Awesomesburg...

At a high school in Ogedensburg, NY. What made it amusing and kept us from homicide is that we knew it would be bad going in. The stage was tiny, there were no dressing rooms and we were going to have crews of high school students. So... might as well pretend to be getting into a locker!And the orchestra pit was nonexistent. Our set filled the entire proscenium - and this venue was back in January when we hadn't played several more houses just like this one so it was still a novel experience.
Welcome to the library/wig and wardrobe work area
And dressing room for all the boys The actors amused themselves with ironic story hour reading eachother books about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

A high school! We put a national tour of a broadway show into a high school auditorium.

I think I have very little to say about that... Except that it's another place I'll never play again if I have anything to say about it!

Happily our Production Manager was in town yesterday and we should all have solid news of our next tour jobs by the middle of March. There is a small core group of us that would love to stay together but it's looking less and less likely. They just don't want to keep a good crew together. They'd rather split them up so several shows get some good people. It's really too bad. There are several people on this crew that have made this an amazing year and I will miss them horribly. Fortunately, touring is a small world so there's always hope that we'll be on other shows together in the future. But when I know something for sure about my future, you'll know about it.

I do know it will have a better schedule than this one which should lead to more regular posting!

until then...
k

Sun, surf and a bunch of one nighters Part 1

On the one hand, we got out of the frozen cold.

On the other, we ended up at houses like this one in Ft. Pierce, FL. Jennifer and I lucked out with a huge room on the top floor of the building, on the same level as the midrail. Note how I captured the ENTIRE proscenium opening in one shot.
It's the first time we considered cutting the stage right office set piece because there was literally no way to get it off stage. Instead we kept it and narrowed the proscenium opening to the point where all the dances had to be rechoreographed and some people danced in the wings throughout the show.
See that guy's foot on the plywood decking above? That was our crossover space backstage in front of the fly rail.

But we walked along the bay during our lunch break and saw a pelican!

I've never seen a real pelican. They are enormous birds...

And then we ended up in Daytona Beach right after bike week and during race week. The theatre was right on the beach and it would have been a great place for a week long sit down. Wanted to spend more time on the beach!
But instead we were only there for one night and this is as much as we saw of race week...

It was Valentine's Day, however, and one of our truck drivers got all the crew girls a teddy bear.

Cute, yes?

Other small tasty vignettes of our Florida one nighters:

Panama City: I had a DH that was at least 70+ years old and said things I've only read and never heard anyone actually say, like "idle hands are the devil's playground." My dressers were her high school students (she also ran a free lance sewing business and operated the town drawbridge) and she wanted me to give them grades at the end of the night.

Coral Springs: Such a crappy venue that we worked all day up until show time trying to shoe horn our show onto stage. As a result we didn't get a dinner break and were all starving half way into the show. Right after Act 2 started, I saw someone scurrying around behind one of my costume racks on stage left and wandered over to see our flyman look out from behind the rack with a guilty surprised look on his face. He saw it was me, beckoned me over and whispered "want a sandwich?" He had a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a squeeze bottle of jelly and a plastic fork balanced on top of his wrench set and screw guns and the two other carpenters were sitting on the floor with half eaten sandwiches in their hands. He made me a sandwich and then stood behind me with his sweatshirt spread out so my dressers wouldn't see me eating ON STAGE, during a show, within feet of my costumes! So bad...

Lakeland: notable only for each of us spending the least fulfilling $84 of our lives to be in a hotel room for less than 6 hours between load out, a birthday party and our first real day off in 7 weeks. But that day is my next post...

later!

k

The Haunted Opera House

Macon, GA Grand Opera House

This is a crazy house. The theatre is on the second floor. Like Butte, MT we had to load in and out via a lift.

Except in this case the lift was on the backstage wall behind the gondolas. So this is the scene during intermission with everyone trying to access stuff stored behind our gondolas.

Meanwhile, Wigs and wardrobe shared the Actor hang out/Green Room space with our drummer. He didn't fit into the orchestra pit so he had to be remoted from the Green Room.
This is the only picture I have. Our drummer was set up just to the right of the picture. I can't believe that I somehow neglected to take a picture of his kit stuffed into our room...

But the House is absolutely beautiful.

Check out the fire escape...

Aren't those flowers lovely?

And when the house is open, they “turn on” the stars in the sky. However, notice that the painted sky stops at that line?

Segregation.

This was the “Coloreds Only”section of the theatre. Look at how narrow those seats are, even though they are beautifully crafted. From this segregation section you can see where the sky just stops. It's probably the best visual metaphor for segregation that I've ever seen.

And on top of all of that, the house was supposedly haunted. We got a ghost tour of the place, including the Thunder Room – the room where they used to beat on pieces of sheet metal to create thunder effects during vaudeville shows – where someone supposedly died.
One of the stage techs took us all the way up to the wooden grid, 77 feet in the air and showed us little rooms back there. Very creepy...

But in other news, I had a great pimento cheese sandwich and Georgia pecan pie a'la mode for lunch preceeded by boiled peanuts. Delish!

Plus we got a hotel room and a 2 night stay. Even though the showers refused to stay at one temperature – hot! Cold! Warm! Warm! Cold! HOOOOOT! Warm! - it was still the best night ever after a string of one nighters.

In case of rain...

A little cautionary tale about bureaucracy...like there's any other kind.

During the winter break I sent one of Ulla's dresses back to NYC to get remade because I didn't think it would make it through the rest of the tour. The chiffon layer of the dress was literally shredding apart, though it looks fine from the audience vantage point. Our costume coordinator sent it back after break and said I'd get a replacement dress “at some point...”

To date, no replacement dress.

