New York, NY

I have nine minutes before I have to call 15, so you get a post.

Here we are, running at the New Victory in New York. I'm having a really great time here. Much has been made of the fact that it's "on Broadway," but I have learned in my career that the address of your theatre has no correlation to the level of professionalism, quality of production, or size of your paycheck, so I really wasn't buying into that hype. But I've been pleased to discover it actually feels something like a Broadway show. The theatre is beautiful, which I knew, but it is pretty well-appointed like a Broadway house, has a Local 1 crew, and in general feels kind of like a shrunk-down Broadway show. And by shrunk-down, I mean like 80%, not like 50%, assuming we are talking about a play here.

Before we arrived they gave me the option of calling from stage left or from the booth, which I was warned was "miles away." I've called from miles away before, but I figured this may be the only venue where I have the option to call from backstage, due to the fact that our set is a full 180-degree wraparound wall, and calling from backstage would offer zero visibility without color and infrared monitors, which we don't travel with, and which most of our venues don't have. The Guthrie had a rather nice camera setup, although I also had a very oddly-placed window to see most things in real life if I needed to. This is my first time calling without any real view of the stage, but it's working fine since I spent the first month of the run calling off monitors at the Guthrie. It's a lot of fun to be backstage among everyone else, and it's so much easier to get around without having to trek back and forth from a booth. We even have paging at the calling desk and in our office (we have an office!). It really does feel like Broadway! So I'm having a good time, and I'm missing home a little less.

Speaking of home, I stopped by Phantom for about an hour before their show last night, after our student matinee and tech rehearsal. All is well, there's new carpet in the stage management office and SR quickchange room, and other than that things seem the same. The in/out sheet had at least 10 understudies on it, so it was a fairly normal day. At some point before we leave town I'm going to do a couple shows there, even if I have to do them for free. The stage managers offered to trade shows with me for the next two weeks, which I gladly accepted, but they rescinded their offer when I described calling Henry as "calling the rooftop scene for two hours and 40 minutes, and then the last 20 minutes is like calling 'Wishing'." It makes sense if you know the show. I think "recoiled in horror" is a better way to describe their reaction.

OK, people keep coming in and asking me questions. See ya!

Reflections on Being Home

1. I've been living on a bus which has independent thermostats for three different rooms. I've been in hotels, where I had to first figure out if the heat was controlled by a little knob under the window unit, or a panel on the wall. So I get home to my apartment and think, "I'm cold." And then I realize that I pay $1200/mo. so that my landlord gets to decide when the heat should be on.

PHOTO: The corner of 45th/9th from the Acting Company offices, 8AM on the morning of our return.

2. 2/28 Today I was running late so I grabbed some breakfast at Pax: a Vitamin Water and a small rice krispy treat. It cost me $7. And I think something's wrong with that. Am I becoming a suburbanite?

3. 3/1 Of the two shows, I find Henry especially not-interesting to call. Being able to hear some of the sound cues for the first time since tech, I am discovering a few new cues that I like. But overall the idea of a play, a 3-hour play, and one in which many of the light cues take anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 minutes to complete, is just not that exciting. Being on the road has been nice because the challenge comes not from the show, but from the venue. Making sure the show looks right in every cue, and executed correctly by every crew, is a process that takes up enough of my attention to distract from the fact that there's otherwise not that much for me to do. Sitting now at the New Vic, there's not much to worry about. After the first few shows, things were settled in. The ventilation is a little odd so the haze is the only thing that I expect to have to keep an eye on -- sometimes I ask for a haze cue to be skipped, but even then, I think we've programmed them now in such a way that it usually doesn't need to be messed with, weather permitting. So as a result of all this, combined with being in New York, where you can't deceive yourself that Henry V is the only show in the universe, I am going a little bit crazy. Nick constantly has to take toys away from me. Lately I've decided I'm going to procure scraps of gel to experiment with different colored filters for my LittleLite.

I had long planned to find time for a performance or two of Phantom during these weeks, but I was concerned about either giving myself a 10-show week, or waiting until the little half-week before we fly to Baton Rouge. This afternoon's matinee has convinced me that my brain may explode before the end of our NY run if I don't call a big flashy musical with automation and pyro and 13 cue lights RIGHT NOW. So I'm aiming for Tuesday. I was even thinking about Monday, but it's our day off and I hoped to keep it that way. Plus, I decided later in today's show, I will be able to work through my tiredness at Tuesday morning's matinee if I have something to look forward to.

Hampton, VA

If you've been reading this blog, you may be somewhat familiar with what our set for Henry V looks like:

This is our set in Hampton, VA:

It's a scrim.  And an RP screen.  And as much of our deck as we could fit.  Hampton is a tiny little theatre that the Acting Company always plays, with the understanding that it's generally not big enough to hold the production at its usual size.  As this is the biggest tour the company has ever mounted, the contrast is even greater than usual, but we have been told for months that this day would come, and that all the challenges will be worth it because the theatre is tiny but very nice, and the people are cool.  Thus, the company comes back year after year despite the fact that the theatre doesn't meet the usual tech requirements.  So far the rumors seem to be true.  While small onstage, the backstage area is well-appointed and comfortable, and feels far more like a professional theatre than some other, much larger venues we've played.  We do have one outdoor crossover, which I'm a little concerned about due to the possible forecast of rain tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll escape having to deal with that.

