For Gene

My friend Gene died today.

His wife and son were with him in Florida. I'm going to spend the night with his daughter tonight.

I don't really have the words right now. But I wanted to acknowledge his passing in a public forum.

Rest easy, Gene. God be with you.

Chain, chain, chain...

Well, Dirty Rotten closed on Sunday without too many incidents. I had a GREAT time working with Kim. We really became friends on this show. The other dresser with us in the female ensemble room was Jess – the “I think I’m getting a digital camera…” hippie girl from my locust plagued Sonora Theatre Works job a couple of weeks ago. Small town, smaller cast of characters in this business… And while I like Jess, she and Kim didn’t really get along (Kim’s comment to me after 10 minutes of talking to Jess was “she’s kind of dumb, isn’t she?”) so some of the drama last week was merely generated between them.

There isn’t much to report overall but there were a couple of notable things. The first is that I presume this touring Wardrobe Head is competent because he’s certainly been in this business long enough and has worked enough shows, but he’s not really big on communication and some of the ways he organized the work for this show made no sense. Case in point: Kim and I were given a certain amount of work to do the first day and 4 hours to do it. Done. No problem. Then the next day we were given the same amount of work and an hour and a half to do it. Wha…?? Well, almost but not quite done after working like maniacs. The next day we had all that work to do again and only and hour and a half so we decided that the only way to do it was to not do everything we were being told to do. So we didn’t, but who likes that kind of solution? Then the next day, I was brought in during the day and given the exact same amount of work to do by myself and given 4 hours to do it. It makes no sense…

Then there was the problem of the assistant wardrobe head who would give us directions and then come in every day to repeat them, sometimes once or twice a show. DUDE! We got it! Stop repeating yourself, you’re getting annoying! Added to which we ran out of baby wipes the second day of the show. Now a wardrobe department of a touring show running out of wet wipes is like a car wash running out of soap or a restaurant running out of ketchup. I’ve never heard of it happening. Wet wipes are used for everything. The actors use them to take off makeup, we use them to spot clean costumes (FYI, they work great for removing lipstick), we clean equipment like the iron and the steamer with them, basically we can’t function without them. When one of the dressers asked why we had run out, the assistant wardrobe head said “Oh, well I haven’t bought any more because I’m not sure where to get them.”

How is it that people like this still have jobs???

But the upside is that the costumes were beautiful. Hand beaded dresses and pants, beautiful millinery and I’ve never seen so many expensive shoes in one place – Versace, Prada, Enzo, Rossi, Manolo Blahniks. It was like The Devil Wears Prada meets “Sex and the City.” So that was cool.

On the closing night we all went to the bar to celebrate three dressers’ birthdays from the past week and one of the actresses met us. She – Natalie - was the coolest girl in the female ensemble and Kim’s birthday was that night so Natalie came out to buy her a drink. Then it just so happened that it was karaoke night at the bar so Natalie sang “Chain of Fools” for Kim as a birthday present and we all got to be back up singers. And I'll tell you what, that girl channeled her inner soul sista and brought down the house! She was incredible. And of course, Kim went over the moon.

“I got to be a back up singer for Natalie! It’s the best birthday ever!!”

And now this week I’m taking a break and only working one job, for the first time since August. For those of you who don’t live here and don’t know, a close friend was diagnosed with cancer last week so if you think about it, send up a prayer for Gene and his family. It’s been a rough week for them (and all of us who know them).

Talk atcha later :)

So the king of michigan was chasing me down the parade route...

Well, I’m working Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the musical (or rather the Movical, since it’s part of the growing trend of stage musicals created from movies, see also The Full Monty). The show is ginormous – big cast, huge set pieces, expensive costumes ($850 shoes…) and my overall impression? Eh. Whatever. I liked the movie, but this staged version doesn’t really work for me. It’s more in the musical style of the golden age musicals like Oklahoma! And Guys and Dolls, two shows I could happily never see again. So, not really my thing. Added to which, for the majority of the show I’m trapped in the female ensemble dressing room, so outside of the small tiffs and spats that go on between dressers and other dressers and amongst the actors, I don’t ever see anyone. Ergo, story potential squashed.

