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.