The ballad of Ketsia and Christine (and Andrea)

Ok, so I know I'm harping on this switch out thing, but I swear that just when I think it's gotten as complicated as it could get, the next show comes along.

Andrea and Ketsia were ensemble actresses for this show in the last city - San Antonio? Houston? Somewhere in TX. Ketsia wanted to leave the show and go on to something else so she gave her 2 weeks notice and the producers hired Christine to replace her.

(As an aside, an ensemble acting role is known as a "track." The dressers and stagehands also each have a track which (like an ensemble actor) is the list of things you do each show, in a specific order, etc. If you fill in for someone, you are "doing their track." )

In the meantime, something happens to Andrea and she goes on medical leave. Ketsia offers to delay leaving and fill in for Andrea until she gets back. So, Ketsia stays with the ensemble cast but in Andrea's track and Christine comes on as planned.

In short, Andrea's out, Ketsia is in Andrea's track and Christine has been hired to take Ketsia's track.

Ok? Stay with me.

The Wardrobe Head knows that Andrea will be coming back in a month or so and will need all of her costumes then, but somehow she also has to get new costumes for Christine AND provide costumes for Ketsia to wear in the month that she's covering for Andrea. What they have is the old costumes that Ketsia used to wear - none of which fit Christine because she's about 6 inches taller- the costumes that Andrea wears (most of which fit Ketsia with some alterations) and the new costumes being made for Christine that aren't finished yet.

Basically 2 sets of costumes for 3 girls.

So most of the new costumes for Christine come in and she premieres in Tucson, Ketsia wears some of her old stuff and borrows some stuff from Andrea and Andrea is elsewhere recovering from her medical emergency and in no need of a lion puppet. All is well until last weekend.

Confused yet? Just hang in there.

Last weekend we discover that Andrea is back in town and supposed to perform. This should mean that Ketsia is out. However, Ketsia's contract was accidentally written to overlap Andrea's so Ketsia has one more show left to perform and Christine is also here and under contract. This means we have 3 girls and 2 roles.

So the producers decide that since Christine is an understudy for one of the principals, she should shadow that principal for the evening in case she ever has to step into that role. Ketsia will step into Christine's track (which used to be Ketsia's) and Andrea will go on in her old track(which Ketsia was covering).

so:
Christine - out (for all intents and purposes)
Ketsia - covering for Christine
Andrea - back in

However, Ketsia and Andrea have been sharing costumes.

I'll cut the madness down with shorthand:

Christine's lioness costume - belongs to her, the detachable cuffs belong to Andrea
Ketsia's bird hat - used to be Andrea's (Andrea wears her own and Ketsia then wears Christine's)
Ketsia's bird puppets - have been passed on to Christine, Ketsia's been using Andrea's birds, so Andrea takes her birds back, Christine is out and Ketsia uses Christine's birds (which used to be Ketsia's)
Black robes - Ketsia is wearing Andrea's (which was altered to fit Ketsia and now no longer fits Andrea) and Christine's is too big for anyone but her

Ok, I'll stop.

We get an hour to prep our stations before each show, make sure we have the right costumes, etc. It takes every minute of that hour to pull two full sets of costumes together for this one show.

The crowning moment? (because you know there is one):
Andsrea comes up to the Wardrobe Head and demands to know why her black robe has someone else's name in it and why she doesn't have her own costumes.

The name in her robe? Jindra.

Jindra is currently on vacation and will be back in one week to find her robe gone and in it's place, the altered robe that used to be Andrea's, then was Ketsia's and now is hers.

And the finale? We have to reverse this whole process tonight since Christine is back in and Ketsia is gone.

Seriously, how great is my life?

Priceless

The cost of one week's worth of dry cleaning? = $1000

The cost of one new ensemble actor joining the show with all new costumes? = $30,000

The cost of a new baby elephant puppet (made to fit one small child and is approx. one quarter the size of the big elephant puppet that is large enough to hold one adult person in each of its legs)? = $50,000

Joining all these elements together with Tony award winning music that WILL NOT leave my head so I can sleep at night?

Yep. you know.

