A Wild Ride in Oshkosh!

So we started our final week of the tour at The Grand Theater in Oshkosh, WI. It was one of our few repeat venues his year. It's a charming, beautiful old refurbished opera house and we were scheduled to do 2 performances here. Our first evening was plagued by a blizzard that blew in around 4p, we had left Milwaukee early to get in ahead of the storm and drove the last 12 miles through sleet and ice, by 5:30 it was a virtual white-out. But in spite of the weather we still had a good house - approx. 400 people braved the storm including a bus from Sheboygan Falls! (their bus driver got a round of applause during the curtain speech!) So it was a good show and we were looking forward to our Friday night performance which was almost sold out because of all the people who transferred their tickets to avoid the storm. Several of us went to lunch and out to the outlet mall, Paul went to a movie and we were generally having a nice relaxing day. A little before 3p William called me and said there was a little bit of drama in the works. The City of Oshkosh had shut down the Grand because of structural problems. In the course of preparing to install a new sprinkler system, they discovered that the roof was in danger of caving in, so they shut down the theater. But the good news was that the TD at the Grand is also the TD at Oshkosh West High School, so we were going to move the show there!

it wss the fasted load out ever! I was on the phone non-stop from about 2:50p until 4:30 or so. We got everyone over to the Grand and got the set out in record time. We drove the whole thing across town and started to load it into the high school. We were down to our last two scenic carts when the hydrolic lift on the back of the truck decided that it was done working for the day. Only half of it would lower threatening to dump our carts off the side of the lift! We tried beating it with a pipe, we tried soft words and curse words and finally had to pull out the metal ramp and unload the last couple of carts one scenic piece at a time. But we did get everything into the theatre. We had pushed the curtain time back half an hour to 8p and we worked right up until 7:30 half hour when we stopped to eat.

The set looked nice in the space, it looked like many of the performing art centers we have played on this tour, it wasn't quite as up to date technically and for the first time on this tour we were forced to call the show by looks rather than cues. We had a Stage Left Crate look, Stage right crate, dark shanty, talking shanty, singing shanty, sr shanty crate, sl shanty crate, fish and band. The calling of the show sounded a lot like "Stand by to cross fade Right crate to left crate" "Add right crate go" "Pulse fish go" "Singing shanty and fish go" it was pretty comical.


But in the end, an audience of approximately 600 loved the show and gave us a big standing ovation at curtain call. So... another tour first; we loaded out the show, moved it, loaded it in and were ready for a show in 4 hours. BUT, I'm pretty sure none of us want to do it again!

The good news is, that the Repairs on the theatre should be done and shows will be back on the Grand stage by next weekend!

Chilton

We spent a snowy Saturday in Chilton, our seventh new venue of the tour. The venue was beautiful. We felt it was built on the same design as Eagle River - the spaces look very much the same, even the view of the booth from the stage is similar. The folks at the theatre were very nice and we did two shows to decent audiences. The first show was much lighter than they expected because of the snow. Some of the roads on our drive in were completely snowed over. But by the evening, almost 600 people braved the weather to laugh with the guys.
Our hotel was a trip - we stayed at the 'lovely' Thunderbird Motel. It was fairly no-frills, but there were some surprises. Like Cheryl's room which was decorated completely with polka-dots. They were on the walls, on the bed, on the curtains even in the bathroom. Craig's room was all Green Bay Packers. The rooms were much cozier once the heat kicked in (it took about 4 hours to warm up) but the thrill was gone between 6:30a and 8a when there was plowing behind the hotel and they ran their snow blower down the walk right in front of all of our rooms.



The shows themselves went very well and we had a good time. I am running out of things to photograph, the set always looks the same - except where our own travel-king makes his appearance and the fish always sing at sound check. Between shows, the theater treated us to a Shanty Special, freshly grilled Johnsonville brat, chips, soda and cookies. Yum.

We had a little time to relax between the shows - I guess idle hands or something!

Crouching Tiger... Hidden mascot!

Ironwood, MI

Figures the best group picture we've taken in three years was taken in a bowling alley/bar in Michigan... No, there was no Chili.









