Back on the Road, Baton Rouge

I apologize for not writing my usual load-in day post, but I completely messed up my computer that day, so I spent the entire day reinstalling the Mac and Windows partitions of my hard drive.  So here's a recap.

We (the crew) left New York last Friday, and flew to New Orleans, where we were met at the airport by Bart and the same bus we had for the first leg of the tour.  We were hoping for the mythical "orange bus" which is reportedly the best one that Pioneer has, but our bus is pretty cool too, so we were happy.  The broken microwave has been replaced, and although all the pocket doors between rooms still don't lock open, and slam shut when we go around corners, it's home sweet home.  Soon after getting on the bus, we were en route to our destination, Baton Rouge.

We weren't actually getting per diem for Friday, it was sort of a voluntary vacation day that we requested, so we slept on the bus.  We wanted to arrive a day early so that we could go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Baton Rouge.  Bart drove the bus over to the parade route sometime early in the morning while we were still sleeping.  We were able to see the parade pass by without even having to leave the bus.  Which was good because I'm not much for St. Patrick's Day, or mingling with the drunken masses.  Unfortunately the party outside migrated onto the bus a bit too much for my taste, so I finally packed my bag and walked the mile and a half to our hotel and checked in early.  Nick, Daniel and I had a nice dinner and margaritas at Chili's down the street, while the rest of the crew partied at one of Bart's friends' houses until who knows when.

The next morning everyone was surprisingly awake for our 10AM load-in at Baton Rouge Community College.  The theatre was really nice -- a loading dock and plenty of parking for the buses, which is always the first step.  The dock was on an incline, with the stuff coming off downhill, which is something we've never really had to deal with before.  The stage management workbox was actually first off the truck this time, so I don't really know how hard it was to unload everything else with all the weight rolling downhill, but it presented some challenges for packing the truck at load out.  We had to put ratchet straps between every two rows of road boxes so there wasn't so much weight wanting to roll back off the truck that a person couldn't hold it back.  Joel has a funny picture of about four of us holding a wall of boxes back while waiting for a strap.

The show went well.  We restored some of the original staging that had been changed for the New Victory.  It was nice to see it again.  I was a little worried about the dreaded "traitors sequence" which is probably the hardest thing in the show to call.  The cues were totally different at the New Vic, so I basically had not called it in almost four weeks.  It went fine.  It's just one of those things that you have to have the whole thing in your head before you begin and know exactly what comes next without needing to think about it or look at the script.

The Baton Rouge crew had obviously been told that the record load-out time for Henry stood at three hours, and decided early on that they were going to try to beat it.  The city that set it, Glenn Ellyn, IL, had about the same setup as far as onstage space and proximity to the truck.  They had a great crew, but we may have had some more bodies here.  I thought it was possible, but it could be tight.  With the truck being packed uphill, that could add an additional challenge.  One thing we had going for us was that our plywood cart, which broke during our 3rd load-out back in early February, was finally fixed, and for the first time since then, we had a venue with a loading dock.  It's just too heavy to go down a ramp, so it often means the plywood deck has to be loaded one piece at a time (there's about 30 pieces).  So that saved us time.  After sending the show report and packing up the stage management stuff, I took up my usual place at the front of the truck and began packing the walls in.  We had a really nice truck pack this time.  We altered the middle area of the pack recently, and I think Daphne discovered a few great breakthroughs this time.  When all was said and done, we had soooo much space in the back of the truck.  The final load bar was put in two hours and 44 minutes after the show came down, breaking the record by 16 minutes!  The crew was rightly very pleased with themselves, and that load bar now bears a commemoration in Sharpie, reading "Baton Rouge 2:44 Baby!"  I got to do the honors of handing out our swag, Acting Company bottle opener keychains.

Now it's the next morning and we're on the bus for our big cross-country drive to Telluride, CO, a distance of about 1,400 miles.  We have to load in on Thursday morning, so the timing will be pretty tight.  It looks like we have just arrived at our prospective stopping point in Wichita Falls, TX.  The cast has just left Baton Rouge, and will arrive here later today and spend the night.  We will hang out in town and get a crew room to shower in while Bart gets some sleep, then when he's ready we will hit the road again.