Citizens of Oz

Aren't they cute?

Glinda exits stage left, runs stage right, changes her clothes and wig in under 2 minutes and goes on stage as Aunt Em. The "Ozians" help keep the hallways clear for her to run...

Tampa and Orlando

Our first load out of Gainesville was a predictably painful 13 hours. We finished around 5:30AM, slept until 8:30, got on the road at 9AM and arrived in Tampa 2 hours later in time to check into our hotel and walk across the street for our noon load in.

The Tampa PAC is huge with a 4 truck dock and it took us two days to load in. But fortunately, once we were in we had plenty of room for this kind of silliness...

We had a decent week in Tampa with lots of work calls. I don't think the electricians or the carpenters had a single day where they weren't working all day. And of course, none of us has had a full day off for about 3 weeks now. But we survived our first 5 show weekend and then loaded out of Tampa in about 7.5 hours, finishing again around 5:30AM and crawling into the bus to drive the 2 hours to Orlando.

Our call was 5PM to start load in to Orlando but then we realized that this was going on right next door to the Bob Carr theatre...

So we grabbed lunch and got to the theatre early to try to avoid the traffic jams caused by this madness...

Lots and lots and lots of people showed up to hear Obama and Clinton talk.

It's good to know that the fine people of Florida are still fans of the electoral process after the debacle of the past few elections.

I would classify the mood of the rally as very calm and up beat. People stood for HOURS in lines that stretched probably for miles to get into the arena space.

We walked around and took pictures and then stood in our loading dock and watched the hoardes of people milling around. Kinda fun to be sideline to that kind of historical situation.

The load in to Orlando was rougher than Tampa cuz the space is much smaller. Somehow they have put the entirety of The Lion King into this space and Wicked got in only cutting one drop. When asked how that was even possible, one stagehand said "with a really big shoehorn..."

And the loading dock kind of sucks
Since you have to ramp down off the truck.
Load out will be painful, pushing all those crates and coffins up a ramp into the truck. However, they do have two loading docks, one on each side of the theatre, so you can theoretically load two trucks simultaneously, or at least be loading one and getting the other into position at the same time.

But that's a problem for a different day, like Sunday. Meanwhile, we have another 5 show weekend coming up.

look! it's a munchkin free post! More about them later...

What's worse than munchkins? Their mommies!!!

After being assured that the munchkin madness would be laid to rest in Gainesville – stage moms interfering with my fittings “can't my daughter wear bows in her hair? The other little girl has bows and she wants bows too...”, moms altering the costumes in the dressing room “can I have a needle and thread so I can just fix this??”and 8-year-old munchkins fighting, playing poker and gambling in the dressing rooms between shows – we have our final preview performance (and second show since all of our dress rehearsals were cut for technical problems that continue to plague us) in Gainesville on Sunday night.

We then have a 13 hour load out that goes until 5:30AM, we get three hours of sleep and get on the road at 9AM to drive ourselves to Tampa and start load in at noon, a bare 7 hours after we finish load out. The carpentry crew works until 10PM and is back on site at 8AM the next morning to work feverishly until 6PM which mean our final afternoon dress rehearsal is cut, again for technical problems, leaving me with a new crew who has never run the show, dresser tracks that still have problems because we've only ever had 2 shows to work them out and an opening night that constitutes the third performance we've ever had.

So, opening night, it's opening night!!! Everything that could go wrong did. It was really a terrible show. The highest uppity up guy in our company said it was the worst show he's ever seen.

hooray!

So happy we worked ourselves to death for 2 weeks and got no sleep and did everything we were told to do and more only to produce the worst show ever. Can someone please transfer me to Springtime for Hitler? I beg of you..

But fortunately, it's the Wizard of Oz, which everyone loves, so we got a standing ovation and a good review by the grace of God, which means that somehow we'll continue to sell tickets while we iron out the rest of the problems over the next month.

