It’s all over!

We are officially done and I’m back in VA. But before I get ahead of myself, I will write about everything that happened the last week.

So, on Monday which was our last day off, I was able to go to the mall and then go work out at the YMCA. I also went swimming at the Y and then I just relaxed the rest of the day. Our last week was Secr

et Garden, Mulan, White Christmas, White Christmas, Secret Garden, Mulan, White Christmas, and Secret Garden! Nothing too exciting happened at our first Secret Garden. The elevator was broken though so at changeover they had to carry all the Mulan stuff downstairs and a lot of the Secret Garden stuff had to stay downstairs because it was too big to be carried up. They got it fixed before White Christmas thank goodness because that would have been a pain! At Mulan the first big thing was that our Shan-Yu was missing half his mustache. He came backstage to me just seconds before he was going on and told me he couldn’t find the other half of his mustache so he was wearing the half he had as a beard and then he went on stage. It was really difficult to hold in the laughter. Later in that same show, I had to actually wipe the sweat off his upper lip with my sleeve so we could apply his Fa-Zu mustache. Later that is how he introduced me to his fiance. “This is Brannon, she applies my mustaches.” Nothing too exciting happened at White Christmas that night besides me going on a wild goose chase for my secret santa gift. My final gift was a tool belt, a wrench, duct tape, a flash light, measuring tape, and a lava lamp. I also was able to figure out who had me. My stage manager had me, which was ironic because I had her. I had also made this ridiculous scavenger hunt for her where the clues led her to different people and then those people had tasks for her to do before they would give her the next clue. She had to do things like say the pledge of allegiance while doing jumping jacks or serenade someone with a love song. I thought it was pretty genius! She had no idea it was me until that night at the reveal. Anyways, on thing I discovered doing White Christmas two nights is that I am too easy to ninja while sitting on the train. People will crawl behind the train and then jump through the window to ninja me. It was mostly the two Andrews in the cast.

Anyways, I was really glad when Friday finally got here because that was the day that my two friends from school were coming and my parents were coming. I was so ready for them to see the shows! Erin and Mason got there Friday morning. Mason forgot to bring nice

clothes to usher in so I took him over to the costume shop so my roommate could get him clothes to wear. He looked very spiffy in his white tuxedo! :) His clothes were leftover from White Christmas because he was wearing pants from Blue Skies and a vest from I Love a Piano. After we finished there, my parents had arrived so we met up with them in the parking lot to say hi and for them to give me stuff that needed to go in my refrigerator. After we took the stuff back to my apartment, Erin, Mason, and I went to explore downtown Valdosta. It was hot, but we still enjoyed ourselves. The show was Secret Garden that night which I was very happy about because in my opinion, that was our best show! During the show, I scared the guy that played Archie because I was sitting on the floor and I was wearing all black of course and he didn’t see me sitting there. So I said “ninja” very nonchalantly. :) It was fun for me because he was the one who always ninjas me on the train. After the show and the changeover, Erin, Mason, and I went to the store to get stuff for dinner and then we took a little side trip to the top of the parking garage because there are 5,000 stories on that garage and I wanted to see how far you can see. Then we made an amazing dinner of spaghetti and green beans and garlic bread. It was very classy because the only cheese I had for the spaghetti was string cheese so we just strung the cheese and laid it over the spaghetti! It actually looked very pretty! We stayed up talking for a while, but we finally went to sleep. The next morning we made breakfast and then Erin and Mason had to head back to VA. It was good to see them but there was no point in them staying longer because I had to work two shows on Saturday.

It was the beginning of the end! Saturday was our last Mulan and our last White Christmas! Mulan went great except for a few things breaking here and there. The cricket cage broke, a branch on the tree broke, and I think a few of the fans broke, and I don’t even know what else broke. It was all okay though because it was our last show. Oh, and we had found the other half of Shan-Yu’s musta

