Rolling in...

We had our 9th show and loaded out for the 5th time in 8 days yesterday. Usually I get in bed as soon as the second truck is packed to make sure to eek out as much sleep as possible before our next load in. However, when we know we have a travel day (or “day off”) the next day, we usually try to keep everyone up until we take off so we can have a beer or two before falling asleep in our seats. Ryan calls this “mandatory fun night.”

I was in reasonable shape and stayed up past 3AM for mandatory fun night and then woke up “early” - which was at 10AM but given our sleep deprivation, we usually sleep long past noon on our “days off.” So I got the ultimate pleasure of sitting in the front lounge by myself this morning for a couple of hours, reading my book, drinking coffee and watching the flat lands and trees of Illinois slide by the windows knowing that I didn't have to do the show tonight.

Delicious.

And when we got to the hotel – all of us looking like homeless kids in our pajamas with bed head crawling out of the bus – I went straight to my room and haven't left since. I took a bath, did my nails and caught up on my sitting around. I'm even opting out of going out for dinner since the weather has taken an ugly turn. When we got here it was about 60 degrees, a far cry from the 20 or below we've experienced all over New York and Ohio for the past week. But then a storm system rolled through and I got this call on my hotel phone:

Front Desk: This is a courtesy call for our guests to let them know that there is a tornado warning for our county for the next couple of hours.

Me: A Tornado? Ok. What would I do in that case?

Front Desk: Um...

Me: I mean, should I do something specific or go somewhere if we get a tornado?

Front Desk: Well, you don't have a room with outside access so you'll probably be ok. You might want to go into your bathroom. I think we have a tornado alarm so that's how you would know.

Me: My bathroom. Got it.

Did you catch all that? You'll “probably” be ok and you “might” want to go into your bathroom when you hear the alarm I “think” we might have. Probably.

I didn't think these were difficult questions.

But I neglected to ask what to do once I got to the bathroom. Not that I would know to go there as there might not be an alarm. I guess I'd have to hope I'd be watching the weather channel when the tornado takes off the roof of the hotel. On the other hand, I don't have any sparkly shoes with me so I'm more likely to acquire a small dog and three good friends than have the hotel dropped on me.

Seriously...

I still have to post about awesomesburg, but it will require pictures to really do it justice. And I didn't take any so I'll cop from other people and post in the next couple of days when I have them.

Until then
xox
k

Last of CT and most of Ont

A last note about Connecticut... these union rules are ridiculous. We couldn't do show laundry during the show because it's not “show work.” If we had laundry to do, we had to wait until the show ended and then start the washers. The wig girls were not allowed to set wigs that weren't going to be worn in the next show. They couldn't work ahead at all. I had 3 fittings to do and I couldn't do them during show time or during rehearsal. I had to pay my department head an extra 4 hours to come in before show time so I could do fittings. And I had three new people going in, so I had no choice but to give her the 4 hour call. Even though the fittings took about an hour, she got paid for a minimum of 4 hours of work. Crazy! Load out took forever because none of us could work. The minute the curtain came down we couldn't touch anything.

But the advantage to this nonsense was that I actually got to see the show. Since I had a shadow all week anyway (my flyman), I made him learn my track and then with much trepidation I made sure my phone was on and I sat in an aisle seat so I could make a quick get away in case something blew up backstage and I sat out and watched the show with my friend Jenny, who came down for the day. It's a good show, actually. I was a little surprised because I'm not hugely fond of Mel Brooks. But our production looks pretty quality and the audience loved it. I also got to see how things look from the house and made some changes once I got back to work. It is the only chance I'll ever have to do that with this show, and of course, the rest of the crew was jealous :)

I also really liked Hartford. It's a beautiful little city.

Brampton Ontario – We crossed the border in the day time and the Canadian customs didn't make us get out of the bus or even show ourselves. They just came on the bus, asked a few questions, looked at our passports and let us go. So, I take back every nasty thing I've said about them. We had a night in Brampton before we loaded in and you would think I'd go to bed early, given that I have to be up at the crack of dawn, but you'd be wrong about that.