However, my fellow dressers are riding to my rescue, story wise, as they so frequently do. So here are a few tidbits for you. And really, I think this post will be most appreciated by Kateri because she’s just like that.

Anyway, back to the dressers, specifically Kim. Kim is a rigger – a stagehand who deals with all the set pieces that fly up, curtains, scrims, sycs etc. - who also works wardrobe. And unlike many of the stagehands who double with wardrobe, she can actually do both jobs and I really like working with her. She has a very no nonsense attitude and doesn’t “suffer fools” easily, so we get along great. This will become relevant so I’ll tell you that she’s my age, pretty, bleached blond hair and skin that looks like she smokes too much and gets too much sun (both of which are true, though it turns out she’s quit smoking). And she works the NASCAR scene as a stagehand when she isn’t working theatre work. So there’s a snapshot.

I first worked with her on Lion King and she had one of my favorite non-show related stories of the run. One day she was bending over to get something and I noticed that she had a tattoo on her lower back that said “N-SYNC,” as in the boy band from the 90s. Now, of all tattoos I would never expect her to have, only one that said “Barry Manilow” would be more surprising. So I asked her about it and she just grinned and said, “Yeah, it’s the boy band. And it’s a great story, wanna hear it?” We all know the answer to that.

Kim’s been a stagehand for about 20 years now and she has several nieces and nephews that benefit from her job as she’s gotten them back stage passes to big concerts and they’ve gotten tours, met celebrities etc. So in the mid 90’s when N-sync was HUGE, they planned to be in Phoenix as part of their tour. As soon as her niece found out, she started telling everyone that her Aunt Kim was going to get her backstage to meet N-sync. Well, the problem was that the show had sold out within hours of the tickets being released and Kim could not get on the call for the show. She pulled in all of her stagehand favors but couldn’t even get tickets to the show, never mind backstage passes.

So one morning close to the show, she gets a call from her sister – her niece’s mom – telling her to turn on the radio. A local station was advertising a ticket giveaway for N-Sync that included back stage passes and a chance to meet the band. They were taking calls, they’d pick a certain number caller and if that person was willing and able to come to the radio station and get a tattoo of N-Sync while on the air, they would win the package. Kim says that as soon as she heard the advertisement, she knew that she was going to win. She got in her car, started driving toward the radio station as she called. She got through but was told that she wasn’t the right caller. They actually picked a different caller, that person got in their car and started driving and then chickened out, called the station and said they weren’t willing to get a tattoo. So they opened up the phone lines again, and this time they picked Kim.

She said that she drove to the station, got there and the tattoo artist took one look at her and said “really? You’re really going to do this?” because she does NOT look like an N-Sync fan. So she told her story about her niece, how she’d been trying to get tickets and couldn’t but didn’t want to let her down et. etc.. So the tattoo artist offered to tattoo her in some really unnoticeable place, like the bottom of her feet, but Kim said “no, if you are going to do it, you might as well do it.” So he tattooed her lower back and she got the tickets and the passes.

She said she cried as she drove home and then called her boyfriend and said “I arrived with Metallica on my windshield and I left with N-Sync on my a**!”

So yesterday, I’m working with Kim and via one thing and another she starts telling me stories about high school. Turns out she was part of something called the NCHA (National Campers and Hikers association) and this organization hosts beauty pageants. I’ll give you a moment or two to absorb that conundrum.

Ready? Ok.

So Kim competed in these beauty pageants all through high school – she actually went to charm school (I need to ask her what that is exactly) and had a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader as a dance coach - and at one point she won Miss Arizona NCHA and went to the national pageant in Oklahoma. There they organized a huge parade and she had a “float” consisting of an old Chevy truck with a toolbox in the bed covered by a blanket that she sat on surrounded by balloons. Another small moment to revel in that picture, maybe?

Ok.

So apparently most of the states elected both a Miss and a Mr. – a queen and king of the state – who went to the pageant but for some reason there was no king of Arizona. Kim says that the King of Michigan thought she was really cute and actually chased her float down the parade route until he caught up with her so he could ride with her. Needless to say, the queen of Michigan was not happy…

And while I love that mental picture, the corker of the story was Kim telling me that the talent section of the pageant was also not “beauty pageant traditional” because it was a camping and hiking association. Then she says, in the most off hand way imaginable – “For instance, the queen of California pitched a tent as her talent.”