che. It had gotten stuck to one of the other actor’s mic pack. I knew it had to just be stuck to someone somewhere. The banners fell perfectly at our last show and the pyro looked amazing! We couldn’t have asked for a better last show! I even got to play with the pyro before the show because the propsmaster had promised me I could do the pyro if we had leftover at the end of the summer! It was cool! :) Well, actually it was hot, but you understand. After the show, we had our first strike. There wasn’t a whole lot to strike after Mulan. But it was kind of satisfying to strike things. Everyone had sooo much energy for White Christmas that night. I was overwhelmed because the energy was so high. I didn’t know what to make of it. I think everyone was just so excited to be doing White Christmas for the last time because we had done it soooo many times. We all liked the show, but we were glad to be done with it. We had a few mic problems during the show, but I don’t think the audience noticed too much. I had told Andrew before the show started that I was not going to let him ninja me on the train that night. So when I knew he was going to be coming backstage for his song, I was standing up and paying attention to all my surroundings so he couldn’t sneak up on me. So he wasn’t able to ninja me then, but after his scene I was distracted because we were doing a scene change so he walked past me in front of the train and then he came back on the train really quietly and snuck up behind me to ninja me. He was so proud of himself. I have to give him props because it is much harder to ninja me by getting on the train because it usually moves when you are walking on it. Our plan for strike was to stay until we had everything struck. We were just going to work till midnight, but all the actor techs and the crew wanted to just strike it all so we could be done with strike earlier the next day! The ensemble got released around midnight because everything that was left at that point only needed a few hands. The master electrician crashed the barn again during strike! I was standing right next to it and I had to run away so I wouldn’t get hit by it. We all wanted to kill him! Anyways, the fly loft looked sooo empty after we struck everything! I was a little scared for my life while people were ripping the wood apart because things were flying across the stage. By 1:30am, we had everything except for the drops struck so we called it a night. We came in early the next day to get Secret Garden set up. It took us a grand total of 30 minutes to get Secret Garden set up with just the actor techs and crew. We felt good about that. Oh, and did I mention the other thing we didn’t strike from White Christm

as was the snow bag? :-D Anyways, we had some issues with the lights at the end of the first act in Secret Garden, but everything else went pretty well! By the end of the show, almost everyone was crying. It stunk having the most emotional show as our last show of the season! When the curtain closed for the last time, we dumped the snow bag on everyone and no one really ran from it because they were all crying and hugging! We got to eat dinner before we began strike, but once strike got into gear, everyone got to work and the crying stopped for a while. By 9:00 we were all sitting in the house just waiting for people to come grab how many people they needed for the few small random jobs that were left. We had a little end of the season meeting and then we were released by 9:30pm! Of course, everyone stayed around for a while to do all their goodbyes and hugs again. After that, I went back to my apartment and packed up all my stuff. I was on the road by 8:30 the next morning and was home by 9:00 that night.

Overall, the entire experience was great! I had sooo much fun even when I was absolutely exhausted! In 9 weeks we only had 3 days off and the first month and a half we were working 70+ hours a week! And you know what, I think I would do it all again! We will se

e where next summer takes me! I met a lot of amazing people and I’m sure I will work with some of them again in the future. The theater world is a small world. Every co

ntact you make helps! Hopefully having this on my resume will open some doors for me!

Goodbye for now Peach State!

One week left! (warning: this blog entry ended up being pretty long)

I can’t believe it’s all coming to an end. Have I really been here for 8 weeks? My body knows I’ve been here for that long, but my mind thinks it’s been shorter. My life for the past 8 weeks has been strictly theater. It’s going to be really weird going back to normal life. I’m used to living my life around call times. This schedule was really hard to begin with, but now running three musicals simultaneously is like breathing in and out. It comes naturally.

That brings me to my first question from someone reading my blog! I was really doing this blog just for my parents and a few friends to keep them updated on what I’m doing, but it’s kind of cool that other people are reading it as well. So, the question is, “which [of the shows] is the most complicated, in your opinion??” Well, we have now done White Christmas 14 times, Mulan 7 times, and Secret Garden 8 times. That doesn’t count all the tech rehearsals and dress rehearsals. When you do a show that many times, everything you do becomes almost like a reflex. I would say that none of the shows are complicated, but if we weren’t as organized as we are, than things would get complicated. If I thought back to the tech weeks for each show, I would say that Secret Garden is the most complicated. There is a lot of scenery that rolls on and off stage so that means all that scenery has spike marks on the stage and some of the scenery comes on multiple times for different scenes and goes in different places and since we are running three shows at the same time, there are a LOT of spike marks on stage. We started out with the spike marks for White Christmas. Each scene shift in White Christmas has a different color spike tape. Then we moved on to Mulan where we only have three pieces of scenery that come on and off so Mulan spike tape is all one color that isn’t the same color as any of the spike tape for White Christmas. So by the time we got to Secret Garden, we had to spike everything with two colors to identify the show. So the different scenes in Secret Garden have different colors of spike tape, but all the spikes for Secret Garden have a green spike with whatever color the shift is. Then we had the problem with people not being able to find their spike tape in blackouts, so we started putting glow tape on the spike marks. Well, in a blackout, a stage covered in spike marks all marked with glow tape just looks like a lot of little pieces of glow tape. So then came the sharpies. Actors started putting their names or the names of the furniture on the spike tape and making designs on the glow tape to differentiate it from the other glow tape. This was very complicated originally, but we have done it so many times now that everyone knows what spike mark they are headed towards. The other complicated part of Secret Garden is storing all the scenery backstage, but I have that down to an art now. There is a 5 minute period where I do about 5 shifts all backstage while only 2 shifts have happened onstage. The one thing I fly in during Secret Garden, I have to fly it out while standing with my back up against a wall so the actors can get a small train past me. There are only two pieces of scenery on my side of the stage that can fit out the backdoor after they come off stage. The scene shop door is blocked during the show because that is where the orchestra is. So, to answer your question, Secret Garden is the most complicated of the three, but we have done it enough times now that it’s a walk in the park now! That was a very long answer to a pretty simple question. Sorry.