Today we loaded in at 8AM as usual, except that we were done in probably less than 2 hours instead of the usual 8 or so.  At noon the cast came in for a scheduled 5-hour rehearsal, with the intention of only needing 3 hours.  We finished in just over 3 hours, restaging the entire show to be played on a bare stage, taking into account the limited wingspace and unusual crossover needs.  A lot of the scenes that are normally played on the second story of the set are now set in the house.

The cast comes back at 7PM for an 8PM curtain, so we have some welcome down time before the show.   Daniel and I will probably spend a little more time checking cues that we rushed through during rehearsal, but that's about it.  Then we have a matinee tomorrow (two performances of the same show consecutively in one venue is something I don't think we've done since we left the Guthrie), and then we head back to New York for our big opening at the New Victory.

An Open Letter to the Hoteliers of America

Dear Hoteliers,

I am tired of filling out those little comment cards, and quite frankly they don't leave enough room for the rant that is about to ensue, so I will address all of you in the hopes that some of you will shape up before I stumble half-asleep across your doorstep some afternoon.

First of all, I see that your comment card asks me lots of questions about things I could care less about: "overall exterior appearance of hotel," "responsiveness to your needs," "condition of furniture."  Let me save you the time and tell you that when I walk into your hotel, I expect 3 things:

A bed

A shower with decent water pressure

an internet connection with sustained speeds over 1.5mbps

I don't care if the room has a TV, a couch, or a chest of drawers.  I hope it has lights and maybe a fridge.  A desk and chair would add to my comfort greatly, and frankly the bed is not strictly necessary, but would be preferable to sleeping on the floor.   But really, the only reason I am here is to take a much-anticipated shower, and to use my little free time to play an online game that demands a reliable connection, and perhaps to download some episodes of "The Wire" from iTunes.  

In my travels thus far, I have found few hotels that can meet even two of these needs.  Everyone has accomplished #1, and for that I congratulate you.  But Holiday Inn Express in Harrisburg, PA, and Hampton Inn in Hampton, VA, are you pumping the water into my shower with a bicycle pump?  Is there a little man in the wall who pours a cup of water at a time into the back of the shower head?  I haven't had a shower in THREE FUCKING DAYS, give me some damn water!!!

Ahem, now on to the most important question, and the area where almost all hotels need to improve.  With the exception of the Holiday Inn Express in Poplar Bluff, MO (!!) you all failed to provide sufficient internet services.  Every hotel I have stayed at has advertised "high speed internet," including the Holiday Inn Select in Lafayette, IN, which provided consistent speeds of 250kbps, which might have been considered high speed 10 years ago.  Here's a tip:  I have just run a speed test on my laptop using my cell phone's connection (in an area with 3G and full bars), and pulled down 818kbps / 348kbps up.   I don't think it's asking too much for your rather large, stationary, and overpriced building to provide better internet service than a fucking PHONE.  

A few other things of less importance:

I'd really like the soda machine to be on my floor and not sold out of everything but Diet Pepsi.  And at least one snack machine in the building.

Why do some of you hide the listing of the TV channels so well that I only discover it when I'm packing up to leave?

Laundry - you must have laundry machines.  When I get a spare hour or two at 2AM, I need some clean clothes.  I might only get that chance once a week, and if I'm in your hotel when it happens, you better be ready for it!

So get it together, folks.  I will be adding to this list as I see fit.

Day Off: Harrisburg, PA

Today I spent the day in this strange place -- it's kind of like the bus, but bigger, and it doesn't have wheels.  And it has showers and laundry machines.  I like the bus a lot, but I could get used to spending the night in one of these places every few days!

Glenn Ellyn, IL

Another post?  Must be a load-in day!

Last night we loaded out from St. Louis, which took about four hours.  It was a rather rough stop for us -- we had to do both shows, and the path from the truck to the stage was about as inconvenient as it could possibly be, short of having to carry the sets up stairs, so load in was absolutely painful (13 hours just to get the set up, with the entire traveling crew working as carpenters), and load out was about an hour and a half longer than it has been at venues with a more direct path to the truck.  Also, the campus folks wouldn't let us park the crew bus, so we spent the entire 3 days there without our kitchen/office/bedroom available to us, which led to an endless list of problems and inconveniences.

One thing I will say about the fact that we were shorthanded, in a hurry, and without the bus is that I learned a whole lot about these shows we're dragging around the country.  I participated in parts of the truck pack and unpacking that I had never seen before, and pretty much built the Henry set bolt-by-bolt, so instead of having just a theoretical understanding of how it's assembled, I literally know every action that has to be taken to make it go up, and I feel much more informed about the rather complicated structure we play on.  We're still experimenting with the truck pack, and I was in the thick of it the entire night, so I now feel more qualified to help direct the process.  We accidentally did some things differently this time, but our truck driver, Mike, said this morning that the trailer felt really smooth on the drive up, so we must have done something right.

