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February 15, 2009

Glenn Ellyn, IL

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:50 am

Another post? Must be a load-in day!

Last night we loaded out from St. Louis, which took about four hours. It was a rather rough stop for us — we had to do both shows, and the path from the truck to the stage was rather long and convoluted, so load-in took approximately forever (13 hours just to get the set up, with the entire traveling crew working as carpenters), and load out was about an hour and a half longer than it has been at venues with a more direct path to the truck.  Also, the campus folks wouldn’t let us park the crew bus, so we spent the entire 3 days there without our kitchen/office/bedroom available to us, which led to an endless list of problems and inconveniences.

One thing I will say about the fact that we were shorthanded, in a hurry, and without the bus is that I learned a whole lot about these shows we’re dragging around the country.  I participated in parts of the truck pack and unpacking that I had never seen before, and pretty much built the Henry set bolt-by-bolt, so instead of having just a theoretical understanding of how it’s assembled, I literally know every action that has to be taken to make it go up, and I feel much more informed about the rather complicated structure we play on.  We’re still experimenting with the truck pack, and I was in the thick of it the entire night, so I now feel more qualified to help direct the process.  We accidentally did some things differently this time, but our truck driver, Mike, said this morning that the trailer felt really smooth on the drive up, so we must have done something right.

Last night into this morning was the first true one-night move we’ve had.  We had a changeover yesterday morning starting at 8AM, did The Spy, and left the theatre in St. Louis shortly before 3AM, and arrived at the theatre in Glenn Ellyn, IL (a suburb of Chicago) at 7:30AM. Until this point we’ve never had to load out a show and load it in the next morning to play a show that night. The delays in St. Louis were a big concern for us, especially so because it’s a 7PM curtain here tonight, but we were thrilled to discover when we stepped out of the bus this morning that our truck was backed up to an honest-to-goodness loading dock, which lead in a pretty much straight line to the stage, maybe 30 feet away.  And there to unload the truck were a large bunch of stagehand-looking adult men and women, who made quick work of our truck, and had the deck and part of the gallery up before Nick and I even finished putting up signage.  We only had to unload Henry, which is also a blessing. I am told the lights were all properly hung, colored and patched when we arrived as well, so we are all a little bit in awe of Glenn Ellyn right now.

The bus is parked just a few dozen feet up the slope from the loading dock (as it’s sort of in a trench between buildings, they didn’t want the fumes from the generator getting sucked indoors all day), and Nick and I are properly able to conduct our load-in day routine of updating signage and then sleeping and playing on the internet. Nick’s next project is probably going to be laying down carpet on the gallery (which gets skipped if we’re pressed for time, but I don’t think he’ll be so lucky with this speedy crew), and my next appointment is with Daniel, our lighting supervisor, who tells me around 4:00 he’ll be ready to do cueing, which is theoretically when we sit out front and step through all the cues and make sure they look right, but in the last couple venues has been more about reprogramming the show to somehow make it look like what it’s supposed to, while cringing at lights wrongly focused, substitute gel colors that look nothing like the original, and occasionally saying, “What the hell is that??”when something completely inexplicable pops up, like last night when we had a single solitary house light come up in one cue! Of course this is also the most important thing I personally do during load-in, as catching these things avoids much embarrassment and danger to the cast, and results in a show that mimics as much as possible the designer’s intention. I think we will find the process much easier here.

Sometime before this happens I take a few minutes with our sound supervisor, Tim, to talk about comm, which is one of my favorite topics. First of all, since without comm everything I do during a performance would just be me sitting alone in a room talking to myself, it’s a matter of some interest to me. Especially on this tour I like to know whether we’re using elements of the house system or entirely our own, because we have a crappy old base station which doesn’t like my personal headset, and the company-supplied headsets are ridiculously uncomfortable. So sometimes it’s all our stuff, and sometimes all the venue’s, and sometimes we add our wireless headsets into their wired system. Often Tim presents me with a couple options to choose from — naturally I prefer the one that gives us the greatest reliability and allows me to use my headset. So sometime in the middle of the day I grab the script(s) of the show(s) I’ll be calling in the venue, and Tim and I go visit the booth or other locales where I have the option to call the show, to figure out where I’ll be calling from and make sure that I have comm and monitors where I need them. I also check out the lighting in the area to see if I have enough light to read my script, and in many cases to decide if the venue’s usual stage manager lighting is too bright. I prefer a very dark place to call shows from, especially these shows, as the lighting design is very dark. I tend not to want any light source higher above my script than is necessary to light it. The stage management workbox is supplied with its own LittleLite, which I try to avoid using because I’m always afraid I’ll leave it behind somewhere, but with the exception of the Guthrie, I think I’ve ended up using it in every venue, once because there was no light for me, once because the light supplied was too bright, and once because the booth was lit by dim-able overhead lights, which I hate because they have to illuminate an entire room when all I need lit is one page. I haven’t checked out the situation here yet.  That’s what I’m up to so far today!