Alrighty, so this week was Secret Garden, Mulan, White Christmas, Secret Garden, White Christmas, Mulan, Secret Garden, and White Christmas! We had changeovers after every show this week. We had a few mishaps and things break this week, but it’s been a fun week. First off, the entire company is playing Secret Santa. That started on Wednesday. They apparently do it every year, but it just so happens we are doing White Christmas this summer which makes it even more appropriate. I got my first gift from my secret santa on Saturday before Mulan. They left me a clue at my station backstage and it took me into the scene shop where we store the snow for White Christmas. They got me Glow Explosion! It’s the markers that you color with and then they glow in the dark! It’s awesome! I put on my form that I like things that light up. They also got me heat wraps, but I’ll explain why that was really funny a little later in this blog entry. Today my secret santa put the clue at my station during intermission. They are very sneaky! Today’s clue led me to one of the desks used in White Christmas that had already been struck to the shop. They gave me M&Ms and this princess globe thing that lights up and spins like something you can get at a circus! It’s awesome!!! I am such a kid at heart! :) My Secret Santa has given me puzzle pieces with each gift that when put together will be my clue to find my last gift. I’ve been getting stuff for my person as well, but I can’t talk about that because it’s a secret! The big reveal of Secret Santas is Wednesday night! I have no idea who my secret santa is. I guess I’ll find out Wednesday! Doing Secret Santa has gotten everyone’s energy up a little bit. It’s fun to be doing our normal job and then find gifts from our secret santa! It’s Christmas in July!

So, I have encountered some more bats in the cove this week. None of the guys believe me. I try not to look around too much when I am in the cove. I have to do my job so I would rather pretend that there aren’t bats up there.

I finally got to go to the pool at the YMCA on Friday! It was sooooo nice to swim and then lay out in the sun! I felt rejuvenated! And I was wearing 100spf sunscreen so I did not get burned! Friday was the same day that we had a work call to clean up the shop and the warehouse to get ready for strike so it was the perfect day for the pool! Friday night however, was not very fun. I apparently did something to my back at some point during the day on Friday and I did not notice it until Friday night when I started having back spasms minutes after the show started. I felt a tiny pinch in my lower back before the show started, but I’m used to having back pain when I’ve been on my feet for a long time. We were doing White Christmas Friday night. I got through my first shift and when I walked over to stage right to get ready to fly in a piece of scenery, the pain became more than I could handle almost imedietly. I was sitting on the fly rail and all I could do was look over to the ASM and mouth the words that I was in pain and she could tell by my face that it was very bad. I was almost to the point of tears. There was not a single position that made the pain go away even the tiniest bit. I had to just stand there and endure it. I think I scared some of the actors around me. I did that shift and then they called in the Technical Director to do the rest of my shifts like moving the huge train off stage and my preset during intermission for the second act. The pain was just constant throughout the show so I’m not sure if it slowly got better or if my pain tolerance just grew. By intermission I was able to walk, I just had a major limp which made things a little more challenging. In the second act, all I really do it sit on the train and push buttons on the pacman to fly scenery in and out so I was able to do that. I had to put most of my wait on my left arm when I was sitting on the train though. The pain finally got to the point where I could bring my legs up to my chest and be a little more comfortable. By the time the show ended, it wasn’t spasming anymore, but it was still pretty painful. Technically I was released from changeover along with one of the actors who had a migraine, but I’m really stubborn and even though I would have loved to go back to the apartment and lay down, I didn’t want to get out of work. I wasn’t able to do a whole lot because I couldn’t really bend over or pick things up, but I didn’t have as much of a limp as I had at intermission. I made it all the way through intermission and then I went home and took a warm bath which was the first relief from the pain! Then one of my roommates gave me her heat pad that I slept on. By Saturday morning my back was feeling much better. It was still pretty sore, but it was nowhere near the pain from the night before. Then when I came into work, I got the heat pads from my secret santa and that helped a lot! So my only clue about who my secret santa is that they knew I had injured my back, but pretty much anyone who was backstage Friday night knew that. My back is 100 times better today! We did White Christmas again today and our Artistic Director still didn’t let me do the big shifts because she doesn’t want me to hurt myself again. I’ll be back to all my normal jobs by Tuesday! I am not going to let a stupid back spasm get the best of me!

