able to come back, though. Tour buses are like children: we don’t really care which one we get as long as it’s healthy.
With Jim back on board, we headed south!
MONDAY: 11:25PM
When we didn’t stop for dinner for a while, and I got tired of the satellite cutting out while we were trying to watch a documentary on the Unabomber, I went to bed. I was awoken by Devon, asking if I wanted the best hotdogs in the world. I didn’t really want hotdogs, but I wanted something, so I got up.
When I got to the front lounge and peered out the window, I saw a surprisingly familiar sight: we were right in the heart of Atlanta, on Peachtree Street. I said, “wait, I know this corner!” and sure enough we passed by the stage door side of the Fox Theater, and I thought to myself, “this is the way to that burger place!” I soon realized that was our destination: The Varsity. I had never heard of their hotdogs, but I had been taken there at the promise of the best burgers in the world, when I was at the Fox for two weeks doing merchandise on the Scarlet Pimpernel tour back in 1999. Unfortunately, Varsity had closed five minutes early, and would not serve us. So we continued driving, watching South Park, and eventually stopped for fuel at a truck stop with a McDonald’s. Not so exciting. Then we went to bed for real.
TUESDAY: 10:00AM-ish
We awoke in the parking lot of our soon-to-be hotel in West Palm Beach. We were not officially supposed to arrive until Wednesday, so we just got a crew room for the first day. After a day-and-a-half without a shower, that was our primary concern, and we rushed through our turns in the shower until our scheduled 1:30 tour of the venue, which is right down the street.
TUESDAY: 1:30PM
The five of us who are involved in the onstage and backstage layout of the show (me, Nick, Bobby, Devon and Olivia) walked to the theatre, where we were met by two of the technical staff, to have a conversation we thought would be about how screwed we are.
The theatre is a black box with a raised stage. Even without the raised stage, it would be barely big enough to fit the set, and with the platforms, it is not actually as big as our marley floor (which we were assured would always be the minimum size of every venue on the tour). We’ve been talking about this on the bus, in hotels and restaurants all over the country for at least a month, so there have been many plans devised, and questions going back and forth to the venue staff about possible solutions.
We laid out Olivia’s tape measure to see how wide the set would be, and began brainstorming. We were told where additional platforms could be added to the stage, and where stairs could be located. As we talked over it, we got more reassured that there weren’t any major obstacles to the staging. The big thing was that we really didn’t think our platform, Fred, would be able to fit anywhere, even if he had to be lifted to stage level. Bobby and Olivia had planned to use Wednesday to go to Home Depot and buy supplies to build a mini-Fred. Thankfully, we realized we didn’t have to do that.
Somebody pointed to the slightly extra amount of width stage left and said, “it’s too bad that space isn’t over stage right, we could put Fred there.”
Massive lightbulb went off. “We can put Fred stage left. We’ve never had to do it, but it’s one of the possible plans for dealing with a Fred problem. It just means more light gets cast on the crew.” We’re also going to work with Devon to see if anything can be done so the crew isn’t walking straight through the light from the floor par. But even so, the fact that our real Fred can live on stage is better than any of the other possibilities, so we left after our short tour feeling much better about our load-in on Thursday.
Here’s a view of the house:
TUESDAY: 2:30PM
Back on the bus we began hooking up the Wii. After a couple quick games of bowling, Nick, Olivia and I went to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch, where we sat outside and drank pina coladas. The entire rest of the tour was worth it for that one hour. It felt like a paid vacation.
TUESDAY: 5:00PM
We ate way too much, and stumbled our way to Barnes & Noble, and then back to the bus, where Bobby and Matt were furiously battling each other on the Wii.
Here Nick and Olivia look on while Matt and Bobby race.
WEDNESDAY: 8:00AM
Me: asleep on the bus. Bobby texts me to let me know we can check into the hotel. I had asked him the night before if we had early check-in, and he said the front desk would have to let us know in the morning.
I was anxious to spread out into my own room, to take a shower, and to get away from any planned St. Patrick’s Day festivities, so I got up right away and gathered my stuff as quietly as possible, and headed to the hotel.
I was also anxious because I got confirmation that my new flashlight would be delivered today. For more about that, read my flashlight post.
WEDNESDAY: 2:30PM
I was getting my laundry ready when I happened to check Twitter and read that Nick was also doing his laundry. So we met up for lunch at the restaurant in the hotel, while waiting for our laundry.
WEDNESDAY: 5:00PM
After doing laundry, I have torn apart my suitcase, made piles of things, and have been making copious lists for what I’m going to bring home with me on vacation, so that I can lighten my load for the final leg. As I did on the last leg, I’m only taking my backpack and Acting Company tote bag home with me, so I have to think carefully about what will fit in those bags and can be taken on a plane. Getting my suitcase emptier is especially important because at the end of the tour I also need to be carrying all my personal possessions that normally live in the work box.
The rest of my night is free, who knows what I’ll do. I’d be happy to hang out and do some little projects, maybe read a little. 8:00AM load in tomorrow, with a 7:30 show. This one is going to require a lot of energy and clear thinking!