February 14, 2009

Another Bag Review: Ricardo Beverly Hills Essentials 30″ Rolling Duffle

I call this: bag reviews,On the Road Again,random,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:36 am

According to my statistics, probably the most popular post ever on my blog is the review I did of my BBP bag (which I decided I kind of hate, and never use, incidentally). It seems people are always searching for reviews of it, and I hope my rather lengthy post on it has helped them make a decision. So since I’m an admitted Bag Whore, and recently purchased a new bag that I’m very excited about, I will give another review.

For this tour I’m now on, I decided I needed a snazzy new piece of luggage that I could lug around for six months, that would be bigger than the small suitcase I use for summer stock, but small enough that I can still get around with it easily. I haven’t selected a piece of luggage for myself since I was about 12, so I really didn’t know what my options were. After looking for ideas in some luggage stores in New York, I decided to try the rolling duffle format, as it seemed the most expandable while still being lightweight and compact when the contents allowed. I think they actually may not make this model anymore, but you can still find it for sale online (at about half of the original MSRP). Here’s the Amazon link.

This is the Ricardo Beverly Hills Essentials 30″ Rolling Duffle. It’s MSRP is $180, but most places I’ve seen it online have been around $100. It comes in blue, shown above (which is the one I have), and brown. The wheels (which are Razer-scooter-style) match the color of the bag, which is a completely useless but cool feature. It has some little accents that are yellow (such as the zipper pulls, and the button you push to make the handle pop out).

As this handy image shows, it has two main compartments: there is a lower compartment that’s kind of box-shaped and somewhat rigid, but not completely. The zipper that you see partially opened on top leads to the main compartment which takes up pretty much all the rest of the space. There is also a nice mesh section on the bottom of the top compartment, so you can see into the bottom compartment and air can get in there. It even zips open so you can get in the bottom compartment without opening it from the outside (my bag is always packed too tightly to make that very useful, but I’m sure it could be).

The upper compartment has two pouches on the back edge, like many suitcases have, to stick whatever it is you stick in those (toiletries mostly, I guess, though I travel with a separate toiletries bag since we don’t stay in a hotel every night). These don’t close, and when the bag is flipped open, due to its flexible nature, I find the pouches sometimes bend over and the contents spill out into the rest of the bag. I keep things like my little swiss army knife, apartment keys, coins for laundry, stamps, and a roll of scotch tape in there. I don’t mind it too much, but they’re not the most useful for keeping things separate that you really need to keep separate. Unfortunately, I’d say the one fault of the bag is there really aren’t any small compartments, but I think that’s true of most traditional suitcases as well.

Attached at either end of the upper part of the bag are rather large side pockets. The one on the left is kind of normal, the one on the right has a little trick. It’s mostly designed to be a place to keep dirty laundry, wet clothes, shoes, or other things you might not want getting shoved in with all your nice clean clothes. The pocket actually goes much deeper than it appears — it has a sort of sock-like shape to it that extends into the main compartment. This has advantages and disadvantages: if you don’t need to fill that pocket with much, then it just compresses and doesn’t take away valuable space in the main compartment. If you do try to cram it with stuff, it will expand into the main compartment, giving you less room in there. I think this is the best possible solution, but when I’ve got close to a week of dirty laundry, it can be tricky to shove it all in the side pouch, and then rearrange the rest of my bag to compensate for the fact that the center compartment is now reduced in capacity for clean clothes. In theory it should all work out because it’s the same total volume, but I find I always have to start rearranging things as the proportion of dirty vs. clean clothes changes throughout the week. If you stay somewhere more than a day or two and actually fully unpack your bag in the hotel, it might not matter at all. Anyway, the idea of having a separate place for dirty laundry was a huge selling point for this bag. The fact that it doesn’t waste space when empty is also highly awesome.
UPDATE: After a recent string of nights spent sleeping on the bus, I had gotten to the point where most of my clothes were dirty. I’m happy to report the dirty laundry pocket was able to expand to about 2/3 the size of the total upper part of the bag, successfully keeping all my yucky clothes away from the nice ones until we were able to spend the night in a hotel.

