It just goes to show...

You can never tell. And here's why:

When you look at the schedule and see that our next venue seems to be in the wilds of some unpopulated area of an already small state you might think it's going to be a crappy show.

Sometimes you're right (Ft. Smith Arkansas, St. Josephs, Missouri, Ogdensburg, NY, Bartlesville, Oklahoma) and other times you are pleasantly surprised (say, Henderson, Kentucky). Decent big house, good crew and fast load in and out. That was our first day back since break.

They also catered all our meals since we were in the middle of nowhere, and by catered I mean that someone made us lunch and dinner. Chili, spaghetti, potato soup, chips, crackers, cookies, sandwiches, vegetables, salad. We decided we could stay all week, train our crews to run the show and then just eat and sleep since there's nothing else to do.

On the other hand, our next day was Burlington, Iowa (not to be confused with Burlington, Vermont where we'll be in a week). Good lord, what a horrible day.

In no particular order: 1. Our TD was gone to go to a funeral so we were on our own for the whole day 2. The stage was tiny and on the second floor of the building necessitating the use of the slowest freight elevator in all 50 states. 3. of course the doorways were low so everything had to be unloaded in the 'loading area” and sent up piece by piece in the elevator. 4. My crew consisted of at least 50% more chain smoking grandmothers than normal 5. The rest of the non-geriatric labor came from the local halfway house. 6. They were creepy and hostile. 7. The first thing they said to us was “we've never seen girl roadies before...” 8. The show was pretty horrible and then the crews just took off, leaving us 14 people short. 9. We had to stop load out for an hour to resolve the labor issue, and I think the resolution involved threatening words but no more actual bodies on the floor. 10. Best part of the day was leaving. Bonus: The theatre was built with a huge balcony surrounded by a really high railing. The railing is too high for short people to see over when they are seated. BUT the leg room is so tight that tall people can't sit there either.

Everyone raise a glass to the genius theatre builder in Burlington. Cheers.

So we drove to Wausau, Wisconsin (you can reference all of the above paragraph about Henderson, KY – except for the catering), which took us 400 miles away from Iowa. For the record, despite the lice and Burlington, Iowa has been good to us. Our last few venues there before break were great and the crews very efficient. Again, you can never tell. So Wausau was good, we had a fast load out and then got back in the bus and drove 370 miles BACK to within 30 miles of Iowa.

30!

If we didn't have all the buildings in the way we could literally see our last venue in Burlington.

Who is in charge of this nonsense because they should be fired.

Now we're finally in Illinois, which means I might see some friends later this week. However, today we're in Macomb, home of Western Illinois University.

The space is a cavernous arena meant for sports events not Broadway shows.
So they built us a teeny tiny itty bitty stage.
So even though we have space for days, we can only hang one drop and it's puddled on the ground.
An unusual shot of all of our scenery on stage at one time.
Our crews? Volunteer college students. Sigh.

Better than that? At break they sat around a mound of bagels and muffins and juice and cereal and hungrily watched us eat until we realized that they had been forbidden to touch the food.

AND

Our flyman comes up during break and said “We need to be nice to these kids. The Hairspray crew made them cry.”

We have volunteer kids that were forbidden to eat the food at break and the last show they worked was so horrible that several of them cried.

And now they are back to work for us.

It's either going to be the best show ever or they are as dumb as rocks.

Tune in later for the stunning conclusion to this cliffhanger...