Lucy welcomes you!

So, there's this hotel in Margate, NJ that's shaped like an elephant.


Really. Her name is Lucy and she is an example of "zoomorphic architecture." She was built as a tourist attraction in the early 20th century and is a National Historic Monument.


The eyes are windows into someone's room and look out towards the sea. I don't know much more than that because we didn't take the tour, but I think I got a well rounded experience just walking around taking pictures and visiting one of the most elephant centric gift shops I'm ever likely to visit. I bought Pippa the cutest present that I would have died for at almost 3 years old...


How much more is there to say about an elephant shaped hotel? I've seen it and should you ever have to be in New Jersey, it's one of the few things worth seeing...


How cool is that water tower?

After that we visited the Atlantic City boardwalk and looked at the sand dunes and the sea.

And all the casinos on the water...

Then we had a margarita and some pita and hummus on the boardwalk and came back to the hotel.

Felt like a day off. Kind of was a day off! It's 5:30 and I don't have to be at work until 7 for our 9PM show tonight and I should be home by 11PM.

Tomorrow I'll try to remember to post our itinerary for all those who want to know where we'll be this fall.

xox
k

Because it always comes down to 2 things...

Today was a long day of annoyances. Today I thought to myself, "if someone offered me a job at Starbucks, I would take it."

But then I was wearing a crocheted tank top that looked something like this one , only, you know, different. And one of the actors said "That's a cute top. Makes you look like a human toaster cozy..."

And so I laughed, which was good.

The Producers Plague

I'm fighting off the cold that's been circulating through the company for the past several weeks. I've been taking Zicam - which is the nastiest tasting stuff ever invented so it better be working! And my congestion isn't bad, just bad enough to make it hard to sleep and make me feel a little bleh...

And I have a massive burn on my leg because at breakfast the other day I dumped an entire cup of the hottest coffee known to mankind in my lap. I now have just the tiniest bit of sympathy for that woman who sued McDonalds after she spilled her coffee...

Needless to say, if there was a game I would not be entirely on top of it.

And the show is reflecting my mood. There have been a lot of injuries and sick outs this past couple of weeks. Plus we've had people out of the show – called “swinging out” - to do other jobs. Some of our actors have an additional job, like assistant stage manager or assistant company manager, so they occasionally swing out of their actor jobs to do their other jobs. And then our swings come in to do their tracks. It's all fine except it's the usual costume madness.

We have one male swing and one female swing and they can play all the parts in the show. So they should have a full set of their own costumes for every character, which is a lot of costumes. Except they don't have a full set. They have a mostly full set. So when Lauren - the swing – goes on for Lara, #22, she wears Lara's fur coat, and her waitress apron and her jewelry. When Lauren goes on for Keleen, #24, she wears Keleen's usherette jacket and her long coat, etc. etc. etc. So the trick is figuring out what is missing and pulling it from the actor's rack to give to the swing. And today we had 2 actors swing out so it was a lot of switching things around. It's a bit of a disorganized mess sometimes...

The other madness has been the deck. Because this show is in the last year of its tour, the production company doesn't want to pay as much money to send it out this last time. So to cut corners, they cut the number of trucks they were giving us from 4 to 3. Now the trucks look like that semi that we packed in NYC and it's how all of our stuff travels from one venue to another. So when you cut a truck, you have to then cut down all the stuff that was going to go in that truck. This means that every department has to pare things down so that all our stuff fits in 3 trucks. Well, we've known since NYC that we have to cut 7 of our 17 gondolas of costume stuff and one of our workboxes. Don't ask me how we plan to fit all the useful things from 17 gondolas into 10 gondolas. So far our plans have defied physics. But it has to happen, so it will. That's the beauty of theatre. Somehow the show always goes up.

The major thing that was cut for space was our deck. The deck is the portable wooden flooring that travels with us. It comes apart and goes back together like a puzzle and we lay it on top of the theatre flooring in each venue. And why would we need a whole extra floor when every theater has a perfectly good floor, you ask? Well apparently the producers of The Producers asked the same question and then said “you wouldn't!” so they cut it to make space in the truck. And instead they gave us a portable floor called a Marley (click on the word to get the details). It's basically just a big piece of vinyl that we tape to the floor.