Mulan on Saturday was very interesting. The show is only 90 minutes long so anything that happens that is not supposed to happen is the big talk of the day. One of our costume changes got messed up. We got the costume changed in time, but the wig was stuck to the head form with a pin so we couldn’t get it off. By the time we just grabbed the wig for her next costume change to replace the one we couldn’t get off, she had already missed her entrance. It was unfortunate, but it happens. The thing about that one song is that there are three girls who have three super fast costume changes all on the same side of the stage in the same song. There are also about three guys who have two quick changes on the same side of the stage during the same song. Then there are 4 of us who are crew helping with the costume changes. There is also scenery coming off stage at the same time. It is choreographed to the point where we haven’t had any problems with it since the first dress rehearsal, but one little thing like a pin stuck in a wig messes up the whole thing. There was also sound cues missed because the cues are taken from the actor who missed her entrance because of the costume change. But we moved on and finished the rest of the song without anymore problems. Later in the show however, I have Mushu come up to me frantically telling me that his fire didn’t get preset backstage so I jump off headset to run to the prop table. As I am running to find the props master, Mushu then finds the pyrotechnics so I relax a little. They had just been pushed behind something else on the prop table. So I am now walking behind Mushu headed backstage and we have to stop as the actors are coming off stage with there puppets and all I see is this huge flash of light on the other side of Mushu because as he was putting the pyrotechnics on his hand, one of them went off. I had only a couple of seconds to make sure everyone was okay and that none of the puppets were on fire, then in the next second I remember Mushu saying that he was only going to have the pyro for one hand and then in the next second the props master runs through the side door and before I can say anything to him, he plainly says, “I know” and starts running towards the flammables cabinet to replace the pyro that mis-fired. Later, I decided that he had to have teleported because he was in the audience when he saw the flash come from backstage and it was literally 4 seconds later that he was backstage. Amazingly, after all of that, the pyro was the best on stage that it had ever been. That little incident got everyone’s blood pumping though! Whew! It’s got me exhausted just retelling what happened! I feel like there was other things I wanted to mention, but they don’t really compare to that story. Oh, one thing is that Secret Garden Saturday night was apparently our best performance yet! I just always feel good when that show ends. It’s kind of depressing in a lot of places, but it leaves you feeling good!

I went back to Crosspointe Church today. I’m not sure if I will make it back next week. It depends on if I need to pack or not. We will see. Today’s show of White Christmas went pretty smoothly. Nothing big or crazy. A gel frame got knocked out by the mid stage traveler and was laying on stage all during “Count Your Blessings,” but according to the people on headset in front of house, it just blended in with all the spike marks. :)

The plan for tomorrow’s day off is to go to the mall, work out at the Y, and then go swimming! Should be a good day. Right now we are experiencing a pretty intense lightning storm so hopefully the weather clears up. We are having a company Cabaret on Wednesday of this week so that is something to look forward to. I am not under any circumstances singing in front of a bunch of musical theater majors, but I look forward to seeing everyone else sing. Also, my friends Erin and Mason from school are coming to visit this weekend. They will be ushering Secret Garden Friday night and then will be leaving Saturday afternoon. My parents are also coming this weekend to see all three shows. And then I am leaving Valdosta next Monday. It’s very bittersweet.

This time next week, all shows will be over.

It's been a wild one!