As I’m falling apart laughing at that statement, Kim looks at me, starts to laugh and says, “And that’s not even the funny part.” I said “You must be kidding!”

And she says, “Oh no, she did it while dressed as a California Raisin.”

Once again, I have the best friends ever.

I’m out, have a good day everyone!

I was joking before...

But I walk out of my house this morning and what do I see on my door?

That is an ACTUAL locust! on my ACTUAL house!

I don't even know what to think!

But I'm grateful I don't have a first born because he would be very worried about now...

A plague on our house

I started working for Sonora Theatre Works this week. It’s a little company (a block from my house! Who knew?) that builds set pieces, props and all manner of fabric things – stage curtains, back drops, hand held pieces etc. They brought me in this week to help with a huge order of 6 black stage curtains – 12’ x 15’ – that need to get built this week.

Unlike most shops where everyone works on separate projects within the same space, in this shop we all work together on one thing. The curtains are too big and heavy to maneuver them by yourself, so while one person sews, another person is feeding the fabric to them and making sure it doesn’t fall on the floor, and yet another person is “catching” the fabric as it comes out of the machine and feeding it back to the table, taking out pins, checking for flaws and problems etc. It’s been really fun and collaborative, things I don’t usually say about a costume shop.

But yesterday we ran out of fabric for the stage curtains and had to order more on a rush that won’t get here until tomorrow. So today we moved on to another project. I don’t know what happened but somehow we went from a smooth easy week where everything was getting done to a day where everything went wrong.

This project is out of sky blue polyester so it’s imperative that it not fall on the floor. No one remembers it falling on the floor, but it’s composed of 2 panels, each 40 feet long and somehow on one of the multiple times we were lugging the 50 pounds of fabric from one side of the table to another, we noticed a dirty mark along the edge. And then another. And another! This is bad. The fabric can’t be washed or spot cleaned because of water marks, so if the dirt can’t be brushed off we have to be able to cut it off or hide it. Gina, the owner, calmly said “someone put a tag on that side and we’ll make that the hem.”

Good solution. So we pin the two panels together and start stitching and the machine keeps jamming and jamming and jamming. Thread snarls, broken threads, weird tension issues, etc. Finally we are 3 feet from the end of this 40 foot long seam and I see a big flaw in the fabric (where the threads got twisted or jammed in the weaving), which is unacceptable in this curtain. Somehow the 4 of us walked past this flaw numerous times, pinned it and didn’t notice it. So now we have to take out that long seam, reverse the panels to put the flaw at the top where it will get cut off, repin and restitch that long seam. Usually seam ripping goes quickly by clipping the thread every 6 inches on one side and just pulling it out of the other side of the seam, but the way the machine was jamming the threads are somehow twisted together and each stitch has to be taken out individually, for 40 feet. Forty!

Sigh.

This is where Bianca starts talking about the plagues of Egypt. She had just been to her first Seder dinner with her boyfriend that week and we had talked about Passover and the Jews fleeing Egypt. So as she grimly rips out each stitch she starts muttering “Locusts. I’m expecting locusts at any minute…” To this Jess, a cute little hippie with a tendency to slip into her own world, looks up, snaps out of her reverie and says “I’m thinking about getting a digital camera…” The laughter at that point was very helpful. And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that she’s blond.

We finally get the seam together, Gina stitches it and as we’re laying out the panels she says “So the dirty part is on the bottom and the flaw is on the top…” And then she just lays her head down on the table and says “I can’t believe that sentence just came out of my mouth. Locusts, indeed!”

Finally we finish the hem and are laying the stabilizing webbing at the top, webbing we’ve carefully measured, cut and marked to fit the curtain exactly, only it doesn’t. The curtain is too wide by about 6 inches. We measure from each end and from the middle and it doesn’t fit. So we abandon it, get the unmarked roll of extra webbing to recut this piece, lay it out and it’s also too short. Argh! So we go back to the marked webbing, lay it down, and for some reason now it fits.

We all look at each other and Bianca says:

Yep, you know.

“Locusts.”