These are really the only four compartments. There is a zipper at the bottom of the bottom compartment which leads into the lining of the bag. I really don’t know what it’s for, but you could shove stuff in there if you really want, maybe for extra security. I keep my mail in there so 3 months of bills and bank statements aren’t rolling around in my way every day. On the exterior there are a few loops, and some elastic straps, which if I’m careful, I can get my toiletries bag to fit in — by complete accident, the bags even match!

The final zippered area is on the bottom of the bag. A panel pulls down revealing some (rather thin and cheap-feeling) backpack straps. I like this feature because if I have to carry the bag up a flight of stairs, it’s much easier as a backpack than as a suitcase. However, when there’s 30-40lbs in the bag, the straps are not particularly comfortable, so I don’t personally see this as an alternative to rolling the bag, except for a quick 30-second jaunt up stairs or the like. I also suspect with any serious use they would start to break.

The bag has a standard pull-out locking luggage handle for wheeling it. It’s very sturdy, the only complaint I have about it is that it’s short. This works fine given the height of the bag, but if you have any carry-on bags that have a slot intended to be passed over the luggage handle of another bag, you will probably find this handle too short to come out the other end of your carry-on.

On the back side of the bag is a little window for your name and address, with a cover that velcros down over it.

The handles are nicely designed. There are duffel-style handles with a velcro strap to keep them together. The top of the bag has a soft handle, and the bottom has a hard rubberish one, which I think is also intended to help the bag stand on end. This doesn’t always work, but it’s a start. No matter how you want to carry the bag, or if you want to carry it with another person, you’ll find a handle for it. I find that especially useful when yanking the bag around in the luggage bays under our bus.

The wheels, as I said, match the color of the bag and are similar to the narrow variety used in Razer Scooters and inline skates. I’m sure you could find a suitcase with more rugged wheels, but I found these satisfactory even through the snow and ice in Minneapolis.

Finally, here’s an action shot of my bag in the Minneapolis airport. This gives some indication that the colors are a little darker and more subtle than the Smurftacular blue that the manufacturer’s photos make it seem to be.

One final observation: when I was shopping for this bag I read some reviews saying that it started to fall apart quickly. I was a little concerned, but I must say so far I don’t see any signs of wear at all. If that changes over the tour I will update this, but we are traveling every day or two now, so it should be going through a lot of use.

Pros:
Separate pocket for dirty laundry, collapses when not needed.
Hidden backpack straps
Handles every place you could think to carry it from.
Wheels roll nicely

Cons:
No small closable pockets or compartments.
Doesn’t stand up on end all that well, depending on how it’s packed.
Handle is too short to attach a carry-on around it.

TEASER: Just this morning, while acting a fool underneath our truck trailer, I got copious amounts of grease on my main backpack, which I fear will be coming off on my hands and anything else it touches from now until the end of time. So I am now in the market to replace my beloved Victorinox bag ASAP. This is one of the most essential objects in my life, so I will be sure to do a thorough review of whatever I get.


My Inner Monologue in Weather Widgets

I call this: mac,On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 9:56 am

Our wardrobe supervisor has nicknamed this tour “The Big Thaw” as we are (theoretically) moving from one of the coldest places national tours go, in the middle of winter, to the warmer climates of the US as we get towards summer. After two months in Minneapolis, we are all a little bit obsessed with the weather. It’s a constant topic of discussion among both cast and crew. What is the weather like tomorrow? Will it rain on load-out day? What’s the forecast in our next city for the day we arrive? What did your mom/brother/spouse/roommate tell you on the phone this morning about the weather in New York?

I currently keep four weather widgets running on my dashboard at all times, which usually have to be updated every day or two as we travel. Below is an example of a current screenshot, and the purpose that each of them serves. Bear in mind when looking at these that a week ago the crew was in Nashville on our day off, wearing tee shirts and eating outdoors at a restaurant when it was 73 degrees.


February 11, 2009

St. Louis Day Off

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:07 pm


Bus.  And truck.

We left Poplar Bluff last night around 1:30AM.  Load out was a little rough due to the fact that the theatre doesn’t have a loading dock, and getting heavy carts up a ramp to the truck (in the rain) is a lot harder than getting them down (in the not-rain).  We also broke a castor on our plywood cart, which holds all the pieces of our floor. So after the cart was all packed and strapped down, we had to take it all off and load it by hand.  Our pipe cart, which is the heaviest, scariest piece to move even on a level surface, was never even attempted to be loaded in one piece.  The cart, and the metal box built into it that holds our cheeseboroughs, was loaded first, and then every piece of pipe loaded by hand.  It was quite comical when a backlog was reached, and we had a line of about 12 people stretching from the truck to the door of the theatre with these pipes.   I was about halfway back in the line and took this picture.