Adventure that is! Okay, where do I need to start on this update? This past week was our first full week of rep! It was a pretty good week! I like this new schedule of sleeping in till noon, relaxing in the afternoon, and then running a show in the evening. Well, on Wednesdays and Saturdays we have matinees, but it’s still pretty relaxing. This past week we did Secret Garden, Mulan, White Christmas, White Christmas again, Secret Garden, Mulan, White Christmas, and then Secret Garden. That kind of gives you an idea of how changeovers go. It’s hard to changeover when you know you are going to be doing that show again in just 2 days. But changeovers are getting faster and easier the more we do them. Okay, now let’s see if I can remember the details from this week. Monday was our first full day off! It was really nice! I went to see Toy Story 3 at the normal theater and then I saw Date Night at the dollar theater. Then we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Las Banderas. It’s not as good as Plaza, but it’s close. I think I also had the opportunity to clean my room that day! Then on Tuesday we still didn’t have to go into work until 6:00pm so we pretty much had two full days off! I’m really liking this schedule! I used all our time off this past week to just rest and clean. The next two weeks I will be trying to see some of Valdosta! There were things that happened this past week that I really wanted to remember, but now I’m having trouble remembering them. Oh wait, I remember one of them. At our performance of White Christmas on Saturday, our fly operator had a little fun with the actors at the very end of the show. As soon as the curtain closed after the bows, he dumped the entire snow bag on everyone who was on stage. The actors didn’t know it was going to happen, but everyone on headset knew so I got it on video! It’s pretty hilarious! Our performance of Secret Garden on Sunday had an interesting start. Within the first couple of minutes I was already sweating and out of breath because I was having to run to the opposite side of the stage multiple times and crawl underneath the platforms on stage because two of the lights on stage behind the platforms weren’t working. I had to keep running back and forth because I had to be on headset for certain cues and then I had to go back under the platforms and then someone’s mic was muted so I had to fix that and then I would have to go back under. Finally after I had checked all the connections and tried a couple other things to fix the lights and nothing had worked, I just made the decision to move the two lights that were working center stage so that it wasn’t just half of the stage that had the lights. And that’s how it was for the rest of the show. At the end of the show, we discovered that the dimmer had been tripped because the white wire in one of the connectors on the twofer had come out and was touching the black wire. In the words of our TD, “that would do it.” In that same show, I had another mic problem I had to fix in the second act. It was funny because I had just been saying earlier that day how I just stand backstage and cue people the whole time. Speaking of which, I don’t know if I have ever fully explained what I do during the shows. I am on stage left headset. It is normally the job of an assistant stage manager, but we only have one ASM and she is on stage right, so they put me on stage left. I am on headset to cue the actors for shifts. A shift is just when scenery is moving on or off stage. The actors do most of the shifts because we don’t have stagehands. For Mulan, we have a couple stagehands because the entire ensemble is not cast in that show. I still get off headset every once in a while to help with shifts. There is one moment in White Christmas where I have to go to the other side of the stage to fly something in because there are four things flying at the same time and we only have one fly operator. In Mulan I am off headset a lot for costume changes because there are so many super fast changes in that show. I’m off headset very little in Secret Garden. I have said before that I run the pacman that is on stage left. The fly system is on stage right, but the pacman which is the motorized line sets is on stage left. In White Christmas, there are three line sets that I fly in and out. Two of those come in and out a few times. In Mulan, there are only two line sets that I fly in and out, but one of those comes in and out a couple times. In Secret Garden, there is only one line set I fly in and out and it only comes in once and it’s in the first couple of minutes so the rest of the show I am really just cueing people. There is not a ton of room backstage in Secret Garden though so for almost every shift that happens on stage, I have to shift stuff around backstage so everything will fit and go on and off smoothly. It’s a little science.

I’m really having a blast working backstage as an ASM and still getting to do the sound and electrics stuff! Since all I’ve done at school is design, I haven’t had a chance to work this closely with the actors. They are all pretty awesome people!

I went to church again this past Sunday. The same church I went to last week. Still on Northside Drive. :) It’s very contemporary and targets our age group. I talked to the music minister this time and he told me that they just had the LED lights installed last week. I just thought that was ironic since it was the first thing I noticed when I sat down last week. :) Sunday night we had a potluck at the house of a couple VSU students that are in the company. We had some small fireworks so I did get to see some fireworks for the 4th of July. We have some really good cooks and bakers in our company. I made brownies of course. Not very exciting, but people like them! :)

