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