Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Closing the 2008-'09 tour - Oconto Falls
Saturday, February 28, 2009
A Wild Ride in Oshkosh!
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!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Chilton
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.
We had a little time to relax between the shows - I guess idle hands or something!
Crouching Tiger... Hidden mascot!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Ironwood, MI
I love the old fashioned wooden "Performance Today" sign.
Eagle River
Wisconsin Rapids
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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"
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!
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