Okay...now to the Wild Adventures part! Yesterday was our second full day off so I had been planning on going to Wild Adventures for the past few weeks! It’s a small theme park here in Valdosta. Parts of Zombieland were filmed there in case any of y’all have seen that movie. I haven’t seen the movie myself. Anyways, I had found a couple people to go with me, and then a bunch of other people decided to go as well so we met up with them in the afternoon. We got there as soon as they opened in the morning and the plan was to stay until they closed, but we were pretty exhausted with an hour left before the park closed so we didn’t stay that last hour. We were there from 10 to 7 though so we still got a full day! It was an awesome day!!! I love going to new theme parks because everything is just so new and exciting! My stomach didn’t totally agree with everything I did, but I did as much as I could. I did both water rides during the day and got completely soaked both times! It was awesome! :) I did all but one of the roller coasters! The one roller coaster I didn’t do was kind of a mix between Big Bad Wolf and Alpengeist so I was okay that I didn’t get to do it. I got to hold a snake, an alligator, some sort of colorful bird, and I fed a giraffe! It was a very adventure filled day! I also finally uploaded some pictures to facebook because I finally took some pictures this summer! I will try to take some more pictures in the next couple of weeks! I need to save these memories in more than just a blog! :)

Oh, and since there isn’t a ton of stuff happening right now, feel free to ask me questions about anything I am doing and I will answer them on here. I have a feeling when I get home I will be telling people about what I’ve done this summer for a very long time so the more I can answer on here, the longer before I lose my voice! :)

I’ll be home two weeks from today! I can’t believe it’s already coming to an end!

Secret Garden Review

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/146897927

Also, if you go to valdostadailytimes.com and search for PSST, you will find most of the articles I've already give you links to, but there are pictures with the articles on the VDT website.

Three shows down...wait...that’s all!

We have opened Secret Garden!!!!! I can’t believe we made it!!! Opening night was pretty great! I made brownies for the cast and crew so I think I could take a little credit for their energy. This show is just great! I love it! The music is beautiful and the blocking is really cool. I wish you could all see it! I just don’t have the words to describe it! We went to this Italian restaurant after changeover to celebrate our opening night. We have actually had parties for every opening night, I just keep on forgetting to mention them. And no, it’s not because I drink at these parties. I just forget about them because I’m so exhausted when I go to them. But it was fun and the food was good...and free!

So, there is a lot of scenery in this show and not a whole lot of room backstage so I have to do a lot of shuffling of scenery backstage during the show. It’s kind of like a puzzle. I love being backstage for this show. There is a lot of time between scene changes and the ensemble for this show are all ghosts so they only come on every once in a while and only stay on stage for a short time so we play games to pass the time. Our games are kind of silly but so entertaining at the same time. Our first game was ninja. Everyone ninjas each other. What you do is you sneak up on someone and say ninja in their ear to try and make them jump. I got ninja-ed pretty good today while I was sitting on the train backstage for White Christmas. Our other game is poison darts. You basically mime with your hand at your mouth like you are shooting a spit ball while making a shooting sound or whatever. It’s hard to explain. Anyways, the person you are shooting has to be looking at you for them to actually get hit. Then they have to die. The way you are revived is when someone pulls the poison dart out of your neck. Those were the original rules. Now there is a safety where you put two fingers at your neck and you can’t be shot. It’s really entertaining for me to look over and see all the actors sitting around with their hands at their necks. Then I found out that I am safe from being shot as long as my headset is on. I also made a rule that standby for a shift revives everyone because I need my people to move scenery. It just makes life so much more interesting when you are goofing off in between shifts...as long as we don’t miss our shifts.

So we had two sold out houses on Saturday. We had a matinee of Mulan which was interesting since we hadn’t done Mulan in a week. It could have been better. It was especially hot backstage so everyone was having trouble keeping their mustaches on. They were sweating off almost instantly. I went through so much tape for mustaches. I literally had to replace the tape on someone’s mustache while she was on stage behind a piece of scenery. And this tape has paper on each side of it so you have to peel it, then put it on the mustache, and then peel the other side so it’s not easy to replace this tape quickly. I’m getting pretty good at doing it quickly though. Half of the villain's mustache fell off during the final fight scene so that was unfortunate. But I had just re-taped his mustache so we did what we could. After Mulan we did a changeover back to Secret Garden and then did a show of Secret Garden and then did a changeover to White Christmas. Oh, and when I went into the cove for that changeover, I turned on the lights and a bat flew at my head. It was not a pleasant experience. So I ran back out of the cove and made the master electrician go up there. We weren’t done with changeover too late. I don’t remember what time it was though.