The drama backstage

It's a theatre maxim that there is always more drama backstage than there ever is on stage. That is so true of this show. What a weird week this has been. So, in order of least dramatic to most dramatic, I'll start with the actors being "out."

This show has so many actors out every show (sick, tired, "over it," hungover, whatever...) that the first thing we - the dressers - do is sign in for our shift and then wait around for stage management to show up with The List. The List - called "On the Rock" - has all the actors that are out for that show and the names of all the actors who are filling in. The longer we have to wait for The List, the more names we know will be on that list. If it takes longer than 2 minutes for the stage manager to show up, we know it's going to be a long night.

This swing actor situation can get quite complicated, as evidenced this weekend. On Friday night we had a dancer - Geoff - leave in the middle of the second act with a knee injury. Much like last week, his dresser scrambled around at the last minute to find all the appropriate costumes for the swing actor - Jose - filling in for him; and also like last week, Jose came backstage, got into his costume and walked on stage in about 5 minutes and his first number was the flying ballet number 40 feet above the stage. Sound familiar?

So for the Saturday matinee, Geoff is still out but now Feliciano is filling in for him. This means that in less than 12 hours, we've switched out costumes for one actor 2 different times. For the Saturday night show, one of the principal actors - Robby - was out. This means that an ensemble understudy actor gets promoted - in this case, Omari - and now Omari's role in the ensemble needs to be filled so Feliciano filled in for him. However, Geoff is still out and Feliciano danced his part during the matinee so Jose is back to fill in for Feliciano who was filling in for Jose who was filling in for Geoff. Got all that?

it's annoying but we're getting used to the "outs" and the actors who threaten to be out. We had an actress last week who had trouble getting into her grass skirt. The skirts can get all tangled up and we have to careful about how we lay them out on the floor or the actor can't get into it. The actress tried to get into it and couldn't, a dresser tried to help her and made the situation worse and while another dresser joined the fray to help, the actress, panicked that she had spent so long talking instead of getting into her costume that she was now going to miss her cue, grabbed the arm of a Wardrobe Head and said "Miss Harriet my skirt is upside down, I can't go on. I'm going to be out."

Watch me roll my eyes. My skirt's upside down, I'm out. Are you kidding?

She made it on stage and finished the show, but that's the mentality. My skirt is upside down, I'm out.

Anyway, to add to the prima donna aspect of the backstage drama, we had a show stopped last week. I know it's a casualty of live performances that occasionally things happen and the performance has to halt mid-show, but I've never actually seen it happen. On opening night last Saturday, the actor playing Simba thought the microphone in his headdress wasn't turned up enough and he was having to project his voice too much to be heard. Midway through the second act - and right before the flying ballet number, which appears to be the breaking point of the show - he walked off stage and told a sound guy that he wasn't going back on stage until they figured out what was wrong with his mic. We actually heard the dreaded words over the loudspeaker - known as the God mic - "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are having technical difficulties. Please be patient and the show will resume as soon as possible." It took them 5 minutes to fix it while about 15 actors stood on stage waiting for the number to resume, and the audience gradually grew more restless, got up, went to the bathroom, talked amongst themselves etc. Finally the sound guys gave him a body mic, the actor refused to put his headdress back on and he went on stage and finished the show. We in the crew were stunned - none of us had ever seen a show stopped, much less for a weak microphone - but the rest of the acting ensemble just shrugged and said "Never a dull moment..."

Indeed.

So now, the corker of the entire week. One of our regular ensemble actresses is on vacation and several swing actresses have filled in for her. On Sunday we had a swing actress named Shameika fill in. She has a wildebeest cosume that consists of a long sleeved body suit, pants, a cape and a hat. All of the dancers wear this costume and manage to perform in it. But this actress complained to the Wardrobe Head that she got hot in the body suit; so, for the Sunday matinee they found her a short sleeved one. Keep in mind that all these costumes were designed by Julie Taymor and they belong to Disney, the corporation. They are designed so that in certain scenes where there are packs of animals on stage - like wildebeests- they all look alike no matter what the size or shape of the actor wearing the costume.