Last night into this morning was the first true one-night move we've had.  We had a changeover yesterday morning starting at 8AM, did The Spy, and left the theatre in St. Louis shortly before 3AM, and arrived at the theatre in Glenn Ellyn, IL (a suburb of Chicago) at 7:30AM.  Until this point we've never had to load out a show and load it in the next morning to play a show that night.  The delays in St. Louis were a big concern for us, especially so because it's a 7PM curtain here tonight, but we were thrilled to discover when we stepped out of the bus this morning that our truck was backed up to an honest-to-goodness loading dock, which lead in a pretty much straight line to the stage, maybe 30 feet away.  And there to unload the truck were a large bunch of stagehand-looking adult men and women, who made quick work of our truck, and had the deck and part of the gallery up before Nick and I even finished putting up signage.  We only had to unload Henry, which is also a blessing.  I am told the lights were all properly hung, colored and patched when we arrived as well, so we are all a little bit in awe of Glenn Ellyn right now.

The bus is parked just a few dozen feet up the slope from the loading dock (as it's sort of in a trench between buildings, they didn't want the fumes from the generator getting sucked indoors all day), and Nick and I are properly able to conduct our load-in day routine of updating signage and then sleeping and playing on the internet.  Nick's next project is probably going to be laying down carpet on the gallery (which gets skipped if we're pressed for time, but I don't think he'll be so lucky with this speedy crew), and my next appointment is with Daniel, our lighting supervisor, who tells me around 4:00 he'll be ready to do cueing, which is theoretically when we sit out front and step through all the cues and make sure they look right, but in the last couple venues has been more about reprogramming the show to somehow make it look like what it's supposed to, while cringing at lights wrongly focused, substitute gel colors that look nothing like the original, and occasionally saying, "What the hell is that??"when something completely inexplicable pops up, like last night when we had a single solitary house light come up in one cue!  Of course this is also the most important thing I personally do during load-in, as catching these things avoids much embarrassment and danger to the cast, and results in a show that mimics as much as possible the designer's intention.  I think we will find the process much easier here.

Sometime before this happens I take a few minutes with our sound supervisor, Tim, to talk about comm, which is one of my favorite topics.  First of all, since without comm everything I do during a performance would just be me sitting alone in a room talking to myself, it's a matter of some interest to me.  Especially on this tour I like to know whether we're using elements of the house system or entirely our own, because we have a crappy old base station which doesn't like my personal headset, and the company-supplied headsets are ridiculously uncomfortable.  So sometimes it's all our stuff, and sometimes all the venue's, and sometimes we add our wireless headsets into their wired system.  Often Tim presents me with a couple options to choose from -- naturally I prefer the one that gives us the greatest reliability and allows me to use my headset.  So sometime in the middle of the day I grab the script(s) of the show(s) I'll be calling in the venue, and Tim and I go visit the booth or other locales where I have the option to call the show, to figure out where I'll be calling from and make sure that I have comm and monitors where I need them.  I also check out the lighting in the area to see if I have enough light to read my script, and in many cases to decide if the venue's usual stage manager lighting is too bright.  I prefer a very dark place to call shows from, especially these shows, as the lighting design is very dark.  I tend not to want any light source higher above my script than is necessary to light it.  The stage management workbox is supplied with its own LittleLite, which I try to avoid using because I'm always afraid I'll leave it behind somewhere, but with the exception of the Guthrie, I think I've ended up using it in every venue, once because there was no light for me, once because the light supplied was too bright, and once because the booth was lit by dim-able overhead lights, which I hate because they have to illuminate an entire room when all I need lit is one page.  I haven't checked out the situation here yet.  That's what I'm up to so far today!

Another Bag Review: Ricardo Beverly Hills Essentials 30" Rolling Duffle

According to my statistics, probably the most popular post ever on my blog is the review I did of my BBP bag (which I decided I kind of hate, and never use, incidentally). It seems people are always searching for reviews of it, and I hope my rather lengthy post on it has helped them make a decision. So since I'm an admitted Bag Whore, and recently purchased a new bag that I'm very excited about, I will give another review.

For this tour I'm now on, I decided I needed a snazzy new piece of luggage that I could lug around for six months, that would be bigger than the small suitcase I use for summer stock, but small enough that I can still get around with it easily. I haven't selected a piece of luggage for myself since I was about 12, so I really didn't know what my options were. After looking for ideas in some luggage stores in New York, I decided to try the rolling duffle format, as it seemed the most expandable while still being lightweight and compact when the contents allowed. I think they actually may not make this model anymore, but you can still find it for sale online (at about half of the original MSRP). Here's the Amazon link.

This is the Ricardo Beverly Hills Essentials 30" Rolling Duffle. It's MSRP is $180, but most places I've seen it online have been around $100. It comes in blue, shown above (which is the one I have), and brown. The wheels (which are Razer-scooter-style) match the color of the bag, which is a completely useless but cool feature. It has some little accents that are yellow (such as the zipper pulls, and the button you push to make the handle pop out).

As this handy image shows, it has two main compartments: there is a lower compartment that's kind of box-shaped and somewhat rigid, but not completely. The zipper that you see partially opened on top leads to the main compartment which takes up pretty much all the rest of the space. There is also a nice mesh section on the bottom of the top compartment, so you can see into the bottom compartment and air can get in there. It even zips open so you can get in the bottom compartment without opening it from the outside (my bag is always packed too tightly to make that very useful, but I'm sure it could be).