So I got to work tired. But fortunately the load in wasn't too horrible. The weird thing is that the Brampton Rose Theatre was just built last year. And it was clearly built by someone who has never done theatre, ever, and has no interest in theatre or those silly things called set pieces. The doorways? 12Ft high. Too low for scenery or decking carts, which then had to be unloaded in the dock and hand carried in piece by piece. The dressing rooms were all up 3 flights of stairs, too far away for anyone to do any changes in them. All costume changes had to be on stage. Plus there was one washer and one dryer. Seriously? I expect this in a theatre built in 1950 but a massive theatre complex built in 2007 has no excuses.

My crew had several really good stitchers though, which was fortunate as I had three new people going in for that show. This means that yesterday all their costumes were worn by the old people and today they need alterations so they can be worn by the new people. I spent the whole day getting everything else ready for three new people. It was a long day and more sleep might have helped...

The show went ok. The crew was pretty competent all around and our three shows were mostly uneventful on the local side. However, the night after load out from Hartford our electrician was throwing up all night. Then on our trip to Ontario, our SL Carpenter was throwing up all day. Meanwhile, our Follow Spot Op had been hacking his lungs up for 2 days straight and looked like death warmed over with pink eye. By the time we hit Brampton, our Wigs Head and our Flyman had the flu and our Stage Manager had the cold/whooping cough/pink eye situation. Then I started to feel feverish the last night we were there and thought “nope.” Cuz Jen, the Wigs Head, and I can't both be sick. Our departments can't run without both of us. Jen was still sick so I had to wait until she was better before I got sick. Then the last day our TD got some kind of lethal combination of the pinkeyecough and the throwingupflu and was “working” in that he was standing and telling people what to do but he looked like a ghost.

Despite all this, none of us can call in sick to work because there's no one to cover us. It works out well that we all like each other because the non-sick people work overtime trying to give the sick people a break and let them sleep longer, especially knowing that since we're all on the bus together it's just a matter of time before the sickness makes the rounds and everyone will be covering your job. It was a gruesome couple of days on our end. Plus it was snowing the whole time we were there, which is beautiful but tiring and cold to work in. Plus the three flights of stairs every 10 minutes for 2 days. ..

It was good to finally get on the bus and pull out of Canada. Next stop? Awesomesburg!

A Tale of Two Houses

We visited Mark Twain's house in Hartford. It's really a lovely place. Just big enough to be mansion-esque but you can picture a family actually living there. Sort of warm and spacious and comfortable.

It's perched on a bit of a hill and when it was built, a river ran alongside it down the hill. Plus Harriet Beecher Stowe was their neighbor. Lots of trees. Really a pretty place. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside and my pictures of the outside are less than impressive. their website isn't much better but you can look it up here.


The best room in the house was - no surprise - the library, which was lined with books on every wall, had a huge fireplace and also opened onto a small greenhouse full of plants with a fountain. His three girls, who sounded like they had a fun adventurous childhood, called it the jungle and played hide and seek in it. If I ever have a house, I'm building that little conservatory into it. :)


There was also a huge fireplace in the library with a long mantle full of chotchkes, sculptures, paintings etc. Every night his girls made him tell them a story using all the pieces on the mantle in order in the story. He "won" the game if he managed to get them so enthralled in the story that he could skip a piece and they didn't notice. If they noticed, he "lost" and had to start over at the beginning of the mantle with a new story.


He was also quite an irascible sort. He named his cats "sin" "satan" and "pestilence" so he could stand on the porch and call for them on Sunday mornings when all his conservative neighbors were going to church. I can only imagine how much he horrified them!


It was a fun visit, full of all his pithy quotes. The best I think was:


"Books are the liberated souls of men."


For comparison, we visited the Winchester Mansion while we were in California. These two houses couldn't be more different.

Mrs. Winchester inherited the Winchester rifle fortune at the turn of the 20th century. A few years later she visited a spiritual medium who told her she was haunted by the souls of all the people who had been killed with a Winchester.

Rather easily influenced, she poured most of her fortune into this mansion. She built in "traps" for the spirits to keep them from finding her.

Like stairs that go nowhere...
Cupboard doors that open onto a blank wall.

Doors that, well, open in several parts and are in no way easy to get through...
Doors of different sizes...

Doors with signs on them that when opened could cause you to fall down 2 stories and hit several roofs on your way.