After load out we went to a Huddle House nearby for dinner.  Some of us didn’t get anything to eat before the show because we were rushing to get ready.  I know Daniel and I didn’t.  He had to adapt the lighting design for a venue with less than half of the instruments the plot requires.  In each city, once everything is focused, the two of us sit down and flip through all the cues on stage and make sure they look like what they’re supposed to, and reprogram them as necessary.  We were doing that right up through fight call, and then continued to make changes during fight call. There’s one bit of fight choreography which involves almost the entire cast running around with swords and poles and jumping on things in near-darkness followed by strobe lights, and I wanted to make sure they had a chance to do it in the cues we had built, to make sure we had given them enough light — of course we hadn’t, so good to know.  This was our first true one-nighter, and it was exhausting, but kind of freeing in the sense that there was no time to get tired of being someplace.  If there’s something not to like about the venue or the situation — the stage right door is dragging on the floor, the dressing room paging system isn’t great —  who cares, we’ll be gone tomorrow!  Two things basically made it hard in Poplar Bluff: the performance which had been contracted for 8pm ended up being at 7pm, which we found out the night before.  If we’d had that extra hour it would have been perfectly relaxing.  Also, if we’d had enough instruments (and interestingly, cable) to do the usual light plot, much less time would have been wasted redesigning the show as opposed to just putting it up like it always is.

One thing I want to share about our lighting situation for educational purposes: the lack of cable actually presented a greater obstacle than the lack of instruments.  We don’t travel with a full lighting package, but we do carry some strips and broad cycs.  Unfortunately, due to the short cable supply at the venue, we couldn’t use them.  The Henry design depends a lot on powerful silhouette images of blue and red created on our RP screen/black scrim combo, and we needed a way to preserve that.  When I saw the solution I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: three par cans, hung side by side dead center upstage of the RP.  One blue, one red, one no-color, or something similar.  Behind the RP was hung the house’s cyc, to use as a bounce.  I thought, “we can’t seriously expect this to work!”  Well let me tell you, it worked!  It wasn’t beautiful.  It would make a lighting designer cringe.  But it told the story just as well as the full design does, and if you weren’t a lighting designer, you’d never know or care that the coverage wasn’t quite as even as it should be.   For all the effort designers put into lighting cycs — fighting for the right number of strips, and just the right angles, we lit the damn thing with one instrument!  It may not be elegant, but when your plot requires 132 instruments and you’ve got 60-something (40 channels), it’s nothing short of a miracle.  Towards the end of the show I actually forgot I was calling something we had just thrown together a half hour before the house opened.  It really did look close enough to the real thing, and Daniel set up a bunch of submasters so he could fill in gaps when our thrown-together design needed a little extra something.  As he was right next to me, I knew he was using them a lot, but most of the time I couldn’t even tell by looking at the stage.  He said it was like running a 2-scene preset board.  One of the interesting things about this tour is that there’s an understanding that we will play venues that can’t satisfy the technical needs of the production.  It’s part of the deal of bringing professional theatre to communities that don’t normally get it.  Our bosses back in New York understand that we will have to cut corners some places, and me, Joel, Ian and the supervisors are expected to make any changes needed to do the best show we can with what we’ve got in each venue.  This was the first time we’ve really had to think on our feet, and I think we did a really good job.

This was our first audience that seemed to be made up of people who don’t get much exposure to Shakespeare.  They were a very quiet audience, but they livened up a bit in the second act, and were very appreciative at the end.  A number of people seemed to have left at intermission, which we assumed meant they didn’t like it, but one of the local guys believed they may not have known the show was over.  It’s really fun to perform for an audience that’s familiar with the show and follows it easily, but really the mission of the Acting Company is to perform for audiences like those we had last night.  If we’re the most professional theatre performance that comes through that venue, then we’ve accomplished our goal, and hopefully they got something educational and enjoyable out of seeing Shakespeare performed live by professional actors.

Nick and the cast stayed behind and performed the 1-hour Henry this morning for about 500 students, which apparently went well according to his report, except that the door on their bus broke in the morning and they had to take cabs!  It’s fixed now, and they are currently en route to join us in St. Louis.