She was also on for the Sunday night performance and when it got the wildebeest part of the show, her dresser handed her the clean body suit and it had long sleeves. Shameika started to complain, said she wanted a short sleeved one, long sleeves are too hot, etc. Her dresser said that she would go downstairs to check the clean laundry and see if she could find another short sleeved one. Just wait, no problem, I'll take care of it, etc.

Shameika says "It's ok, do you have a pair of scissors?"

Her Dresser says "no! Are you kidding?!"

Another dancer - Wilia - sitting next to Shameika says "Oh, I do. Here you go." and hands her a pair of scissors.

Shameika looks at her dresser, says "Don't worry baby, you won't get in trouble." and proceeds to CUT OFF THE SLEEVES OF HER COSTUME. She then puts it on and goes onstage.

I thought her dresser was going to have a heart attack.

SHE CUT OFF THE SLEEVES OF HER COSTUME! An actress. Backstage. Property of Disney.

I'm stunned. I can think of many shows where the actress would have been summarily fired for doing something like that. And I can think of many Wardrobe Heads who would have lost their minds if they had ever heard of an actress doing something like that.

In this case, her dresser immediately told the Wardrobe Head who very calmly said "ok, I'll take care of it."

You know what that means? That means that this is not the worst thing she's seen on this show. I can't even imagine what the next 4 weeks are going to be like.

Oh, and I almost forgot. One of the actors wants to hire me to beat up another actor. For real.

But I don't think that story has completely played out yet, so I'll save it for my next post.

I swear I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.

Night terrors

I went to bed last night after the show - 12:30 ish - and fell asleep. Woke up all of sudden not very long after that - how long, I have no idea - and saw the light shining on the floor by my bed in a sort of circular pattern.

In my sleep fogged brain it looked like a grass skirt and I completely freaked out for a minute thinking "Oh my gosh I've missed my cue! Where are the actors? Why is it dark in here?! Where is everyone else? What's going on?!" It took me several minutes to realize I was IN BED and not at the show backstage (by myself) and even longer than that for the adrenaline to fade enough for me to go back to sleep.

I waited tables in college at a place called Baker's Square. After especially long days at the restaurant pulling double shifts I used to have nightmares about waiting tables all by myself, with no one in the kitchen, every table full of people yelling my name, my tray empty as I kept forgetting things etc. It was a common type of nightmare for waitstaff and my fellow waiters used to call them "square mares."

What would Lion King nightmares be? And can I point out that I have 5 more weeks of these nightmares to look forward to?

Nants ingonyama bagithi

The above title is Zulu for "Here comes the Lion," and is the first line of "Circle of Life," the opening song of Lion King.

Wow, what a show this is. I'd love to post pictures of these costumes and set pieces because they are Incredible, but Disney is very touchy about copywrites and I don't want to get sued. So, here's their official website with a couple of pictures.

http://www.disney.com.au/lionking/about_the_show/the_story.html

I started this show last week as a dresser - which is just what it sounds like, someone backstage who helps the actors in and out of their costumes. There are 16 dressers and probably 30-40 actors plus a whole rank of "swing" actors who are trained to fill in at a moment's notice if someone is sick or injured. More on that later.

Added to the people, there is a full sized Elephant puppet, a baby elephant puppet (one of the cutest things I've ever seen, her trunk is attached to her mama's tail!), two full sized giraffe puppets, about 15 hyenas, wildebeests, ostriches, fish, antelope, a pig, two cheetahs, several dozen birds, etc. etc. Backstage looks like a wild life zoo. Well, a wild life puppet zoo.

A quick run down of how this works, for those who don't know much about theatre. This show tours with a whole crew of people backstage to work with costumes, props, puppets and set pieces. However, in every city, they hire local people to fill in as dressers, props people and stage hands because the show is too big to function with just the touring crew. So I'm on this show as a local dresser for their 6 week show here in Tucson.

On stage are the actors. Principal actors are ones with bigger parts - like Simba and Mufasa, for those of you who have seen this musical or the animated movie - and the rest of the actors are called the male and female "ensemble" actors and they sing and dance and play all the rest of the parts. I'm a dresser for the ensemble actresses, which means I have 3 singers that I'm responsible for.