The upper compartment has two pouches on the back edge, like many suitcases have, to stick whatever it is you stick in those (toiletries mostly, I guess, though I travel with a separate toiletries bag since we don't stay in a hotel every night). These don't close, and when the bag is flipped open, due to its flexible nature, I find the pouches sometimes bend over and the contents spill out into the rest of the bag. I keep things like my little swiss army knife, apartment keys, coins for laundry, stamps, and a roll of scotch tape in there. I don't mind it too much, but they're not the most useful for keeping things separate that you really need to keep separate. Unfortunately, I'd say the one fault of the bag is there really aren't any small compartments, but I think that's true of most traditional suitcases as well.

Attached at either end of the upper part of the bag are rather large side pockets. The one on the left is kind of normal, the one on the right has a little trick. It's mostly designed to be a place to keep dirty laundry, wet clothes, shoes, or other things you might not want getting shoved in with all your nice clean clothes. The pocket actually goes much deeper than it appears -- it has a sort of sock-like shape to it that extends into the main compartment. This has advantages and disadvantages: if you don't need to fill that pocket with much, then it just compresses and doesn't take away valuable space in the main compartment. If you do try to cram it with stuff, it will expand into the main compartment, giving you less room in there. I think this is the best possible solution, but when I've got close to a week of dirty laundry, it can be tricky to shove it all in the side pouch, and then rearrange the rest of my bag to compensate for the fact that the center compartment is now reduced in capacity for clean clothes. In theory it should all work out because it's the same total volume, but I find I always have to start rearranging things as the proportion of dirty vs. clean clothes changes throughout the week. If you stay somewhere more than a day or two and actually fully unpack your bag in the hotel, it might not matter at all. Anyway, the idea of having a separate place for dirty laundry was a huge selling point for this bag. The fact that it doesn't waste space when empty is also highly awesome. UPDATE: After a recent string of nights spent sleeping on the bus, I had gotten to the point where most of my clothes were dirty. I'm happy to report the dirty laundry pocket was able to expand to about 2/3 the size of the total upper part of the bag, successfully keeping all my yucky clothes away from the nice ones until we were able to spend the night in a hotel.

These are really the only four compartments. There is a zipper at the bottom of the bottom compartment which leads into the lining of the bag. I really don't know what it's for, but you could shove stuff in there if you really want, maybe for extra security. I keep my mail in there so 3 months of bills and bank statements aren't rolling around in my way every day. On the exterior there are a few loops, and some elastic straps, which if I'm careful, I can get my toiletries bag to fit in -- by complete accident, the bags even match!

The final zippered area is on the bottom of the bag. A panel pulls down revealing some (rather thin and cheap-feeling) backpack straps. I like this feature because if I have to carry the bag up a flight of stairs, it's much easier as a backpack than as a suitcase. However, when there's 30-40lbs in the bag, the straps are not particularly comfortable, so I don't personally see this as an alternative to rolling the bag, except for a quick 30-second jaunt up stairs or the like. I also suspect with any serious use they would start to break.

The bag has a standard pull-out locking luggage handle for wheeling it. It's very sturdy, the only complaint I have about it is that it's short. This works fine given the height of the bag, but if you have any carry-on bags that have a slot intended to be passed over the luggage handle of another bag, you will probably find this handle too short to come out the other end of your carry-on.

On the back side of the bag is a little window for your name and address, with a cover that velcros down over it.

The handles are nicely designed. There are duffel-style handles with a velcro strap to keep them together. The top of the bag has a soft handle, and the bottom has a hard rubberish one, which I think is also intended to help the bag stand on end. This doesn't always work, but it's a start. No matter how you want to carry the bag, or if you want to carry it with another person, you'll find a handle for it. I find that especially useful when yanking the bag around in the luggage bays under our bus.

The wheels, as I said, match the color of the bag and are similar to the narrow variety used in Razer Scooters and inline skates. I'm sure you could find a suitcase with more rugged wheels, but I found these satisfactory even through the snow and ice in Minneapolis.

Finally, here's an action shot of my bag in the Minneapolis airport. This gives some indication that the colors are a little darker and more subtle than the Smurftacular blue that the manufacturer's photos make it seem to be.

One final observation: when I was shopping for this bag I read some reviews saying that it started to fall apart quickly. I was a little concerned, but I must say so far I don't see any signs of wear at all. If that changes over the tour I will update this, but we are traveling every day or two now, so it should be going through a lot of use.

Pros:
Separate pocket for dirty laundry, collapses when not needed.
Hidden backpack straps
Handles every place you could think to carry it from.
Wheels roll nicely

Cons:
No small closable pockets or compartments.
Doesn't stand up on end all that well, depending on how it's packed.
Handle is too short to attach a carry-on around it.

TEASER: Just this morning, while acting a fool underneath our truck trailer, I got copious amounts of grease on my main backpack, which I fear will be coming off on my hands and anything else it touches from now until the end of time. So I am now in the market to replace my beloved Victorinox bag ASAP. This is one of the most essential objects in my life, so I will be sure to do a thorough review of whatever I get.

My Inner Monologue in Weather Widgets

Our wardrobe supervisor has nicknamed this tour "The Big Thaw" as we are (theoretically) moving from one of the coldest places national tours go, in the middle of winter, to the warmer climates of the US as we get towards summer.  After two months in Minneapolis, we are all a little bit obsessed with the weather.  It's a constant topic of discussion among both cast and crew.  What is the weather like tomorrow?  Will it rain on load-out day?  What's the forecast in our next city for the day we arrive?  What did your mom/brother/spouse/roommate tell you on the phone this morning about the weather in New York?