As for me and the crew, after eating at Huddle House in a downpour and tornado warning, we got back on the bus and hit the road for the 2-hour drive to St. Louis.  I don’t know how long it actually took because I was exhausted and malnourished and damp and disgusting and went immediately to bed.  The drive was pretty scary.  The rain was ridiculous, first of all, but I could feel the wind pushing the bus to and fro, drifting all over the place.  It felt like we were going really fast, but I think that may have simply been the fact that we were driving into the wind so it felt like more resistance.  Not being able to see anything from the bunk, it’s sort of like a trust exercise.  You lie down in the dark and close your eyes, and no matter what you feel or hear, just trust that Bart’s not going to drive us into a tree or off a cliff, or get us sucked up into a tornado.  I don’t spend that much time in tornado country, and I’ve never seen one, but the idea of a tornado warning at night is very scary to me.  I mean, seeing a tornado is bad.  I figure not being able to see a tornado is worse!

Anyway, we apparently made it without tornado interference, as when I woke up we were in the parking lot of our hotel in St. Louis.  We arrived sometime overnight and Bart went to his room to sleep and left the rest of us sleeping in the bus, to check in whenever we felt like waking up.  I was desperate for a shower so I got up around 11AM, dressed and ran around in the rain trying to figure out which cargo bay my luggage wound up in.  Then I checked in and took the best shower ever.  Any shower would have been the best shower ever, but the water pressure was especially good, too.  I unpacked a bit, gathered up my dirty laundry to do tonight, bought a Mountain Dew from the vending machine, but having not bothered to bring my computer bag from the bus, eventually ran out of things to do, so I have returned.

By the time I got back, Daniel was up and at the desk in the front lounge, no doubt working on a light plot for some venue in the future.  That’s basically all he does.  I feel like at this point in the tour, there are many people whose jobs suck more than mine.  I’m not really used to that.  Anyway, I counted the number of closed curtains in the bunks (not counting Nick, who is traveling with the actors on this trip, and whose job also currently sucks more than mine), and determined that the back lounge would be unoccupied.  I was very pleased to find that the case, so here I sit, feet up on the leather couch.  The wind is still blowing the bus side to side.   Now people are starting to wake up and come visit me.  Our plan for the day is that when Bart has had enough sleep, he will come back to the bus and take us to see the St. Louis arch.  I’ve never been here, so I’m excited about that, because it’s pretty much the only thing I know about St. Louis.   Our plan to go go-carting has been squashed by the fact that the track we planned to visit has apparently shut down!  We were so excited, we even invited the cast to come with us tomorrow, and they were really looking forward to it, too.

Our schedule here is kind of nice.  We have the day off today, then load in at 8AM tomorrow (for Henry), but then have no show or anything else at night.  Friday Nick and the cast have a 1-hour Henry, which I suppose I’ll drag myself out of bed for if there’s no reason not to,  and then we do Big Henry at night.  Then Saturday at 8AM is the changeover to The Spy, and a performance that night, then we hit the road for Glenn Ellyn, IL.


February 10, 2009

TOUR STOP 3: Poplar Bluff, MO

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:05 pm

After several days of hanging out and slowly making our way west, we have arrived and loaded in in Poplar Bluff, MO.   I have yet to figure out what there is here, except for a Holiday Inn that beats the pants off the one we stayed at in Lafayette (for the first time in months, I had a good enough internet connection for uninterrupted online gaming). Unfortunately we were only there for one night. We are playing Henry V tonight at Three Rivers Community College, which seems like a nice place. The theatre is a single-level proscenium, I’d guess maybe 600 seats, but then I suck at estimating capacity. Everything is clean and spacious, and close together (we didn’t even bother putting up directional signage).

Nick and I made new laminated name signs for the dressing room mirrors, using some of the parchment paper used in the show (we have a colonial-era theme in our signage, utilizing still images from our favorite YouTube video). Now that we had the time to make them laminated and nice-looking, they will be reusable, which has been a goal of mine for a while. We set up our stuff in the dressing rooms — signs on the doors indicating men and women and the names of the actors inside, valuables bags, and the names over the mirrors (sometimes assigned at random, sometimes located at the request of our wardrobe supervisor).

Our crew breakfast, which is required in our rider for load-in day, was delicious, and everyone here has been very nice. We are in the last hours of load-in. The small electrics stock of the theatre has made it a difficult show to light, but I just went inside to check in with Dan and he thinks we’ll be ok with only a tiny bit of restaging for one moment.