This show is really busy, and my girls change costumes about every 10-15 minutes, on average, for 2 hours and 45 minutes every night and twice on each weekend day. This means that we have a backstage area about 4 feet wide and about 6 feet long where 3 people change clothes - and puppets and shoes and hats and get their makeup done - AND it's also a walkway for anyone else trying to get past us and get on stage. So sometimes we have to stand up on the benches so that someone with a huge hyena puppet head can get past us to make their cue and get on stage. The cramped space was the first thing that took some getting used to.

The second thing is that none of these costumes are small and some are enormous. There's one scene where all the ensemble actors wear grass skirts - for a scene in the grasslands. The skirts have wired bottoms, like Scarlett O'Hara, and the only place to put these skirts is in that 4 foot walk way where you are changing clothes. They are so big that they take up all that 4 foot space and they overlap eachother. We have to lay them out ahead of time because it gets too busy at the beginning of the show to lay them out right before the actors need them. So for 20 minutes at the beginning of the show, all the actors and dressers are getting changed while walking - and tripping - over these huge skirts in the walkway. To get a better idea of this situation, go stand in your closet with 3 other people and 3 hula hoops and each of you try to put something on in 5 minutes or less. That's my life for 20 minutes every night until October.

But you learn to deal, and eventually you stop tripping over the skirts and everyone makes their cue and the show goes on. The weird thing about this show, for me, is that there is a whole staff of actors trained to go on for any ensemble character at a moment's notice. These are the "swing" actors. If someone is sick or hurt, a swing actor takes their place. Each swing actor has a costume for every number in the show so they can fill in for whatever actor is out and do whatever they do. This means that they know 10 or more different parts. Every day we get a list of which actors are out and which swing actor is filling in, we change out all the costumes and the swing actor performs the show until the regular actor gets back. Now this isn't all that unusual, because there has to be some way to cover if an actor is out.

The swing actors are required to be at the theatre for every show in case they are needed, which is a good thing, as I discovered last week.We had 5 shows last week and in two of them, an actor left in the middle of the show.

On Friday night, an actor got sick during the first act and left at intermission. So in that 15 minute time span, his dresser and the Head of Wardrobe rushed around like maniacs, figured out what costumes he used in the second act, took all the regular actor's costumes, shoes, hats, socks etc. downstairs and changed them out for the exact same costumes of a swing actor, took them upstairs to the backstage area, got the swing actor into his costume and he went out for the second act.

Last night, a dancer left in the middle of the second act. In. the. middle. She came back from one of her numbers, sat on the bench and said "I'm done." We all said "yeah, yeah" walked around, talked to each other, did our costume changes and turned around 5 minutes later and that dancer was gone. In her place was a frantic Wardrobe Head going through all the costumes for the second act, figuring out what was left and switching out costumes for the remaining hour of the show. The swing actress came upstairs, changed into a costume in about 2 minutes and went onstage. Not only did she have to go on in the middle of the act, but her first number was one where she wears a flying harness and is hooked to ropes and performs a ballet number about 40 feet off the stage. She had 5 minutes of notice.

I tell you, it's always an adventure.

Quote

"Wretched excess is just barely enough."

- Mario Battali (chef and outsized celebrity personality)

Lion King starts tomorrow.

Catwalk over the Canyon

In the 1880's, the city of Graham built a mill to process metals taken from the nearby mountains and needed water to run the mill. The nearest water source was 3 miles away so the enterprising miners and mill owners built a 4 inch gravity fed water pipe from that water source to the mill, running the pipe through the canyon attached to the rock walls.

The water pipe was packed in sawdust and then a wood housing to keep it from freezing. About 20 years later, they replaced the 4" pipe with an 18" pipe and in 1935, after the demise of the mill, an intrepid bunch of men in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built a metal catwalk that followed the path of the original pipe line and created a walkway. It has been a tourist destination ever since. It was rebuilt - enforced etc. - in the 1970's but continues to follow the path of the orginal pipeline.

In fact, the pipeline under this part of the bridge is the original 18" water line. (probably best not to think about the fact that I'm standing on metal pipe over 100 years old...)

The metal catwalk wends its way through these enormous rocks, only about 30 feet or so off the canyon floor.