And then the munchkin mommy showed up. She's not only a mom of one of the munchkins – did I mention that we pick up 12 local kids in each city to be munchkins?? - but she's the teacher at the local dance studio where all the kids take lessons. During the fittings she wanted to take pictures. Which would be ok if they were candid shots but instead the kids want to smile and pose and do dance steps while I'm trying to get them to try on shoes, and fasten belts and figure out why a parent would mark down that their kid is 4 feet tall when clearly they are 5 feet tall, which means that the costume I chose for them based on the advance sheets won't work at all. And 12 kids means 24 hands for gloves, and 24 feet for two pairs of shoes each, and each kid gets two costumes consisting of many many pieces ([petticoats, shirts, bum rolls, jackets, suspenders, hats etc.) so that's a lot of stuff and i have one hour (1!) to get all this done and she wants to distract the kids by taking pictures.

So I ask her not to take pictures explaining that I'm busy and pressed for time and that I lose the 10% of the kids' attention that I had to begin with. I know I was harried but I also know that I used the word please. And instead of saying “oh, you're right. There are three of you and 12 kids and you must be busy...” she just gave me a look like I had told her her child was an untalented wreck that didn't deserve to be on stage and turned around and walked away.

well, then.

So I finish fittings, we have our mediocre opening night and this munchkin mommy continues to cause us problems. For legal reasons we have to have local chaperones to watch the kids backstage. And if I could I would post this sign in the dressing room:

“To all local chaperones, you are a baby sitter. You are here only to watch the kids, not to give us costume advice,and not to alter the costumes. We don't tell you how to raise your kids (or we would tell them to stop punching their neighbor and fleecing the next door munchkin for their lunch money), so please don't give me advice on what color your daughter should wear. She's a Lollipop munchkin. This is her costume. That will be all.”

But instead we have to say “thanks for your help but could you stand over there so we can get this done as quickly as possible?” And every time we said that to the Tampa munchkin mommy, she would stalk away from us and say loudly as she walked away “Girls, I love helping you with your costumes but i just can't because THEY won't let me!”

Really?? Are we 12??

AND THEN, Jennifer went into the munchkin room on Wednesday night and that same munchkin mommy was drinking beer.

In the dressing room.

Backstage, during a performance.

While she is in charge of 12 kids.

!!!!!!!!!!

And when Jennifer told her that she would have to get our company manager, the mommy says “oh, so now you are going to tell on me??”

Those were her exact words.

To recap: gambling munchkins and their moms on the bottle. This is Wizard of Oz on tour.

worst. tech. ever.

hands down.

Show's gigantic, electrics is still working out how to light it after 2 weeks of tech and we have NO idea how to get this show out of gainesville in less than 24 hours so we can make it to tampa, load it all in and get the show up and running by opening night on tuesday.

but we had a preview last night and there were half a dozen little girls in the audience dressed like dorothy complete with their ruby slippers and stuffed Totos. It doesn't get cuter than that.

This show will do well if we can just get it to a manageable touring size. The question isn't whether we can do it, but how long it will take and how much sleep we'll lose in the process.

I'll be spending my birthday loading out this year. But as in theatre when a bad final dress means a great opening night, I think this year will be pretty stellar.

when i have more of a brain (or heart or courage) you'll hear more.

xox

the creatives...

The creatives are in town... There are 29 designers (give or take a few) for this show and they are ALL here.

For those of you who don't know how a touring show like this works, here's a crash course. A bunch of people get together and design a show to include lights, sound, scenery, hair, costumes and props. Then they put that show together in Britain (in this case) and the show runs for 6 weeks (in this case) and then it's over and they pack it up and go on to other projects.

Many months (or years) later, our company buys the whole package and hires “designer/coordinators” of our own to stand in for the original people and make design choices that stay true to the original intent. Ordinarily, those coordinators put the show together and the show goes on the road looking much like the original production with only minor changes to accommodate not being able to exactly duplicate or replace certain things. For instance, if you have a pair of purple shoes custom made for an English actress with a size 5 foot and she gets replaced with an American actress with a size 10 foot, you now have to do hours of internet research to find an American company that might make a shoe like that in a size 10...

The local coordinators/designers are normally in charge of all these decisions. And we have all those coordinators/designers here all doing this job and then, in an unprecedented move, our company decided to bring in all of the original designers as well.

There's one advantage to this onslaught. If you have questions about a design choice, instead of trying to guess at what they wanted now you can find the person that made that design choice and ask them directly.

