We arrived last night in Palm Springs, CA. We knew right away that we were someplace nice because the airport had an outdoor plaza separating the gates from the baggage claim. For this group of mostly New Yorkers and Minnesotans, such architecture was completely inconceivable.

Here we are at LaGuardia, waiting for our first trip as a company.

This morning we had our first tour performance, of our 1-hour trunk show of Romeo and Juliet. This is done out of costume, with basic props. For a brief primer on how this works, this post is a good introduction (bear in mind it refers to last year’s tour). Because we don’t have any performances of the big show here, the truck has gone on to Northridge from New York. So the 1-hour trunk had to go on the plane as checked baggage. The trunk is huge and weighs about 100 pounds. We were very concerned about it. We also almost missed our connecting flight, and everyone’s biggest concern was the 1-hour trunk making it onto the plane, nevermind our own luggage. But my seat was perfectly positioned to confirm the good news:

The most concerning thing about it is that due to the fact that we’re doing the actual show fights in the 1-hour this year, we need to use the show weapons. So the stakes for losing or damaging the 1-hour trunk are far greater than they would be otherwise. The cane swords used by Mercutio and Tybalt are handmade for this production and essentially irreplaceable. The other swords would take some time to get duplicates of. We’re hoping to have duplicates of the fighting swords made before the spring tour, but for now we just have to be really careful with the show swords.

We’re performing two back-to-back performances of the 1-hour at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, CA. This theatre is awesome, and I was immediately sad that we won’t be doing the big show here. This would be a wonderful venue to play.

The green room is by far the greatest I’ve seen. Here are some pictures:

After being slain, our dead characters hang out in the greenroom watching the show on the big screen:

There’s also an enclosed patio (with a grill!) just off the greenroom, where John, Stephen, Jonathan, Whitney and Ben relax between our back-to-back performances.

There’s even a lady on staff who serves drinks and provides other food services. Not only an amazing greenroom, but someone to serve you! Crazy!

As is the custom for the 1-hour, Meaghan is in charge and I’m here to help set up props and wrangle actors. Since this is a big venue, it’s very good that I’m able to be here, as the distance between where she’s calling from and the stage is quite large, and the setup and turnaround time between the shows is short.

Everyone was very happy to find such a nice place for our first shows out of New York. The student audiences seemed to enjoy themselves. The talkbacks were brief but the questions were very good. The 1-hour is always kind of a weird thing, but so far it seems to be a good experience for all of us, and I’m glad for the new people that it’s starting out this way. People are prepared for the fact that it can be performed in less-than-ideal conditions, but it’s nice to start at pretty much a perfect venue.