I currently keep four weather widgets running on my dashboard at all times, which usually have to be updated every day or two as we travel.  Below is an example of a current screenshot, and the purpose that each of them serves.  Bear in mind when looking at these that a week ago the crew was in Nashville on our day off, wearing tee shirts and eating outdoors at a restaurant when it was 73 degrees.

St. Louis Day Off

Bus.  And truck.

We left Poplar Bluff last night around 1:30AM.  Load out was a little rough due to the fact that the theatre doesn't have a loading dock, and getting heavy carts up a ramp to the truck (in the rain) is a lot harder than getting them down (in the not-rain).  We also broke a castor on our plywood cart, which holds all the pieces of our floor. So after the cart was all packed and strapped down, we had to take it all off and load it by hand.  Our pipe cart, which is the heaviest, scariest piece to move even on a level surface, was never even attempted to be loaded in one piece.  The cart, and the metal box built into it that holds our cheeseboroughs, was loaded first, and then every piece of pipe loaded by hand.  It was quite comical when a backlog was reached, and we had a line of about 12 people stretching from the truck to the door of the theatre with these pipes.   I was about halfway back in the line and took this picture.

After load out we went to a Huddle House nearby for dinner.  Some of us didn't get anything to eat before the show because we were rushing to get ready.  I know Daniel and I didn't.  He had to adapt the lighting design for a venue with less than half of the instruments the plot requires.  In each city, once everything is focused, the two of us sit down and flip through all the cues on stage and make sure they look like what they're supposed to, and reprogram them as necessary.  We were doing that right up through fight call, and then continued to make changes during fight call. There's one bit of fight choreography which involves almost the entire cast running around with swords and poles and jumping on things in near-darkness followed by strobe lights, and I wanted to make sure they had a chance to do it in the cues we had built, to make sure we had given them enough light -- of course we hadn't, so good to know.  This was our first true one-nighter, and it was exhausting, but kind of freeing in the sense that there was no time to get tired of being someplace.  If there's something not to like about the venue or the situation -- the stage right door is dragging on the floor, the dressing room paging system isn't great --  who cares, we'll be gone tomorrow!  Two things basically made it hard in Poplar Bluff: the performance which had been contracted for 8pm ended up being at 7pm, which we found out the night before.  If we'd had that extra hour it would have been perfectly relaxing.  Also, if we'd had enough instruments (and interestingly, cable) to do the usual light plot, much less time would have been wasted redesigning the show as opposed to just putting it up like it always is.  

One thing I want to share about our lighting situation for educational purposes: the lack of cable actually presented a greater obstacle than the lack of instruments.  We don't travel with a full lighting package, but we do carry some strips and broad cycs.  Unfortunately, due to the short cable supply at the venue, we couldn't use them.  The Henry design depends a lot on powerful silhouette images of blue and red created on our RP screen/black scrim combo, and we needed a way to preserve that.  When I saw the solution I couldn't believe what I was seeing: three par cans, hung side by side dead center upstage of the RP.  One blue, one red, one no-color, or something similar.  Behind the RP was hung the house's cyc, to use as a bounce.  I thought, "we can't seriously expect this to work!"  Well let me tell you, it worked!  It wasn't beautiful.  It would make a lighting designer cringe.  But it told the story just as well as the full design does, and if you weren't a lighting designer, you'd never know or care that the coverage wasn't quite as even as it should be.   For all the effort designers put into lighting cycs -- fighting for the right number of strips, and just the right angles, we lit the damn thing with one instrument!  It may not be elegant, but when your plot requires 132 instruments and you've got 60-something (40 channels), it's nothing short of a miracle.  Towards the end of the show I actually forgot I was calling something we had just thrown together a half hour before the house opened.  It really did look close enough to the real thing, and Daniel set up a bunch of submasters so he could fill in gaps when our thrown-together design needed a little extra something.  As he was right next to me, I knew he was using them a lot, but most of the time I couldn't even tell by looking at the stage.  He said it was like running a 2-scene preset board.  One of the interesting things about this tour is that there's an understanding that we will play venues that can't satisfy the technical needs of the production.  It's part of the deal of bringing professional theatre to communities that don't normally get it.  Our bosses back in New York understand that we will have to cut corners some places, and me, Joel, Ian and the supervisors are expected to make any changes needed to do the best show we can with what we've got in each venue.  This was the first time we've really had to think on our feet, and I think we did a really good job.  

This was our first audience that seemed to be made up of people who don't get much exposure to Shakespeare.  They were a very quiet audience, but they livened up a bit in the second act, and were very appreciative at the end.  A number of people seemed to have left at intermission, which we assumed meant they didn't like it, but one of the local guys believed they may not have known the show was over.  It's really fun to perform for an audience that's familiar with the show and follows it easily, but really the mission of the Acting Company is to perform for audiences like those we had last night.  If we're the most professional theatre performance that comes through that venue, then we've accomplished our goal, and hopefully they got something educational and enjoyable out of seeing Shakespeare performed live by professional actors.

Nick and the cast stayed behind and performed the 1-hour Henry this morning for about 500 students, which apparently went well according to his report, except that the door on their bus broke in the morning and they had to take cabs!  It's fixed now, and they are currently en route to join us in St. Louis.