Because there was so much rain, several waterfalls had formed off the sides of the rocks, splashing down into the raging creek below.

The highest recorded flood line was marked on the side of the canyon, about 2.5 feet above the railing of the catwalk. Given the narrow canyon walls and the height, I would bet that "flash flood" doesn't even begin to describe that scenario.

The canyon was gorgeous and the trail is about a mile long. Unfortunately we only were able to hike half of it because the rain had caused a landslide. Boulders the size of a small car had crashed down the side of the hill and created twisted metal wreckage where part of the trail handrail had been. It will probably be awhile before it fully opens again.

Stonehenge, NM

This is the City of Rocks, one of God's little playgrounds.

The rocks were pushed up during a volcanic eruption several million years ago and then formed by wind and water.


There are rocks like this in only 6 other places in the world.

They are IMMENSE and really fun to climb on. I would recommend this site to anyone with kids (or anyone who is still a kid!).


It was great to get out of the truck and go play around some.

In search of Cooney

In 1875 a young miner named James Cooney discovered gold and silver in the Whitewater Valley. He prospected the mines he developed there until 1880 when he was killed by Apaches. His friends and his brother decided to bury him in the valley where he was killed so they found an enormous boulder, carved it out to serve as a tomb and then sealed up his body with ore from his mines.

This is the story we had heard in Glenwood and our ghost town map said that there used to be a town called Cooney. We thought we'd try to find it, also thinking that the tomb probably doesn't exist anymore but we might find something. While I was in the one general store in town, I picked up a packet of hiking trail maps thinking that there might be something in there. The guy running the store counter asks me what I'm looking for and I say Cooney, and he says "Cooney's tomb? I can tell you how to get there, in fact, I'll draw you a map."

It seems pretty straight forward, up Highway 180 and then a hard right onto Forest road 701, drive about 10 miles and it's right there. OK, no problem. We drove about 5 miles and came to a fork in the road. T. says "He didn't say anything about a fork, did he." Uh, no, he didn't. So we stay with 701 and keep driving. Another 2 miles or so and the road dead ends in a hiking trail. T. says "He didn't say anything about hiking, did he?" Um, no, he didn't.

But welcome to getting directions from the locals.

It really helps to know the right questions to ask when someone is drawing you a map... Well, what now? We decide to hike in, knowing that we A. have no idea where we are going and B. don't even know if this is the right road or what exactly we are looking for.

perfect!

So we start hiking along this trail that's more of a small ridge cut into the side of a slope with a roaring creek underneath it.



But the canyon we enter is beyond beautiful with a natural archway in the rocks far ahead of us.

However the trail is starting to get muddier and soon, it looks like a landslide took it out. We decide to climb the hills above it to circumvent the landslide, neccessitating scaling some rocks and climbing through part of the landslide, which we do, and then a little further on the trail just dead ends in the creek.



And there's no getting across it and staying dry. the water is running really fast, is dammed in places with logs and the rocks that still above water are too far apart for me to jump them.

Bummer! Especially since we have no idea what's further ahead of us, if anything. But the course of wisdom is to turn around, so we head back to the truck.

Once in the truck we decide to turn off on a dirt road just up the road and see if anything is up there. At every tourist destination we went to in NM, "No trepassing!" signs were very visibly posted on private property. Apparently trespassing by tourists is a real problem. But there aren't any signs on this road, so we take it.


We drive a couple of miles and around a curve we see a beautiful little valley surrounded by mesas and the remains of an early homestead. It's not on any map we've seen, including the ghost town map, so we have no idea what it is.


It doesn't look inhabited now but it does look like it's been inhabited sometime in the past several years. We wander around and take pictures and I started to get a feeling we were on private property but, as T. put it, the damage was already done so the only thing to do was not go into any of the buildings and probably leave soon lest we get chased off by an old prospector with a shotgun. We debate going further down the road and decide to do it (again, the trespassing damage being done).



We head down the road and find a little creek with a waterfall bisected by an earthen bridge that we tentatively drove across, and a mine shaft. We had found an early 20th century prospecting homestead and mine! It was very cool to find something that wasn't on the map - and in pursuit of something else, which is probably how a lot of things get discovered.