In January I looked at one of our principal actor's boots, which were vinyl and also falling apart, and gave our stage manager a head's up that we would need a new pair. This actor has really big calves for the size of his feet and we had a lot of trouble fitting him in boots to begin with so I requested permission to have a pair custom made for him. I mentioned it a couple of times but never heard anything back about it.

So last night, Ulla's zipper broke on the shredding dress and I had to sew her into the dress to get her through the rest of the show. And while that's annoying enough, now I'm faced with getting a zipper replaced on a one nighter schedule. That leaves me hoping for a competent crew with stichers in my next venue, which is always a crap shoot.

And then... my actor came up to me and showed me his boot. The sole had cracked in half. In one show. SO annoyed. And that's worse than the zipper because the boots aren't fixable. And we originally ordered them on line so I have to have them delivered to a venue several days from now to make sure we get them. The worst case scenario is having things delivered to a venue after we've left and then having to get things continually forwarded to us as we wander around the country. Inevitable the boxes arrive to three different venues after we've left before we finally get them.

This leaves my actor with several shows and no boots. And I'm in Fayetteville, NC where I have no option but to find boots that will work for the week until his boots arrive. Knee high black boots for men without laces up the front. Anyone? Anyone? So, Jennifer and I go shopping at the Red Wing Shoe Outlet, the only place where they sell boots in town. And there are several lovely options, none of them knee high but all of them black and all over $150.

$150 for boots that aren't quite right and will only be used for the week until his real boots, the Darth Vader Deluxe style, arrive via BuyStarWarsCostumes.com. I wish I were kidding... So Jennifer and I look at the options. I need boots and if I have to spend $150 on temporary boots then that's what I'll do, but...

Then we see the rain boots. And they're black...

Seriously.

There's one pair. They've been in the store since they opened 10 years ago. They are a discontinued style and a size 11 – the size I need – and the cashier has to call someone to find out how much to charge us.

The fact that there's a big yellow logo on the side of each boot that says “Superior Boot Company” is just icing on the cake.

I spray paint them black – well, blacker and a little glossy - and use sharpie over the logo and my actor goes on stage in them that night.

Just so you know, Hitler is wearing galoshes all week...

Virginia theatres, how I loathe ye

Jennifer and I have decided that we get to opt out of one venue this tour.

This is the one.

The stage is minute with a 4 foot drop from street level neccessitating a three ramp situation

and check out the dimmer board that hasn't been updated since 1950.
The house is gorgeous, however, full of Baroque decorations

and doorways that open into nothing.

It used to be a vaudeville house, so I'm sure that doorway was used during a show. I wish we could use it during ours. I can see Hitler crawling up there to talk to the audience during Springtime.

But the downstairs and upstairs backstage area has completely fallen apart. The building has been privately owned since the 20's with very little upkeep or renovation.

This is the downstairs.

And here.

Note the mold on the wall.

And this is level where the dressing rooms are... At least the ones that are still functional. One room upstairs, the "Boston" room (all the rooms are named after cities) is locked up because the ceiling FELL IN! And the vent in the door looks like something pried it open trying to get out. The whole building rides that fine line between fascinating urban spelunking and... um, horrifying.

Ooh, plus there's no elevator or lift and no rooms on the stage level so that means that wardrobe and wigs have no work room. Well, no work room in the building...
Welcome to the parking garage that is the wardrobe and wigs work room.

A PARKING GARAGE, ya'll!

With cars driving around. They gave us a couple of spaces, but the rest of it is a legitimate parking garage.

And it's cold today, probably in the low 40's, so that means we need heaters.

Only... outdoor heaters and hairspray equals hospital for somebody so we had to shut the whole thing down. In order for me to work, I'd have to drag costumes into a parking garage and set up a table and a sewing machine and keep everything from falling on the floor.

Sigh. I think all repairs can wait until tomorrow.

Addendum:

This show was as close as I ever hope to get to unofficially striking while on the job. I had my load in crew do about 30 minutes of work getting costumes into dressing rooms and then I cut them until show call and basically took the afternoon off. I draw the line at a parking garage.

When my crew came back at show call it turned out we couldn't do any steaming or ironing anyway because very few of the outlets on the stage level or the upstairs worked and the few that did were overloaded by electrics and audio.

We plugged my new iron in upstairs and it started to smoke. I had to send my dresser Parthena (greatest name ever...) down to the sketchy basement to the one working outlet to iron our shirts.

This was not a good show. If I see Virginia on the schedule in future shows, I'm out.

A little bit of Ohio

How cool are these masks?Made of paper maicheEyes made of those reflective disks for bike wheels
Just hanging out in the basementWaiting to go on stage in the next Greek tragedy

Kentucky

I bought two pairs of boots yesterday. I'm now traveling 6 pairs of boots on tour. It's clear I have a problem.

But they were on sale! $15 apiece! And one pair is black cuz I need another pair of black boots... But I'm also the proud owner of a pair of red high heeled boots. They are pretty hot.

So I show up at load in here in Danville Kentucky at 7:45AM, and I'm wearing my new red boots and the coat that one of the actors calls my "Space Pirate" coat (long, black, big collar, also a $15 buy).

It's safe to say that Kentucky doesn't know what to do with me right now...

Edited to add:

My crew last night had one Kate, two Katies, another Kaitlyn and another Jennifer out of 10 people.

One of the Katies came up to me after the show and said "I saw you downtown this afternoon before the show, walking around in your red boots and I thought to myself 'she's not from around here...'

The boots were a hit. While we were walking around downtown a couple of cars honked at us and Jennifer turned to me and said "that was for your boots, I think." :)

And they hurt like crazy. Note to self: 18 hours in high heeled boots from load in to load out and all through down town wasn't my best decision.

But they're hot...