As for me and the crew, after eating at Huddle House in a downpour and tornado warning, we got back on the bus and hit the road for the 2-hour drive to St. Louis.  I don't know how long it actually took because I was exhausted and malnourished and damp and disgusting and went immediately to bed.  The drive was pretty scary.  The rain was ridiculous, first of all, but I could feel the wind pushing the bus to and fro, drifting all over the place.  It felt like we were going really fast, but I think that may have simply been the fact that we were driving into the wind so it felt like more resistance.  Not being able to see anything from the bunk, it's sort of like a trust exercise.  You lie down in the dark and close your eyes, and no matter what you feel or hear, just trust that Bart's not going to drive us into a tree or off a cliff, or get us sucked up into a tornado.  I don't spend that much time in tornado country, and I've never seen one, but the idea of a tornado warning at night is very scary to me.  I mean, seeing a tornado is bad.  I figure not being able to see a tornado is worse!

Anyway, we apparently made it without tornado interference, as when I woke up we were in the parking lot of our hotel in St. Louis.  We arrived sometime overnight and Bart went to his room to sleep and left the rest of us sleeping in the bus, to check in whenever we felt like waking up.  I was desperate for a shower so I got up around 11AM, dressed and ran around in the rain trying to figure out which cargo bay my luggage wound up in.  Then I checked in and took the best shower ever.  Any shower would have been the best shower ever, but the water pressure was especially good, too.  I unpacked a bit, gathered up my dirty laundry to do tonight, bought a Mountain Dew from the vending machine, but having not bothered to bring my computer bag from the bus, eventually ran out of things to do, so I have returned.

By the time I got back, Daniel was up and at the desk in the front lounge, no doubt working on a light plot for some venue in the future.  That's basically all he does.   I feel like at this point in the tour, there are many people whose jobs suck more than mine.  I'm not really used to that.  Anyway, I counted the number of closed curtains in the bunks (not counting Nick, who is traveling with the actors on this trip, and whose job also currently sucks more than mine), and determined that the back lounge would be unoccupied.  I was very pleased to find that the case, so here I sit, feet up on the leather couch.  The wind is still blowing the bus side to side.   Now people are starting to wake up and come visit me.  Our plan for the day is that when Bart has had enough sleep, he will come back to the bus and take us to see the St. Louis arch.  I've never been here, so I'm excited about that, because it's pretty much the only thing I know about St. Louis.   Our plan to go go-carting has been squashed by the fact that the track we planned to visit has apparently shut down!  We were so excited, we even invited the cast to come with us tomorrow, and they were really looking forward to it, too.

Our schedule here is kind of nice.  We have the day off today, then load in at 8AM tomorrow (for Henry), but then have no show or anything else at night.  Friday Nick and the cast have a 1-hour Henry, which I suppose I'll drag myself out of bed for if there's no reason not to,  and then we do Big Henry at night.  Then Saturday at 8AM is the changeover to The Spy, and a performance that night, then we hit the road for Glenn Ellyn, IL.

TOUR STOP 3: Poplar Bluff, MO

After several days of hanging out and slowly making our way west, we have arrived and loaded in in Poplar Bluff, MO.   I have yet to figure out what there is here, except for a Holiday Inn that beats the pants off the one we stayed at in Lafayette (for the first time in months, I had a good enough internet connection for uninterrupted online gaming).  Unfortunately we were only there for one night.   We are playing Henry V tonight at Three Rivers Community College, which seems like a nice place.  The theatre is a single-level proscenium, I'd guess maybe 600 seats, but then I suck at estimating capacity.   Everything is clean and spacious, and close together (we didn't even bother putting up directional signage).

Nick and I made new laminated name signs for the dressing room mirrors, using some of the parchment paper used in the show (we have a colonial-era theme in our signage, utilizing still images from our favorite YouTube video).  Now that we had the time to make them laminated and nice-looking, they will be reusable, which has been a goal of mine for a while.  We set up our stuff in the dressing rooms -- signs on the doors indicating men and women and the names of the actors inside, valuables bags, and the names over the mirrors (sometimes assigned at random, sometimes located at the request of our wardrobe supervisor).  When this was done I

Our crew breakfast, which is required in our rider for load-in day, was delicious, and everyone here has been very nice.  We are in the last hours of load-in.  The small electrics stock of the theatre has made it a difficult show to light, but I just went inside to check in with Dan and he thinks we'll be ok with only a tiny bit of restaging for one moment.

When I was in there it looked like the set was almost assembled, there were a bunch of ladders up on the gallery.  Nick and I spend about the first hour of load-in working, and then sit around trying to be useful for about five hours, waiting for the set to be done and the ladders to get off the gallery so we can lay the sound-dampening carpet.  Nick also replaces the pipe insulation that protects the actors from whacking their heads on low-hanging scaffolding supports.  Some of it travels intact, but some can't, and then there are tiny pieces that cover the bolts once they are assembled, to keep the actors from snagging their costumes on protruding bolts.

Looks like it's time to go help with focusing lights.  See ya later!

Slice of Life in Transit

The crew bus rolls along a narrow deserted highway somewhere between Kentucky and Missouri.  The drive has become so boring that many of us have gone to our bunks because there's nothing else to do.