Other advantages... other advantages... let me think.

Oh, I know. There aren't any.

Because here's what now happens: 29 people who haven't seen this show in months are now looking at their design work with fresh eyes. And fresh eyes want a fresh show. Plus, there are always creative differences within a team and this is everyone's second chance to get what they really wanted in the first place.

Here's an example of what happens in the wardrobe room 50 times a day this week: “Those gloves were yellow? How come I don't remember that? Why did I ever approve that? I think they should be red but if we make them red, then we should change the buttons on the coat because those are also yellow...” And now a coat that fits perfectly and should just go on into the gondola and be ready to wear, needs to be put on the alteration rack and someone has to spend hours looking for just the right red gloves with buttons that match.

You can only imagine the extra work this entails... Plus now the designer/coordinator has to ask approval for all of his choices; and as nice as the British costume designer is (and he's a total sweetheart) this requires a conversation so everything takes twice as long.

That's the costume side.

From the sound side, it's much less gruesome. Sound cues deemed unsatisfactory require replacements and you can't just buy them – unlike gloves and shoes. You have to find them. Our British director and choreographer, one of the sound designers, the assistant choreographer and the drummer found themselves on a field trip to Lowe's Hardware Store to find sound cues for the Tin Man.

Lauren, our assistant choreographer, said that watching our choreographer test the sound quality of the metal trash can lids by knocking them into her head was one of the funniest things she's ever seen. Nigel, our director, and Phil, our drummer, walked up and down the aisles with his drum sticks drumming on everything and saying “for when he knocks on the door? For when his legs come unstuck from the rust? For when he gets knocked over?” while everyone else grabbed anything else metal and rapped it on the ground or shook it in the air to get a reverbe and kept coming back to the director and saying “This? How about this??”

It took a while for the Lowe's employees to hesitantly approach this madness and say “can we...help you...???”

Uh, no. There's no help for us. Really.

Witches in Oz are green. I don't know if you knew that.

We had to prep for a video shoot the other day, video that will be shown during the show in dream/nightmare sequences. Video involving the primary actors for the Witch and Aunt Em plus all their covers dressed in full makeup and costume.

Our witch in full green makeup with the hat and cloak strides across the lobby on her way to the shoot and decides to stop at the box office window to inquire about tickets to the Wizard of Oz. When the quick thinking box office kid said they didn't serve witches, she gave him the classic line: “I'll get you, my pretty!” and his friend shot back “well, it is the first time he's ever been called pretty, so thank you for that!”

Then we get to the video shoot at the black box theatre and the video people (not ours, some outside hire...) have brought one screen with them as the back drop and it's green!

Green!

For the Wizard of Oz Witch in full green face makeup!

So now when you look at the camera it works like a blue screen and her face completely disappears. It's a black hat gliding over the screen, which is not the intention.

The the video director's first suggestion was: “Can we change her makeup color, maybe blue?”

Cuz it' only the Wicked Witch of the EMERALD CITY!!!

I know I say this all the time but REALLY? Seriously???

Eventually they decided to shoot really close and photoshop it, which I'm sure will cost extra...

Then I'm quietly sitting at my desk doing work and the wig designer stops by and says “Kaitlyn, you might want to go outside and check out your kids. They look pretty tall...” I go outside and all of our local munchkin kids are milling about waiting for rides and such. And they are TALL! So I run back in and grab their measurement sheets and sure enough, several of them are taller than the adult actors in the show!

Got that? Tall munchkin kids, tall swings... We clearly need a different word than munchkin, something that implies a tall brightly dressed person acting oddly and carrying a lollipop. I'm taking any suggestions.

We had a crew meeting last night and I realized that every single department in this show is dealing with something abnormal for them.

Our Assistant Carpenter is not only in charge of moving scenery but also helps the monkeys and witches fly.
Our Props guy is also in charge of Pyro.
Our Lighting guys have video rigs to deal with.
Our Audio guys are also in charge of the projections of the tornado.
Our Flywoman has to deal with scenery that can't be built without the assistance of chain motors
and Jennifer and I get giant munchkins.

At least no one feels left out.

As of yesterday I have one week before our first dress. I'm starting to get a little nervous...