In short, a crazy place. There were also boarded up doors with fully furnished rooms behind them, a bathroom with only an outside door for access that sits 3 feet off the ground and a fortune in tiffany glass windows that were never installed. In fact there were upwards of 3 million dollars of furnishings stored in rooms below the house, never installed, never unwrapped and never used.

Her will dictated that construction had to be going on in the house 7 days a week to keep the spirits at bay. She also had a thing for daisies and the number 13, just to cover all the superstitious angles. I think she died in bed at the age of 90+.

My next post will be about the show in the high school cafe-gymatorium.

Can't wait, can you?! :)

xox

k

In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire

Hurricanes hardly happen...

This is our first union house with really strict union rules. We knew that going in, but working (or not working) has been a really tricky thing here. With most union houses we've worked as we always do and it just happens that our crew is union and we are a non-union show. Occasionally we've been forbidden to push our gondolas around during load in or load out (because we aren't loaders, we're heads of department therefore, according to the union, we're technically unqualified to load trucks). And I say “whatever.” You want to push this box? Feel free...

But this house is adhering to really strict arcane rules. Since we are a non union show, they require each of us to have a union “shadow” who follows us around and watches us do our jobs. In some houses, they would even do our jobs for us and forbid us to work at all but in this house they are letting us work as long as we are “supervised.” On our own show. It's absurd. Not least because my shadow is a flyman. Working wardrobe. And he can do a better job on my show than I can because he's a union member? Really? I think not.

For load in we were expressly forbidden to pick anything up, do any work, open any boxes or touch anything show related. I spent the morning standing in front of gondolas, gesturing at them and saying things like “Can you open this up and get out the gold shoes that are in the lower right hand corner?” or “Can you make 4 trips up and down the stairs since I'm forbidden to pick up this basket and follow you to help you out?” Ridiculous. But I was allowed to work the show, which I did with someone standing at my shoulder every minute. Technically I can be training my shadow to do my track during the show and then I could just not come to work. At all. I could have a night off. I might even be able to see the show. Can you imagine? So I'm working to that end. I figure if I have to be stalked all week, I'm going to put my stalker to work and I'm taking some time off for the last time until the end of tour. Plus my friend Jenny lives here in Connecticut and it would be so cool to be able to see my show with her.

Other than that nonsense, Hartford is lovely. I get the “what's your favorite city that you've visited on tour?” question a lot. Previous to this I haven't had a good answer though I liked Ft. Collins Colorado, our day in San Jose California visiting the ocean and the redwood forest was amazing and Anchorage was cool because I've always wanted to go to Alaska. But now I think that Hartford is at the top of my list. The hotel is great – and I have a single room, which is so glorious after a week on the bus - the theatre is in walking distance as are restaurants, bars and shops and the town is so beautiful in a very old New England sort of way. Plus there are lots of Irish pubs, how can you not love that? We visited Mark Twain's house today, which was beautiful. I'll post about that later. And we had a really expensive and delicious meal at Max Downtown our first night here. Spent a pile of money and treated ourselves right.

Gonna be a good week, ya'll...

Nap or Shower?

So, it's Sunday. Our load out last night went until 2ish AM and our load in this morning started at 6AM. It's our 5th city in 4 states in 2 countries in one week. We are T-I-R-E-D... But we have a travel day tomorrow and I expect we will all sleep until the early afternoon.

A brief recap? ok...

Wabash, Indiana. We had a crazy wig lady that not only showed up an hour early to every call but she talked non stop and was the kind that would follow you around still talking as you tried to get away from her. My crew was only moderately competent but the space was pretty large. It's a really bad night when the crew is incompetent AND the space is really tight AND we are all exhausted. We can all handle two of three. But three of three? Duck and cover... We had pizza for the second night in a row because there was nothing else open and we didn't have the time or means to get anywhere for dinner.