I have the lights out and am lying down with my eyes closed but not really trying to sleep.  After about 15 minutes I feel the bus start to slow, then make a sharp turn, then another, and finally we seem to have stopped (though the ride is so smooth, at low speeds it can actually be hard to tell).  I suspect that our quest to find Mexican food for dinner has come to an end.   At the very least, I have learned that these sensations generally indicate we are stopping.

I slide my bunk curtain partially open and stick my head out, just as Bart steps into the open doorway of the driver's compartment and exclaims, "El Bracero!"  I flip my legs out of the bunk, and immediately Nick slides his curtain open across from me and asks, "Are we somewhere?"  I say, "Yes."  And so we all gather in the front lounge, getting shoes on and tidying ourselves, and together head out to dinner.

TOUR STOP 2: West Lafayette, IN

Tonight we are leaving West Lafayette, home of Purdue University (where we performed both our shows, as well as conducted student performances and workshops ranging from 6th grade to college level.)  West Lafayette is also the home, as we learned, of Triple XXX Family Restaurant, which despite sounding like a porn shop, is actually an historic drive-in diner, the first in Indiana (opened in 1929).   The crew was HUGE fans of this place, mostly due to the fact that it's open 24 hours, and serves great diner food and their specialty root beer floats.  In the six days we spent in West Lafayette, I think we ate there five times.  I do believe on one day we ate there twice.

The crew at Purdue was great, and the support staff very friendly and helpful.  We spent most of our time there teching The Spy, so we only did one invited dress and two performances (one each of Spy and Henry), but our audiences were large and responsive.

We have two days before we have to load in in Poplar Bluff, MO, so we are taking a slight detour to Nashville.  Part of the reason for this is that it sounds like a more interesting place to spend a day than Poplar Bluff, but also because it's the home base of the bus company, and it will provide an opportunity for the bus to be serviced, as our water pump is broken.    We will sleep on the bus for two straight nights, chipping in on a single hotel room so we can all shower in the morning and have a place to stash our stuff during the day.   I think it will be a fun couple days to unwind after a very busy week.

Life on the Road

I'm still new at this, but now that we've been really in touring mode for about 5 days, here's what's going on. 

Our day often consists of waking up at 6:30AM to be ready for a 7:30 bus call.  If I think my personal involvement in the insanity occurring at the theatre at 8AM will be minimal, I will bring my personal pillow from the hotel to the bus, in the hope of getting to sleep more hours on the bus than I do overnight.  

Our schedule here in West Lafayette is kind of insane.  We started out re-teching The Spy, then tearing it all down to do a single performance of Henry V, then tearing that down to put the Spy set back up for our last two days.  This has been a kind of boot camp for our crew, getting to practice almost every method of changeover before we leave our first stop.  They're getting very good at it.  Nick, being an ASM, deals a lot with props, and actor-proofing the set, so that's basically what he helps with during load-in and changeover.  I really have nothing to do once the signage is up and I've put the proper calling script in the booth, so I kind of float around helping with simple tasks.  Today I packed a drum in a cardboard box and carried a few things to and from our prop road box, then I went on a cleaning spree of the stage management work box, which it desperately needed.  Then when I ran out of things to do, I went back to the bus and took a nap for about 45 minutes, before returning to help Nick set up for our 1-hour Henry performance for a student audience.  

Thankfully, that performance was in the same building as our main shows are, in a small proscenium theatre, so we didn't have to go too far with our trunk of props.  I hung out for that one and helped to set up and get the cast settled in before the show.  The 1-hour show is Nick's baby, as there will be times when he has to stay behind to put it up in a city after the crew has left.  As far as that show goes, he functions as the PSM, and whenever I'm available I will make myself useful as his ASM.  This was the first time it's been performed, and although it's been rather underrehearsed due to all the work needed to remount The Spy, the cast did well and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Now that the show is over, we are back on the bus.  Bart, our very awesome driver, needs to take the bus for an hour or so, so the call went out for anyone who intends to hang out and/or sleep on the bus to get on for the ride.  I'm not sure where we're going.  I'm not sure where we are.  It doesn't really matter.  I think we're going back to the hotel for a while (where I suspect we are now), and then to a place where he can service the bus.

Tomorrow we have five final hours of rehearsal, and then we play our first performance of The Spy to a paying audience (finally!  We started rehearsals Nov. 3!), then the cast stays here for a true day off before traveling to Poplar Bluff, MO.  For the crew, we will load out the show Saturday night and immediately begin driving to Poplar Bluff, where it will be loaded in.  

I still don't know where we are right now, but I'm pretty damn sure that's our cast bus parked inches away ahead of us.  Either that, or there's more than one black rockstar bus with gray swirly designs in Lafayette, IN.   I haven't explored their bus that much.  I've only taken one brief ride on it.  They have 12 bunks instead of our 8, which means they stack 3-high, giving everyone less headroom.  On the plus side, the bunks are there for convenience, they don't ever actually have to sleep overnight in them.  I heard a rumor they have a shower on their bus.  That sounds nice in theory, I guess, but I'm sure the reality is more cramped and awkward than it sounds.   Their front lounge is also smaller, which I don't like.  On short jaunts around town, including our favorite pastime here in Lafayette, having a late-night dinner at XXX, Indiana's oldest drive-in diner (founded in 1929), we generally all sit in the front lounge, which can comfortably hold all seven of us.  It's a nice chance to unwind, check in about how the show went, and discuss anything we need to.  I have taken to claiming the seat at the table on the post-show trips, so I can write the report and send it before we get to XXX.  

