Two Saturdays ago, I started my new life adventure with a week of rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast. The week went fast, and I’ve never learned, memorized and refined a show in such a short period of time. It was exhausting, but so … satisfying. I got to work with a wonderful director and my cast is superb. Everyone is cast SO WELL in their roles. Along with the rest of the cast, we work with a stage manager who is SUPERB and Tech director who is also awesome! We really lucked out with this cast and crew. Talented, silly, fun, and DRAMA-FREE. I love drama-free. I foresee this group having a super awesome and fulfilling time on this tour. As much as I will miss Philly and my peoples, I am very fortunate to have these awesome people to fill my void until we get back.
Our first couple days of the actual tour have already been really… interesting. On Saturday, we left for our hotel in New Brunswick, NJ, where we were suppose to stay for two days while we perform at The Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for Performing Arts. Within the first five minutes we are there, I realize that I had left my character shoes I wear in the show somewhere. No idea where, just…. Not in my suitcase. I guess someone had the make the first dumb mistake, and who better to do it then me! I ended up doing our two shows on Sunday in my own black flat shoes that had never even been worn before. I guess that’s what being a theatrical actor is all about- being able to adjust to your surroundings and to any snafus that come our way. I’m learning this early. By the way, I have since found my character shoes, along with a scarf I left in the hotel. I’m going to have to start triple checking my room before we leave.
So, back to our hotel in New Brunswick- the Howard Johnson, which we will so lovingly call the Ho-Jo from now on. From the moment we walked into the Ho-Jo, it was clear that this was no Comfort Inn, which is where we stayed in Philly for rehearsal week. The décor looked like it had been bought at second hand shops and the bathroom looked like it might cave in at any moment. And did I mention that this place was a motel style dig set back from a small highway without anything around but a Fuddruckers next store. And, the sign on their front desk door read “Valentine’s Day Special. Short Stay (4 hours) $50 with ‘FREE’ Champagne”. Classy, eh? But, OK, fine. Not everywhere we go is going to be a Grade A hotel. This is a non-union and partly non-profit company, after all. It wasn’t until we got a text message at 3am from our stage manager that read “Do not come out of your rooms. Do not look out the window. Lock the doors.” Uhhh… ok. My roommate and I didn’t get the text until 8:30am, thankgod, because I wouldn’t have slept the rest of the night. In the morning she sent a text telling us to pack up all our things because we were not staying there another night. It turns out there was a HUGE fight that my roommate and I completely slept through right outside Monica’s door. Luckily, her boyfriend was staying with her, but even he was holding the phone ready to call 911 apparently, so it must have been pretty intense. Victor said he heard in the front desk area that someone had been “knifed” there that night. Awesome. Monica also suspects that they had a prostitution ring going on there because a couple of us could hear a lot of sex going on that night. Anyway,let’s get the hell out of there. So we did. And just as we had thought we had left for our tour, we were right back at the Comfort Inn in Philly for the night. False start!
Now, let’s get to the meat of it and talk about our first two shows. On Sunday, we performed two shows at The Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for Performing Arts. We were very spoiled with this venue. It was huge, beautiful and had multiple large dressing rooms. They had crew guys to help us load in and load out, along with a huge elevator to lug all our flats and set pieces to the theater itself. I wish I wasn’t so caught up in everything, because I would have liked to take pictures. It was so nice to finally be performing on a real stage, rather than in a rehearsal studio the size of my living room. It was such an adjustment, too. But, we really worked to together and made it happen without too many problems. It was so great to finally do the show for an audience. It was getting a little stale by the end of rehearsal week. We went from an audience of three at the studio to an audience of over 1000 at the Mayo Center. Overall on Sunday, we played for about 2000 people. Sweet. After the second show, we did a meet and greet in the lobby. We got SWAMPED. This wasn’t your typical receiving line that I am used to after a show. This was pictures, autographs, Victor and I even sang happy birthday to a little girl. It’s so funny because, to us grown ups, children’s theatre just isn’t that big of a deal. But, to these kids, we are freaking celebrities. It was really cool and really strange all at the same time. It was like being a fake celebrity! Just what I’ve always wanted!
Afterwards, we did some cast bonding at Heather's apartment, which was about an hour away. Her wonderful boyfriend made us a huge Superbowl Opening Night Party spread- pulled pork, eggplant, queso, wings, punch... the works. It was so great to have a nice cooked meal. We won't be getting many of those for a few months. But, it was a great bonding time for us, so THANK YOU JIM AND HEATHER!!
Afterwards, we did some cast bonding at Heather's apartment, which was about an hour away. Her wonderful boyfriend made us a huge Superbowl Opening Night Party spread- pulled pork, eggplant, queso, wings, punch... the works. It was so great to have a nice cooked meal. We won't be getting many of those for a few months. But, it was a great bonding time for us, so THANK YOU JIM AND HEATHER!!
Well, we are on our way to Georgia now, which is where our next shows are on Wednesday. We’ll be stopping in Fayetteville, NC tonight to sleep and then finishing the drive tomorrow. But, right now, we are on a hunt for Chipotle, so bye for now!