Portsmouth, Ohio. Groan. A mostly inexperienced crew of college and high school students. We walked in the door and were told that we were short a wig girl because “she got drunk last night and her dad won't let her come to work in the play...” Oh. My. Dear. Lord. That was the three of three night. And it was a matinee load in so we had started work at 7AM in the morning plus the space was really tight PLUS it's the only crew I've ever had that made more mistakes in the second show than they did in the first. We had two actors miss entrances because of dresser mistakes. Horrible. My crew head would just leave during the show for long stretches and take smoke breaks. And she was lazy. Horrible. I refused to make her work by the end of the show. I just let her stand around, which she was more than willing to do. Horrible. But the bonus was that there were only about 20,000 people in the town of Portsmouth so we figured between the people working and the two shows, we employed or entertained most of the families in town. And I had one really great girl on my crew who was willing to train all the other inexperienced dressers. Thank God for her...

Now we are in Mansfield, Ohio. Another 2 show day. We don't have any space on stage. None of our crew has worked a show this big. We can't store our gondolas inside because there isn't enough room. And it's snowing outside.

But we have no show tomorrow! So yay...

And Nap or Shower? That's the afternoon dilemma of a one nighter during our few brief moments of free time. I always pick shower. But I have much envy of the nappers.

More later
xox
k

Canadian customs is worse than Guatemala...

So here's my timeline from yesterday.

1:30AM: Early load out from Kitchener Ontario. Somehow with our new TD we've managed to load in 2 hours faster than normal and load out at least 1 hour faster than normal. Speculation runs rampant...

2:00AM: On the bus, trying to sleep without much success. The whole crew is a bit rowdy and loud and sound travels in the bus...

2:30AM: presumably sleeping.

4AM: I wake up to my TD walking thru the bus saying “get up! We're at the Canadian border and we have to go into the office!"

4:01: Total disbelief. They are making us get off the bus at 4AM?

4:05: Forbidden to go the bathroom by customs officials and asked questions like “Most of you have at least $10,000 on you, right? How much money are you carrying? How much do you think the whole company is carrying? “ (my answers “seriously?” and “about 75 cents” and “No idea at all but less than you might expect...”)

4:30: Back on the bus and asleep.

8:30AM: In a new theatre in a decidedly sketchy neighborhood in Saginaw Michigan (where all of us are going to look for America...). Our crew also looks decidedly sketchy and the first thing they tell us is “You know you're in the middle of a war zone right now, right? The whole east side is in bad shape. Please don't walk around by yourself...” Gang wars apparently.

Noon: We go to the only restaurant in walking distance, a drive thru burger joint called “Rally's” with what looks like bullet proof glass. I had the crispy fish sandwich. It was pretty good.

2PM: Our principal actor who plays Franz calls out of the show with a sore throat. We now have two principal men out and only one male swing.

Rest of Afternoon: discussing how the show will run if the female swing goes in for male character roles.

7:30: show time with a crazy split track list including our female swing playing several male character scenes and our male swing essentially playing every other male character role in the show except for Lead Tenor.

8PM: Female dancer #4 starts to feel nauseous and sick. She assures us she can finish the show. Jennifer and I tell the female swing anyway who proceeds to try to figure out how she will cover the rest of her male character roles and all of #4's scenes with the male swing covering the rest of the show.

8:30: Female dancer #4 gets up on the bunker stairs on stage during Springtime, shakes her head twice gets down off the stairs 10 minutes ahead of her scheduled exit walks outside and throws up.

Rest of show: Jennifer and I running around like crazy people, inventing quick changes that aren't in the show to make sure that both the female and male swing can make all their exits in the proper characters. Our male swing played 3 different character roles in 5 minutes.

11PM: Ingrid asks where a near convenience store might be and several local stage hands immediately say “you don't want to be walking anywhere at this time of night.”

1:30PM: Jennifer's and my truck was loaded and we were in the bus drinking vodka (5 minutes) and going to bed (10 minutes later).

8AM: Now we're in Indiana and the whole thing starts all over again... But as a bonus there has been no talk of war.

Ontario

First off, US Airways sucks. My flight was again late leaving Tucson, but since I had gotten an earlier flight I didn't miss my connection. We were also late leaving Phoenix and got into Toronto over an hour late. Amongst our 50+ company members who mostly flew US Airways, at least 75% had connections that were late or canceled and 5 had luggage that didn't arrive. Not good... I don't think I've had a flight on US Airways in the past 6 months that has left on time. Several company members are now refusing to fly on this airline and I may be among them...