When I was in there it looked like the set was almost assembled, there were a bunch of ladders up on the gallery. Nick and I spend about the first hour of load-in working, and then sit around trying to be useful for about five hours, waiting for the set to be done and the ladders to get off the gallery so we can lay the sound-dampening carpet. Nick also replaces the pipe insulation that protects the actors from whacking their heads on low-hanging scaffolding supports. Some of it travels intact, but some can’t, and then there are tiny pieces that cover the bolts once they are assembled, to keep the actors from snagging their costumes on protruding bolts.

Looks like it’s time to go help with focusing lights. See ya later!


February 9, 2009

Slice of Life in Transit

I call this: On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 7:32 pm

The crew bus rolls along a narrow deserted highway somewhere between Kentucky and Missouri.  The drive has become so boring that many of us have gone to our bunks because there’s nothing else to do.

I have the lights out and am lying down with my eyes closed but not really trying to sleep.  After about 15 minutes I feel the bus start to slow, then make a sharp turn, then another, and finally we seem to have stopped (though the ride is so smooth, at low speeds it can actually be hard to tell).  I suspect that our quest to find Mexican food for dinner has come to an end.   At the very least, I have learned that these sensations generally indicate we are stopping.

I slide my bunk curtain partially open and stick my head out, just as Bart steps into the open doorway of the driver’s compartment and exclaims, “El Bracero!”  I flip my legs out of the bunk, and immediately Nick slides his curtain open across from me and asks, “Are we somewhere?”  I say, “Yes.”  And so we all gather in the front lounge, getting shoes on and tidying ourselves, and together head out to dinner.


February 6, 2009

Life on the Road

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:42 am

I’m still new at this, but now that we’ve been really in touring mode for about 5 days, here’s what’s going on.

Our day often consists of waking up at 6:30AM to be ready for a 7:30 bus call.  If I think my personal involvement in the insanity occurring at the theatre at 8AM will be minimal, I will bring my personal pillow from the hotel to the bus, in the hope of getting to sleep more hours on the bus than I do overnight.

Our schedule here in West Lafayette is kind of insane.  We started out re-teching The Spy, then tearing it all down to do a single performance of Henry V, then tearing that down to put the Spy set back up for our last two days.  This has been a kind of boot camp for our crew, getting to practice almost every method of changeover before we leave our first stop.  They’re getting very good at it.  Nick, being an ASM, deals a lot with props, and actor-proofing the set, so that’s basically what he helps with during load-in and changeover.  I really have nothing to do once the signage is up and I’ve put the proper calling script in the booth, so I kind of float around helping with simple tasks.  Today I packed a drum in a cardboard box and carried a few things to and from our prop road box, then I went on a cleaning spree of the stage management work box, which it desperately needed.  Then when I ran out of things to do, I went back to the bus and took a nap for about 45 minutes, before returning to help Nick set up for our 1-hour Henry performance for a student audience.

Thankfully, that performance was in the same building as our main shows are, in a small proscenium theatre, so we didn’t have to go too far with our trunk of props.  I hung out for that one and helped to set up and get the cast settled in before the show.  The 1-hour show is Nick’s baby, as there will be times when he has to stay behind to put it up in a city after the crew has left.  As far as that show goes, he functions as the PSM, and whenever I’m available I will make myself useful as his ASM.  This was the first time it’s been performed, and although it’s been rather underrehearsed due to all the work needed to remount The Spy, the cast did well and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Now that the show is over, we are back on the bus.  Bart, our very awesome driver, needs to take the bus for an hour or so, so the call went out for anyone who intends to hang out and/or sleep on the bus to get on for the ride.  I’m not sure where we’re going.  I’m not sure where we are.  It doesn’t really matter.  I think we’re going back to the hotel for a while (where I suspect we are now), and then to a place where he can service the bus.

Tomorrow we have five final hours of rehearsal, and then we play our first performance of The Spy to a paying audience (finally!  We started rehearsals Nov. 3!), then the cast stays here for a true day off before traveling to Poplar Bluff, MO.  For the crew, we will load out the show Saturday night and immediately begin driving to Poplar Bluff, where it will be loaded in.  