So today I got to go to church with a few of the other girls in the company. We went to Crosspointe here in Valdosta. It was pretty similar to church services I’m used to. It’s always interesting visiting churches. I’ve always thought it’s funny when people come to Northside and they think they have to pay for the coffee, but today I saw doughnuts and soft drinks being served and the first thing I did was look for a cash box or a cash register to see if you had to buy them. :) After going to church, I feel like I will finally be able to figure out what day of the week it is every day this week because I am always used to figuring out my weeks based on Sunday...if that makes any sense. Anyways, as we were leaving, I noticed that the street the church was on was named Northside Drive. I find that really ironic. My dad says it’s a sign. We went to Atlanta Bread Company for lunch on the way back to campus. It’s basically a Panera. It was good though. I felt like I had a more productive morning because of waking up early and then having a couple hours of just chilling out in my room before we had to be at the theater. We did White Christmas this afternoon. It went pretty well. It was rough in spots. And I think we broke the train when we were bring it off stage. I heard a very loud splintering sound. Also, we have to bring the first legs out to bring the train off stage, and they lowered the legs back in too soon because one of the legs lowered right into the train. This has happened before and it’s not cool because then I’m practically on stage trying to pull a leg out of a train and then it goes swinging and there is nothing I can do except hope that what is happening on the other side of the stage is more interesting than what I’m doing. Then in the second act, Betty Haynes' mic went out so I had one scene with her doing a costume change to fix this. I had to run back and forth between my headset and the shop to get instructions from the sound engineer on what to do. I ended up having to track down one of the other actors who yells most of their lines anyways to give her his mic. We did the switch and then I zipped up her dress just in time for her to get backstage for her entrance and for me to run backstage and jump on the train and dive for the pacman to fly the front barn legs out. A couple more seconds and the barn legs would have been in a New York night club. I was shaking afterwards. It was insane and I probably could have handled the situation a little better, but I may have panicked a little bit. The actress stayed calm though which helped me stay as calm as I possibly could. I hope that never happens again, but if it does I'm just going to immediately find the guy who yells his lines so he is ready to hand over his mic. After the show, we had a changeover back to Secret Garden. But guess what...Secret Garden is not till Tuesday night! That means that I get all of tomorrow off and then most of Tuesday off. I think I’m going to see a movie tomorrow! I’m very excited! Oh, and I made Skyline Chili for dinner tonight. It was yummy. And I made way too much spaghetti! Like I made enough Spaghetti to feed an army. It’s kind of ridiculous! But now I am just rambling because I am ready to go to sleep.

Some more articles

Be sure to watch the video at this link: http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=12709918

My name is in this one! It's at the very bottom, but it's still there: http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/146608354

I'm not sure if this is the same article about White Christmas that I posted before: http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/145731987

White Christmas again: http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/145978328

If you are in the area: http://valdostadailytimes.com/todays-top-stories/x1617562230/Buy-tickets-now-for-Peach-State-bingo-party

Mulan: http://valdostadailytimes.com/todays-top-stories/x1617553037/-MULAN

That's right. I did that!

Just had to share a story. At our final dress rehearsal tonight, I glass of water that was sitting on a desk got spilled on stage right before the curtain was about to go up for Act II, so what do I do? I go out on stage, drop to my hands and knees, and wipe up the water with the t-shirt I am still wearing. That's how intense we are here at Peach State! I had a wet shirt on for the rest of the show to protect my actors from slipping on water. After I had a chance to realize what I had done, I just started laughing. Some of the actors who hadn't seen it were asking me what was so funny and I couldn't even get it out because I was laughing so hard but at the same time trying to hold it in because the second act had started.

I just needed to share that story. :)

Mulan Article

Here is a short article about Mulan.

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/146319976

Two shows down, one to go!