The Ironwood theater is a beautiful old space. Emphasis on the old. It reminded us a little bit of Stoughton because of it's size. There was no space backstage and even less masking, so movement was limited. The dressing rooms were a hike through a basement labyrinth that included an old 'trunk slide' where they used to unload the actors' trunks on the sidewalk and toss them into the basement to be transferred to the dressing rooms. The paintings on the ceiling were beautiful, leave it to Steve to count the number of naked breasts present. The show went very well, the audience loved it and although we were a little hesitant at first, we had a good time in Ironwood and would love to come back!
















I love the old fashioned wooden "Performance Today" sign.

Eagle River

We Always have fun in Eagle River, it's a great hotel which is a stone's throw from the theater. The space is great and the staff is very nice. This is the third year in a row when Eagle River has had a valentine's day raffle prior to the play. This year they raffeled off balloons, flowers, trees, a couple of nights in a resort and a night in a resort that included a chartered fishing trip! All these prizes arrived in a sled and the tickets were drawn out of a bait-bucket. Fun.

Wisconsin Rapids

We loved Wisconsin Rapids last year and this year we had some fun too. They really go all out with their lobby games - this year you could throw a roll of toilet paper through a toilet seat into a bucket and win a prize. You could also guess how many fish (candies) were in a jar and win a prize. They also had a costume contest and a polka band (aren't they cute in their little hats?!)




The show went well - there were some sound problems with the theatre, which we solved for Act II, but it seemed like folks had a lot of fun. AND, Steve learned just a little more about the percussion section!

Jefferson

We are having a blast in yet another new venue - Jefferson WI. We're pretty close to home, only an hour's drive to the hotel and another 15 minutes to the theater. This venue went all out decorating the lobby with all sorts of Ice fishing/up nort' type decorations. My favorite is the bottle fish - there are several different types of bottle fish! They even had an ice shanty set up in the lobby. Before the show they treated us to dinner at their brat fry - yummy. They also had several sponsors that didn't make it into the program, so they acknowleged them on big sign posts on either side of the stage and smaller sign posts scattered around the lobby. It was a lot of fun.

I call this picture "Of Lights and Men"
It's a huge space - 996 seats. There are some that weren't sold because they were obstructed by the sponsor signs, but otherwise it was a sell-out!














After the show we were all invited to a party at the beautiful home of the Sandy and Mike, the head of the theater and her husband (head of the school district) It was a great party with AMAZING food.











We all enjoyed the bacon-cheese dip baked in a loaf of bread, the artichoke dip and of course what Guys On Ice party would be complete without fish-shaped cookies! There were also mittens and snow-flakes but we were partial to the fish! Paul's enjoyment of the Brandy Slush garnered him a new nick-name... Slushy and he was a big hit with our hosts and the other party guests. They even packed him a doggy bag (fishy bag?) of cookies for the road!

La Crosse

So at the end of our second week on the road (not counting Madison) we have finally hit our first repeat venue - AND it's only a repeat for Bachelors, not Guys On Ice. It's a beautiful space and the load in went very smoothly especially when you consider that the house crew was on their 10th show this week. During the 2nd act, half the crew was outside changing the sign and after the load out, they were re-focusing for their next load in.

The show went well - only 11 empty seats which means that 1110 people saw Guys on Ice in La Crosse Saturday night. The town is great, but unfortunately, a lot of us were to apathetic to enjoy it. We were all interested in the 24 hour hot tub at the hotel, but it was full of kids until 2:45a. Oh well, maybe next year.
Next week we are back to a new venue - we'll be in Jefferson for two shows! See you on the ice!

Beaver Dam

Lovely Beaver Dam Wisconsin. We had two shows at the Beaver Dam High School, hosted by the Beaver Dam Community theatre. The houses were both completely sold out and the audiences were a lot of fun, including giving us the new battle cry "WALLEYE". Someone shouted it at the stage as the lights were going down our first performance. The house staff from the community theatre all dressed in their favorite plaids and hunting caps - they were very cute!
Since we were in one place for two days, we took the opportunity to have an understudy rehearsal. It was fun to see Lee as Marvin again and Paul as Ernie the Moocher.