We didn't stay long, as the feeling that we were on private property intensified, but instead drove back to rd. 701. As we were exulting about how amazing it is to find stuff in the middle of the wilderness that you have never even heard of before, T. screeches to a halt and says, "There's Cooney's tomb."


Lo and behold, there it was. It's on a curve in the road so it's not visible from the other direction unless you know what you are looking for. But it's an immense boulder and obviously a tomb. After a homestead and mine it's a little anticlimactic but a great landmark nonetheless. And he appears to be undisturbed, more than 100 years after his death.

RIP Cooney.

Gila Cliff Dwellings

We've seen cliff dwellings in two other states now, Colorado and Arizona, and these dwellings were really amazing.

For those of you who don't know what these are, some of the Native Americans in this area built houses into the cliffs, accessible only by rope/wood ladders or hand and foot holds carved into the rocks. In the 1300s for no known reason, they abandonded these dwellings and went somewhere else, we don't know where. Maybe this is where the UFOlogy and the Native American history of New Mexico all comes together... (Edit: I am kidding about this but some people really believe the natives were spirited away by aliens. Strange but true...)

Unlike the other dwellings we've visited, you can walk right through these dwellings and see them up close. We did tour a dwelling at Mesa Verde in Colorado but it cost extra on top of the admission price and it was ranger led, so you went with a group and didn't get to spend the kind of time you wanted to just looking.

At the Gila dwelling, you have to hike up to the site, about a mile and several hundred feet above the canyon floor, and it was pouring rain the whole time.

In some of my pictures there are white lines all over the picture from the flash reflecting off the rain. But the great thing about the rain, other than feeling like I was in a swamp instead of the southwest,

Is that we were mostly alone in this great monument. We got to sit in the huge arched window of this dwelling where people had sat centuries before us and look out over the valley and watch the rain fall.

And we didn't kill ourselves hiking up the slippery slopes of this monument! Bonus!

Monticello

One of the prettiest "ghost towns" we visited this trip.

The town is built around a central square, which still stands surrounded by the original houses.

The houses are all well restored and well kept and the entire town seems cared for, unlike some of the other semi-ghost towns we visited.

The buildings that are ruined are picturesque and contribute to the old beautiful landscape instead of creating a weird contrast between ruined 19th century buildings and falling down 20th century buildings.

The difference may be that in Monticello, the residents are descendents of the original settlers of that town. They live and ranch in that area the way their families have for generations. Some families can probably track their relatives back over 200 years.

Can you imagine living in a house your family has owned for 2 centuries?

Driving through the Gallinas Mountains

We found ourselves above the clouds.



The wind blew the clouds through the pine trees. We stopped on a rise overlooking this valley and watched the white wisps thicken and thin as they wound their way through the branches.

Completely magical.

So you want to buy a ghost town and move to New Mexico?

Have we got the place for you!


Or maybe you're looking for something a little more...

what's the word I'm looking for?

uh, condemned?

All your questions can be answered (starting with, "are you kidding me with this?") because they are both

Any takers??

Fungi

Did I mention it was really wet?

Fauna

We saw a lot of animals, who were probably as shocked as we were by the amount of rain.

Nevertheless they were kind enough to stop and pose for me.

These were my favorites (and blurry from the extreme zoom, sorry about that...). Bighorn sheep that are native to this area but rarely seen. We saw a herd (flock? gaggle??) on the slopes above the cliff dwellings.

They were running along on a 75 degree slope like it was nothing! And they blended into the background perfectly. There are 5 on the ridge in this picture, can you see them?


This horny toad was hiding under the bushes by a roaring creek while we were hiking.


And this little guy was right next to our breakfast table. He had a harem around him and was busy trying to keep them in line. We were witness to several aerial dive bombs that were quite impressive. I had never been around that many hummingbirds at one time. They sound like very large low-pitched bees.

It rained straight through from Saturday to Monday afternoon. I've never seen that much continuous rain since I moved to the southwest. The truck actually started to leak, that's how hard and torrential the rain was falling!

Flora

It rained so much while we were in NM that everything was green and full of life.