So we laid the marley in AC and have been using it for the past 3 weeks. Except it sucks. It's vinyl so the dancers' shoes stick to it just a little bit, which puts some stress on their legs that they aren't used to and several of them have gotten injured working on it. It rubs against all the shoes during the dance moves and they are now all scuffed up. But the most important problem is that all our set pieces don't work on it. We have these big set pieces that were tracked to run on grooves in the deck. So you pull them apart and slide them together and they go to the same place every time on the deck. Not so on the marley. With no grooves to run on, the set pieces have to be put together manually and it's almost impossible for them to run in straight lines every time when you have 3 guys hauling them on and off stage. It was complete chaos all during tech as we tried to get the set to run on the marley. Finally after 3 weeks, the producers gave in and let us have the deck back. Yay! Except we still don't have any extra truck space. Booo! So now every other department has to pare down even more so we can fit the deck into the truck. Double Booo! But we have the deck instead of the marley. Yay! You get the picture...

how does this all relate to tonight, kaitlyn? Well... last weekend was the first weekend on the deck so Sunday night was a painting party to repaint the deck that hadn't been used since July. Fortunately I don't have to be a part of the painting because I'm wardrobe! So the stagehands all stay late and paint (and drink a lot of beer, naturally) and the paint dried all day Monday on our day off. Last night they stayed late again to seal the deck. Today we come in for rehearsal and everyone's shoes are leaving big white scuff marks all over the deck... Why oh why is this happening? Well, it turns out that our TD didn't read the instructions on the sealer... So now the deck had to be repainted again tonight. And then it has to be resealed tomorrow night.

Yay!

And every time this happens, the spike marks ( all the tape marks on the floor that tell people where to stand and where set pieces need to be and where props and furniture need to be so that everything is the same every time) all those marks have to be taken off and replaced every time the deck is painted.

Ask me how happy the stagehands are tonight...

Ask me how happy I am not to be a stagehand!

OK, stuffy and tired so I'm off to bed

xox
k

Monday! a day off...

I'm so behind on this blogging thing that I need to just start with now, and eventually work back to some other more general things when I have a slow day or nothing to say.

So...

I had a day off yesterday! And I went to NYC. I had tried to go into NYC a week or so earlier on my day off – Labor Day, actually – but here's how that went...

Sunday afternoon I talk my friend Josh into coming with me to NYC and between shows we run back to the hotel to get our stuff. We work the night show and get out around 9:30 and he thinks we're getting a ride with my friends – which I may have told him... - and I think we're getting a ride from his friends – which may have just been hopeful – and we end up getting left at the theatre with no ride. So we take the jitney – a shuttle service that runs between casinos in Atlantic City – and go to the bus station down town. By this point it's 10:30. We discover that the buses stop at every casino before getting to the bus station, AND it's a holiday weekend AND they oversell their bus tickets so there's no guarantee of a seat. So we decide to wait at one of the casinos instead, hoping to increase our chances, and walk down to the closest one. At this point it's 10:40PM and I have a one way ticket in someone else's name – they weren't going to use it – and Josh has no ticket because he neglected to buy one before he left the bus station and apparently you can't get them at the casinos. Even though you can get on the bus there, you have to already have a ticket in order to ride the bus. Isn't that efficient?

There's a mob of people outside the casino and after some questioning we ascertain that there are all kinds of destinations and lines for buses so we get in the NYC “line” (which is more like a wad, a people wad...) The last NYC buses are supposed to arrive at 10:45 and 10:55. Well, buses come and go with no signs on them. They leave half empty sometimes even though there are cascades of people in weird crisscrossing lines all over the sidewalks. 10:55 comes and goes and the NYC line isn't getting any smaller. But we're too far back in line to figure out what's going on. By 11:15 there appears to be a NYC bus that pulls up and people get on and when it leaves we definitely get closer to the head of the line. But by now Josh is just waiting with me to keep me company since he has no ticket and we can''t figure out what to do. Since we're clearly off any kind of schedule, it's hard to just leave. That may have been the last bus, or it may not. And everyone else is staying in line but what do they know? We're in line too and we know nothing!

We end up staying until 11:30 and then decide to walk back to the bus station to get the next bus there. But when we get back, we discover that the next bus to NYC isn't until 12:40AM. It's a 2.5 hour bus ride into the city and then we have to get on the subway to get to our respective homes – and Josh's train ride is about 2 hours from the bus station, so that makes it almost 6AM on his only day off before he even gets home. Such a bad idea...

So he makes some phone calls and gets us a ride back to the hotel and we decide to do NYC at another time. Like, say, this past weekend.