I still don’t know where we are right now, but I’m pretty damn sure that’s our cast bus parked inches away ahead of us.  Either that, or there’s more than one black rockstar bus with gray swirly designs in Lafayette, IN.   I haven’t explored their bus that much.  I’ve only taken one brief ride on it.  They have 12 bunks instead of our 8, which means they stack 3-high, giving everyone less headroom.  On the plus side, the bunks are there for convenience, they don’t ever actually have to sleep overnight in them.  I heard a rumor they have a shower on their bus.  That sounds nice in theory, I guess, but I’m sure the reality is more cramped and awkward than it sounds.   Their front lounge is also smaller, which I don’t like.  On short jaunts around town, including our favorite pastime here in Lafayette, having a late-night dinner at XXX, Indiana’s oldest drive-in diner (founded in 1929), we generally all sit in the front lounge, which can comfortably hold all seven of us.  It’s a nice chance to unwind, check in about how the show went, and discuss anything we need to.  I have taken to claiming the seat at the table on the post-show trips, so I can write the report and send it before we get to XXX.

As far as the show goes, things seem to be going well.  Last night was our first performance of Henry outside of the Guthrie, where we teched it.   The adjustment to a very different space, and to a new local crew who were unfamiliar with the show, went pretty smoothly.  It felt good to try that once, to prove that we can do it.  I’m really looking forward to this week being over, and finally being done with tech and major rehearsals.  We have a couple 1- and 2-nighters next week, which will be a different experience as well.  I enjoy the travel, so I welcome the change of scenery.  If there’s one thing we’ve gotten experience with on this tour, it’s changing scenery!


February 2, 2009

On the Road, Finally!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:13 pm

Well we finally did it!  We finished our run at the Guthrie last night, and after about 5 hours, closed the door on our tightly packed truck and hopped on our bus, where a bunch of take-out bar food in styrofoam containers awaited us.  Within a few minutes we started to roll, and finally hit the road!

We ate for a while, watched the highlights of the Super Bowl we missed during the show, and then got into our bunks exhausted.   I for one slept really well.  I’m a small person, so I don’t feel as much like I’m in a coffin as some of my colleagues.   That’s my bunk in the foreground, the lower frontmost bunk.  I found the motion of the bus was actually very soothing while trying to sleep.  We all pretty much slept until about 12:30PM when I slowly got up and wandered into the front lounge where Nick already had his computer out.  I also sat with my computer out, and had barely begun checking out Facebook when Nick pointed out the window over my shoulder and said, “Look!  There’s our truck!”  Sure enough, the Acting Company truck was waiting at an intersection as we passed it.  Moments later the front divider slid open and our driver, Bart, announced we had arrived.  We were all taken a bit by surprise, and stumbled into our shoes and out the door to meet the local crew here on the campus of Purdue University, in snowy West Lafayette, IN.

Nick and I helped direct the unloading of the truck for a while, and brought some of the small items that travel under the bus into the theatre, until our work box was off the truck.  Then we set it up in a corner and began hanging signs, assigning dressing room space, setting up the callboard, etc.  There wasn’t all that much for us to do, so a lot of our time has been spent on the bus updating paperwork, or just hanging out and watching TV.  One of the main tasks we’ve taken on is to make coffee for the crew.  We all carry walkie-talkies, and they can just radio ahead a few minutes in advance when they’re going to be wanting a coffee break, and we get a pot going on the bus and begin making their orders.  It’s not our job, but I think considering they’re in there doing heavy labor for 10 hours, and we hung some signs and printed some documents and sent some emails for a few hours, it’s a fair trade.  We also took on a project for our wardrobe supervisor, who didn’t have enough of the little plastic things that divide each actor’s clothes on the costume racks.  We got some cardboard and made a bunch more for her.

Tomorrow we begin (or re-begin) teching The Spy.  Tonight when the crew is done at 11PM Bart has offered to take us someplace to eat, and then we will go to our hotel, where everyone is going to appreciate a good shower (we were running late last night so we didn’t get to stop at the hotel in the morning, we just got up and went straight to work).  I’m having a lot of fun with this aspect of the job so far.  I think the longer multi-day trips will be really cool.  The unfortunate thing so far is that from the moment we got on the bus in the parking lot of the Guthrie, I didn’t see the outside world until we got on campus at Purdue, so “seeing the country” isn’t really happening yet.  Also, the windows on the bus are so heavily tinted that you can’t see anything at night.  A couple times through the night I used the GPS on my iPhone to find out what state we were in!


December 15, 2008

This Should Not Happen. Ever.