As far as the show goes, things seem to be going well.  Last night was our first performance of Henry outside of the Guthrie, where we teched it.   The adjustment to a very different space, and to a new local crew who were unfamiliar with the show, went pretty smoothly.  It felt good to try that once, to prove that we can do it.  I'm really looking forward to this week being over, and finally being done with tech and major rehearsals.  We have a couple 1- and 2-nighters next week, which will be a different experience as well.  I enjoy the travel, so I welcome the change of scenery.  If there's one thing we've gotten experience with on this tour, it's changing scenery!

On the Road, Finally!

Well we finally did it!  We finished our run at the Guthrie last night, and after about 5 hours, closed the door on our tightly packed truck and hopped on our bus, where a bunch of take-out bar food in styrofoam containers awaited us.  Within a few minutes we started to roll, and finally hit the road!

We ate for a while, watched the highlights of the Super Bowl we missed during the show, and then got into our bunks exhausted.   I for one slept really well.  I'm a small person, so I don't feel as much like I'm in a coffin as some of my colleagues.   That's my bunk in the foreground, the lower frontmost bunk.  I found the motion of the bus was actually very soothing while trying to sleep.  We all pretty much slept until about 12:30PM when I slowly got up and wandered into the front lounge where Nick already had his computer out.  I also sat with my computer out, and had barely begun checking out Facebook when Nick pointed out the window over my shoulder and said, "Look!  There's our truck!"  Sure enough, the Acting Company truck was waiting at an intersection as we passed it.  Moments later the front divider slid open and our driver, Bart, announced we had arrived.  We were all taken a bit by surprise, and stumbled into our shoes and out the door to meet the local crew here on the campus of Purdue University, in snowy West Lafayette, IN.

Nick and I helped direct the unloading of the truck for a while, and brought some of the small items that travel under the bus into the theatre, until our work box was off the truck.  Then we set it up in a corner and began hanging signs, assigning dressing room space, setting up the callboard, etc.  There wasn't all that much for us to do, so a lot of our time has been spent on the bus updating paperwork, or just hanging out and watching TV.  One of the main tasks we've taken on is to make coffee for the crew.  We all carry walkie-talkies, and they can just radio ahead a few minutes in advance when they're going to be wanting a coffee break, and we get a pot going on the bus and begin making their orders.  It's not our job, but I think considering they're in there doing heavy labor for 10 hours, and we hung some signs and printed some documents and sent some emails for a few hours, it's a fair trade.  We also took on a project for our wardrobe supervisor, who didn't have enough of the little plastic things that divide each actor's clothes on the costume racks.  We got some cardboard and made a bunch more for her.

Tomorrow we begin (or re-begin) teching The Spy.  Tonight when the crew is done at 11PM Bart has offered to take us someplace to eat, and then we will go to our hotel, where everyone is going to appreciate a good shower (we were running late last night so we didn't get to stop at the hotel in the morning, we just got up and went straight to work).  I'm having a lot of fun with this aspect of the job so far.  I think the longer multi-day trips will be really cool.  The unfortunate thing so far is that from the moment we got on the bus in the parking lot of the Guthrie, I didn't see the outside world until we got on campus at Purdue, so "seeing the country" isn't really happening yet.  Also, the windows on the bus are so heavily tinted that you can't see anything at night.  A couple times through the night I used the GPS on my iPhone to find out what state we were in!

Prepping for the Road

It's Saturday night, and tomorrow we have two more shows at the Guthrie and then we're gone.   Much of my attention in these last couple days has been focused more on packing and preparing to leave than on the shows we have remaining here.

I did most of my laundry last night, and will do the last bit tonight.  I cleaned my apartment last night, and tonight is my last opportunity to pack.  In the morning before the matinee call we have to bring our luggage to the parking lot of the Guthrie, where the crew bus is already parked.  As soon as the show is loaded out tomorrow night we hop on board and are off to West Lafayette, IN.  The cast will get picked up by their bus at the company housing on Monday morning, and will arrive at West Lafayette in the evening.

Our production manager and tech director, Joel, took all of the crew, as well as our staff rep director and company manager, out to dinner tonight between shows.  This was our last opportunity to talk as a group about anything that might need to be said about how things will work on the road.  It was a great opportunity for all of us to get on the same page and approach our next challenges as a team.  By the time we walked back to the theatre, our bus had arrived, so a bunch of us ventured to the parking lot to take a tour of the bus, and meet our driver, Bart.  He has been driving the crew bus for The Acting Company for many years, and by all accounts is incredibly awesome.

Here's Nick and one of our actors, Andy, who happened to tag along to see the bus, testing out the couches in the back lounge (pardon my flash -- there are a lot of mirrored surfaces).

   In the morning I plan to come in early (which Nick thinks is hysterical because lately I'm never early, and barely on time for my own duties) to clean up all of the random stage management stuff strewn around the theatre.  We have a cardboard box that lives under the seats in the theatre with a bunch of stuff that needs to get thrown out, and a bunch of stuff that needs to be packed in our road box before the whole place turns into a disaster area during load-out.  So I hope to have a lot of time to make order out of all our belongings so there's as little as possible to keep track of after the shows.

We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but everyone is very excited to start the most adventurous part of this gig.