The Toronto airport was fun though. I had to get from one terminal to another to catch my shuttle to the hotel and I'm not saying they made that as difficult as possible, I'm just saying...

The original directions were to go to the ground floor and look for signs for the train that takes you between terminals. Except there weren't any signs. There were, however, little information booths every 500 feet staffed by brusque but helpful Canadians, all of a different ethnic origins and accents. At first I thought this was very convenient, since I had to ask at every single one to make sure I was still going in the right direction. But then I started to think that if they actually need this many information booths, that means a lot of people are lost and maybe it would be cheaper to just put up a few readable signs...

I had to take a total of 4 elevators to get to the train. I had to walk through a hotel. There were elevators that only went up one floor and then 20 feet down the way was another elevator that only went down one floor. It was ridiculous. Plus I had a cart for my luggage that only went forward when the handle was pushed down, otherwise the brake would abruptly activate. So I would stop briefly to try to read the elevator signs in French and the cart would screech to a halt and I would fall into the cart. The cart wouldn't back up or turn corners either unless you were pushing the handle down, you had to simultaneously push down on the handle and try to back up or throw your whole weight at the cart and lean in the opposite direction you wanted to turn. A video of my trek through this airport would probably be worth watching...I would have been amused had I not been so annoyed.

But our run in Kitchener has been without drama. Yesterday was a little crazy, 3 weeks off is just long enough to start forgetting how the show runs and what exactly I do during it. Plus our crew had A LOT of questions at the beginning of the show. So many that for 2 hours I didn't do anything except answer questions and look for misplaced costume pieces (Anchorage, Grrr!). I realize that I haven't written about Alaska. There's not much to write but there are pictures so I'll post them as I get a chance.

We have our last performance in Ontario today and then head out tonight for a brutal string of one nighters. We have 2 matinee load ins this weekend. That means we have a show Friday night, a load out that will go until at least 2AM, a short bus drive and a load in that starts at 5AM followed by a show at 3PM and a show at 8PM on Saturday. The load out will go until at least 2AM, a short bus drive and another load in that starts at 5AM with 2 more shows at 3PM and 8PM on Sunday followed by another short bus drive and a load in on Monday at 8AM. I won't do the math but let's just say that isn't enough sleep to be doing 5 shows in 3 days in 3 different cities...

I'll let you know how that goes.

XOX
k

Got a golden day

In my typical manner I put off everything to the last minute and spent all day yesterday screeching around corners late to various appointments and trying to multi-task. I had social dates for breakfast, lunch, dinner and after dinner drinks as well as dealing with my storage spaces, getting my hair cut, packing, laundry and late christmas present wrapping.

Let's just say it was a very late night...

After 2-ish hours of sleep I got up and went to the airport and sat around waiting for a delayed flight until I realized that there was really no way for me to make my connecting flight in Phoenix. The rescheduling of flights was a medieval process involving several different desks of the same airline in the same small airport, desks that seemed to only vaguely know of each other's existance and surely couldn't be bothered to find out what they did. Ran up and down stairs, resigned myself to the idea that I would not make it to work tomorrow and that my baggage was happily on its way to Phoenix with nowhere else to go and very little hope of making its way back to Tucson before I left town and called my friend Eric who came to pick me up.

I made the requisite 20+ phone calls to all the company members who need to know where I am, rearranged the schedule for my crew since I won't be at load in tomorrow, reassured Jennifer that she would not be loading in two departments all by herself and then the phone calls started to trickle in.

At last count, our stage manager had missed her flight and was trying to get out of NYC. Our assistant carpenter's flight was canceled so he was trying to get on another one. Our Audio head is not showing up tomorrow for reasons I don't know about (presumably flight related), our props head and wigs head were having drinks in a bar because they missed their bus to the hotel after making it to toronto and our flyman is stuck in Denver because of plane issues, waiting for another flight and now looking at a 3AM arrival in toronto and an 8AM work call.

In addition to this madness, we have a new TD who has never loaded the show in before and is now missing half his crew and an audio assistant who has never worked the show and his head won't be there. But both of our electrics guys have made it, as far as I know, so we'll have lights if nothing else.

Ontario? Looking good already...