china...

Isn't this lovely?

Especially after 3 hours of sleep...

I'm in the airport waiting to get on a plane. Our load out last night was surprisingly ok. 2 truck dock, plenty of space and a crew that's done this a few hundred times makes for a pretty mellow night.

We finished around 1:30Am, got home and packed, went to bed around 3, got up at 6:30 and headed to the airport. And now we wait...

We had a full company Come to Jesus meeting about China the other day. Main points were as follows:


1. China is not a free country.

2. Do NOT talk about the three T's - Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square

3. Expect that they will be monitoring your email and internet usage.



oh, and



4. Have fun.

In addition, there was a huge hullabaloo the last day about flammable substances in our workboxes because of the FAA regulations on all of our stuff.

I'm not talking about blowtorches and C-4, I'm talking about hand sanitizer and AA batteries. And paint. And glue. And acetone. And approximately three quarters of the props and carpentry work boxes, in addition to... hairspray.

Apparently on Hairspray, we can't actually transport hairspray...

And, true to form, no one on the crew knew anything about these restrictions until the day of load out. Which means that thousands of dollars have been spent by the crew stocking up on stuff that we can't take with us.

And then the rumors start running rampant

"The beds in China are terrible, you have to bring a foam pad or you'll never sleep!"

"Buy tampons! The Chinese don't sell tampons!"

"You could be arrested for having hairspray in your personal luggage!"

Seriously? The inmates are taking over... :)

But the most horrible and possibly real rumor of all is that we'll be on a plane for 14 hours going thru two countries and two sets of customs - we have to go through customs in Seoul to get to our connecting flight to China... - arriving at 8PM the day after we left where we'll possibly be met by media crews wanting to interview the cast and then 3 hours later have to drag ourselves to the theatre and dump the trucks that have arrived with all our stuff.

That, my friends, will be the worst day ever.

And incidentally, I have hairspray in my luggage.

I'm going to end my last free world post with the intriguing "sculpture" here in the DFW airport.
It's gargantuan and it's all hands...

I don't know what that means, but it's creepy.

later...

k