We decide to again leave on Sunday night after the last show. We go back to the hotel, grab stuff, shower, eat something etc. etc. and get a ride to the bus station, with a couple of stops in between. Josh's roommate, John, drops us off at the station, we walk in to buy tickets and the ticket person says “ok, but the next bus is at 12:40...”

Seriously!?? Somehow, even without all the casino people wads and the jitney and the missing rides and the walking we still managed to get to the bus station only in time for the 12:40AM bus! We looked at each other and said “no!' simultaneously. So Josh pulled out his phone and called John who wasn't far away and we ended up at the hotel. Again.

But this time we stayed at the hotel and then drove into the city on Monday morning with a friend of ours instead. And this is all to talk about dinosaurs, because I went to the Natural History Museum.



Cool, right?



I didn't stay there very long as it was sandwiched in between other things and people and stuff, but the dinosaurs were awesome.






I saw the African displays as well. It's actually a 4 story museum and the African animals are on the first floor but viewable from the second floor balcony/atrium type thing.

The displays of masks and sculptures and tools, etc. were really fascinating and beautifully organized and curated. But I think I've watched too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I look at those masks on the wall and half expect the eyes to glow green and someone to become possessed by an ancient spirit or start laying eggs or turn into a troll... Even through glass you can feel the power of some of those objects. There was a text posted on the wall next to some of the fetishes explaining that the Africans didn't consider the belief in their power to be a spiritual thing. They thought that the object itself had the power within it, therefore it wasn't a matter of belief that made it work. It was more like science or medicine. I found that interesting. They definitely made a distinction between the objects that invoke the spirits or were utilized in a spiritual manner and the ones that just fulfilled a function – of healing or protection or whatever – by virtue of some inherent quality within them.

So, a great day off all around. Got to see some friends, ate at the Shake Shack, had breakfast delivered in the morning, which is definitely my favorite thing about NYC. How have I lived for 35 years and not in a city where they deliver breakfast?? Imagine rolling out of bed, putting on pajamas, making a phone call and by the time your coffee has brewed there's a knock on your door and you have fresh scrambled eggs and bacon waiting for you! It's like room service in a hotel, only cheaper! It's like pizza delivery only waffles! It's totally the best thing about NYC, hands down.

And now I'm back at work for the week. So, more soon.

Xox
k

It's all about underwear

Well, I've been quite neglectful of this blog (shame!), the ramifications being – aside from losing my audience :) - that so many things have happened that it's now going to be difficult to cover them all. So I'll try to be concise... but you know how that goes...

where to even begin...

Well, here are some of my impressions of the show. For those of you not familiar with “The Producers”, it's not the show for everyone. It has some difficult satirical humor about subjects most decent people don't find funny – like mocking gay people and celebrating nazis. Additionally, I think the funniest and most memorable parts of the show are the “Keep it Gay” and “Springtime for Hitler” numbers so that adds to the difficulty because it's what you remember. There's also some rough language (mom, be warned...) so it's not your typical golden age musical – which is fine with me as I've expressed here before that if I never see Oklahoma! or Guys and Dolls again it will be too soon. I'm not much for the sentimental happy ending musicals.

I'll devote a whole post to nazis soon because several things have happened that revolve around that aspect of this show. But nazis and drag queens aside, the main thing that I have to deal with during the show is that we have a huge show with lots of costumes and 25 actors and we're doing a 90 minute “casino” version instead of the 3 hour full version. This means is that all the long talky parts have been cut and it's now small segments of dialogue interwoven into song and dance numbers. Except no costume changes have been cut.

Normally, the actors have time to change during the talky parts and now they don't have time to change. A quick change means that the actor walks off stage and has quick turn around (usually measured in seconds and not minutes) before they have to be back on stage in a completely different costume . So where we usually have a show with 4-5 quick changes in 3 hours, now we have a show with 10-20 quick changes in 90 minutes. What makes this bearable for the dressers is what is called “underdressing,” which means an actor wears more than one costume at a time. For instance, an actor will wear a pair of tux pants underneath his cop pants and a tux shirt under his cop jacket, get off stage, pull off his cop jacket and pants and put on a tux jacket and in 10 seconds be transformed from a cop to formal wear.