I call this: On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 5:43 pm


Part of my interest in touring is to spend more time outside Manhattan and see regions and climates I’ve never been to. One of the things I have learned so far is that this planet of ours is crazy. In the grand scheme of things, New York and Minneapolis aren’t that far apart, and yet at the same moment in time there is a difference in temperature of 70 degrees!!! Another thing someone pointed out is that the position of the sun in the sky here makes it always look like it’s about to be sunset. I noticed it especially today as I was walking to the train around 2PM, and was blinded by the sun low in the sky over the street ahead. I don’t really understand why that happens, as it’s only 4 degrees more north in latitude than New York, you wouldn’t think it would be a noticeable difference.

Well today was our first day off here, and of course the temperature dropped about 40 degrees overnight. It was our first real sub-zero day. A few of us went on the morning grocery run provided by the Guthrie, which was very cold. Then I set out alone to take the light rail to the Mall of America, which was incredibly convenient, and I had a good time and got all the items I set out to find. I probably saw less than half the mall, but it was very nice. It’s not really that different from most malls, except for the giant roller coaster in the middle, and the fact that it’s so big that many of the standard mall stores actually have two or three locations within the mall.


December 11, 2008

TOUR STOP 1: Minneapolis

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:34 pm

Minneapolis (or “Minnennapolis” as our flight attendant said, over and over), is not really a “tour stop” per se, but where we will be spending two months rehearsing and opening Henry V, before setting out on the real heavy touring. It is home to several of our cast members, as part of the co-production with the Guthrie it was agreed that many of the cast would be actors drawn from the Guthrie’s talented pool of actors and former students. Those of us not from Minneapolis, or who have not spent time studying or working at the Guthrie, have lived in terror for at least a month at the very thought of suffering through the infamous winter weather.

Although we arrived in a snowstorm (which resulted in our plane aborting landing several seconds before touching down), I think we are all pretty much agreed that it’s not as bad as we thought. I don’t think you can put a limit on the extent of frozen horrors we expected, so I guess it should be no surprise that the reality is not as bad as the city’s reputation would suggest. Below is a view from the back of our 3-vehicle caravan bringing the company from the airport to the apartments.

Temperatures have been regularly in the single-digits in the mornings and evenings, and yet the four-block walk from our apartments to the theatre doesn’t feel any different than an average winter walk in New York. Today on my morning walk I was considering how this is possible. First of all, I have found the main point is that we are taking the cold very seriously. Before I get in my elevator, I have on warm clothing, a fleece vest, leather-and-wool show jacket, scarf, hat, and leather gloves, and I think this warms me up before I step outside. I decided this morning that it takes me longer to put on all my outer layers than to actually get dressed in my basic clothes. I also think the walk is too short to get really bothered by the cold. There are only two streets to cross, so there’s not much time standing still, letting the cold sink in. Also, there aren’t many large buildings along the way, which I think cuts down on the wind, and allows more direct sunlight to warm the path, than one would encounter on the same walk in New York.

The apartments are pretty amazing. The building is an old glass factory which has been converted into stylish industrial-inspired lofts with stainless kitchen appliances and lamps and things. I think the well-designed furnishings set these apartments above any other company housing I’ve seen. It looks like something out of an interior design magazine, instead of a pile of hand-me-down furniture donated by friends of the theatre. Or maybe they are, but it’s very clear, in all regards, the Guthrie has friends with very deep pockets!

On to the theatre itself. The building is only a couple years old, and by one account I heard cost about $120 million. It surely must be the most expensive building dedicated solely to the production of theatre ever in the history of ever. If there’s a bigger one, I’d like to see it!

The best way I can describe the building and the way it functions is that it’s like if the Starship Enterprise were designed primarily for the production of classical theatre. It really gives the impression that at any moment it could blast off from its mooring on the bank of the Mississippi, and take off into space as a fully self-sustaining habitat and theatre company. Everything is designed to be sleek, beautiful and interesting, while still being completely functional. Many times when working in a theatre, one may ask, “Why the hell would anyone design a theatre like this?” I have not yet had any of those moments here. Everything from lamps in the restaurants in the building, to the hardwood floors in the costume shop, to the bathrooms in the rehearsal room hallway are absolutely perfect.

The facility is run with a level of organization that I imagine works wonderfully if one is doing a show at the Guthrie and nothing else. It’s been a little hard for me because we are a separate company in residence here, so we have separate needs and methods of communication for the majority of our people who are not at the Guthrie and linked into its computer network. In fact they don’t allow outside computers on the network, so I have chosen to have our fabulous intern, Meaghan (they give us an intern!!!) be master of the Guthrie computer and keep me on track to make sure I do all the little things that are expected of me to assimilate into the Guthrie collective. It’s been a lot of fun working here and enjoying this amazing building.


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