But this means that all the actors are constantly wearing 2-3 outfits at a time so they are hot and sweaty on stage and then the backstage area is like a freezer – the air conditioning is on “arctic” all the time – so they come off stage and immediately start shivering. It's been a bit miserable and everyone has been sick. Of course in this situation, when one person gets a cold it's just a matter of time before everyone has it.

Don't you wish you were on tour in Atlantic City???

but the great thing about actors is that they expect a certain amount of discomfort in their jobs so they don't complain much. They have to wear uncomfortable costumes that are heavy or hot under intense stage lights, do difficult things, make impossible character changes where they go on stage as a cop and then a minute later have to be a prisoner, wear a lot of itchy wigs and heavy makeup etc. Learning to work under physically difficult conditions is part of being an actor. So is having to wear the same shirt over and over and over without it getting washed as much as you'd like.

Which leads me to the other major aspect of this show – for me. Laundry. 25 actors, a minimum of probably 30 costume pieces per actor ranging from t-shirts to fully beaded show girl outfits and no set schedule for how all this gets cleaned. PLUS, from everything I've heard, the last wardrobe crew apparently decided that laundry was hard – which it is – so the solution was not to do it. Shirts didn't get washed, dry cleaning didn't get sent out, actors complained, the wardrobe crew felt put upon and as things built up it just got more daunting and less doable so less and less got done, etc. This is a miserable situation. Trust me when I say that when the actors are unhappy, no one is happy. All of our crew jobs revolve around them being able to do their job and none more so than costumes.

here's the thing about my job. And those who know me will laugh, and then shake their heads and think there must be something to this karma notion after all... My job is to be the mom and I have 25 kids to look after. For 6 days every week I have to make sure their underwear is clean, I'm the one that's there when they are in bad moods and just want some sympathy, I know when they've gained weight or pulled muscles or they are sick, I'm the one they go to when their shoes hurt or their dresser isn't being helpful or they've lost their socks or something broke 2 seconds before they have to be on stage and my main response has to be that I can take care of it – whatever it is – and in the process make the actor feel that they are in a comfortable place and can go on stage and do their job. As such I talk to each one every day to make sure they have everything they need. I have this stock of goodwill building up between up between me and them such that they speak well of me to upper management – which they do – and make me look competent and good at my job, it makes our department run well so stage management doesn't get complaints and they can deal with things that are actually important and the actors are happy so the show goes well, the audience likes it and they say good things to other people who then come to see the show.

Apparently it all comes down to about clean socks and sympathy.

But maybe that's a good lesson for life, yes?

Rockstar life

aWell, the show is up and going pretty well. However, I've been a little MIA because the internet connection in this hotel is really crappy and fails constantly while I'm in the middle of writing something. It's really frustrating. I have to actually take my laptop and dress in actual clothes and walk down 4 flights of stairs and wander around the hotel until I find a place where the connection is stronger and has a place where I can sit down so I can post blogs or check email or do anything. Needless to say, I've decided to do other things instead...

But that is truly my biggest complaint right now. My friend Ingrid and I were swimming in the casino pool yesterday which is huge and surrounded by 6 jacuzzis and enclosed by the largest glass dome in North America and she looks at me and says “we live the rock star life, for sure...” and she's right. All things told, everything is pretty sweet. Hotel paid for, travel arrangements made for us, access to pools and gyms and restaurants for complimentary meals... The hardest part is remembering how to be a productive member of society and pay my bills and keep up with people I don't see every day and not buy a pile of things I have no use for and can't pack in a suitcase.

The other hard part is not having a car and living in a hotel 8 miles away from the casino and the boardwalk and the ocean. The lack of mobility is a little frustrating as I am dependent on other people with cars – we share a car between the three of us in the wardrobe and wig department – to go anywhere or do anything from buying toothpaste to sight seeing. So I haven't seen much of Atlantic City that I can't see from my office window at the casino. And on my next day off I'm planning to go back into New York to see my friend Deborah, as I didn't get to see her before I left. So Atlantic City will have to wait until my next day off, I think.

I have a lot to say about the show but I'll save that for my next post. As to the people I'm working with, they are a good group. There are a few rotten apples that I prefer not to spend time with but overall, the crew is a great group of smart funny people. A touring show seems to naturally split into 3 groups, the crew, the cast and the band. But with this 7 week “sit down” (the term for a longer show engagement) in AC we've all had a chance to interact at parties and after the show, which is great. So I'm getting to know the cast and the band and finding a few people that I think will be good friends of mine throughout the tour and probably afterwards as well.

How great is my life??