Whew! I’m just going to say that again. Whew! First, opening weekend for Mulan went great! Kids really are the best audience. That show also just moves so fast that you don’t have time to really think about what you are doing...you just do it. It’s just a fun show. It makes me feel like I’m working at Disney. All the actors get to run out to the front lobby after the show to take pictures with the kids. It’s so cool! Oh, and we got our new comm. system so that helped a lot with getting the show running smoothly. So we did Mulan on Friday and Saturday and then changed over to White Christmas Saturday night for our Sunday matinee. Changeover also went pretty smoothly. We saw a bat up in the cove which was not pleasant. I never really want a bat to be that close to me again in an enclosed space where I can’t really run away because I have to duck under pipes and crawl over air ducts. I promise I will take pictures of the cove before I leave this summer. Anyways, I should say that everything with the changeover went smoothly except for the barn being brought back in. Let me remind my readers that this barn weighs 1310 lbs. I’ve actually been told a few different weights for this barn, but the latest weight I was told is 1310 lbs because when we had to call the company who installed the Variable Speed system because the barn was stuck in the fly loft, they informed us that the weight limit on each batten is 1300 lbs. The problem was that the pacman was telling us the barn was already all the way in when it was actually all the way out. Therefore, it wasn’t letting us bring it in because like I said, the computer thought it already was in. So our ATD had to open up the computer and manually tell the computer where the barn was and then reset the system so we could bring the barn in. We had to fix this all Sunday morning though so we were getting very close to the time when we were going to have to start preset for the show. But we got it fixed so all is well. Well, I should say that our ATD got it fixed so all is well. For not doing White Christmas for a whole week, I thought the show went really well. It went smoothly for me at least. After the show, we did another changeover to Mulan. We had to brave the cove again and hope not to see any more bats. We didn’t find any bats, but I did learn that I shouldn’t look around so much when I’m up there because I did see a dead rat. So, I think we finished changeover around 7:00pm on Sunday and then the cast was sitting down with the orchestra in the theater to sing through Secret Garden for the evening work call so we weren’t able to work in the shop. The tech crew left, and then we all had to come back at 10:00pm when the actors and orchestra were done and then we all had to work from 10pm to 2am to get things done. All this week we are on run crew for Secret Garden so we can’t work in the shop during our normal times. At this point, I’m not even working in the shop anymore. I’m only in rehearsals. When Friday comes along and we open Secret Garden, we will then be in rep so all we will be doing is running shows and doing changeovers. I’m very very excited to get some rest! I think this week is reaching every one’s breaking point. We are all exhausted and small things are setting us off so the big things are just insane to have to handle. I thank the people who are keeping their cool and having patience with the ridiculous stuff going on and I don’t judge the people getting frustrated because I completely understand. We are so close to having all three shows open and then I think we will all be able to get recharged and into a new groove of doing the rep. I love our cast though! They rock! I appreciate their patience with me because I am new to this whole Assistant Stage Manager thing and it’s been really hard for me because I’m not actually an Assistant Stage Manager so I was never at any rehearsals so I am still learning the show. I’ve told a few people that I think for doing three musicals in rep, it is more important to have a second ASM with sound and lighting skills than an Sound and Electrics Assistant. I feel like it’s been forever since I actually did anything for sound and lighting besides un-muting mics backstage.

So for Secret Garden, I’m basically flying one thing in and out one time during the entire show. The rest of the time I am just cuing people and moving a few things around backstage. There is a lot of scenery backstage in this show and not a whole lot of room for it. Traffic jams are an issue, but every rehearsal we figure out a problem and we fix it. It’s kind of a slap in my face when I worry about how something is going to work and then it just works. That why our cast is awesome. They make things work. When my brain is on overload, I just forget how to make easy fixes. But we had our last 10 out of 12 on Tuesday and it was long! I mean, it was the 10 out of 12 hours, but it just felt long. I was actually just sitting on the floor backstage reading a book the majority of the day because I cued people like once an hour. So, I guess today is Wednesday, but it’s after midnight now so I guess it’s actually Thursday. My days are completely mixed up. So our 10 out of 12 was only yesterday, and then this morning was our first dress rehearsal. This afternoon we did a shift tech where we only did the scene shifts with the ensemble. Then tonight was another dress rehearsal, but we had the orchestra for this one. Tomorrow we are having just a run through in the morning without orchestra and without costumes. The afternoon tomorrow is to be announced and then our final dress/preview is tomorrow night. And then I’m not sure what we are doing during the day on Friday, but we open Friday night and then changeover to Mulan for Saturday matinee and then changeover to Secret Garden for Saturday night and then changeover to White Christmas for Sunday matinee. Like I said in the beginning...whew!

Nobody move!!! I dropped me brain.

So, it has been a crazy week. I really could just leave it at that, but I guess I’ll go into a little more detail since that’s why I’m even doing this blog in the first place. :) I’ll try to do this update in chronological order so that I don’t confuse myself. Last weekend was another weekend of White Christmas. So far we have done 6 performances of White Christmas. During the school year, 6 performances would mean that we are done. I have to say that I am actually glad we have more performances to go because you work so hard to put on a show and then after only 6 performances you have to strike everything. We need to get some more use out of this set and these costumes! We are not working 70 hours a week for nothing. Anyways, our performances went pretty well. It was rough in places after not doing the show for a week, but it was still good. I think it was Saturday night that one of our scene shifts just went very wrong and we were halfway in the Vermont Inn and halfway in the barn, but I thought it was kind of funny. :) Our stage manager said someone had better be lying on the floor dead for a shift to go that wrong. :) But it wasn’t that bad. They made it work. After our performance on Sunday, we did our first changeover. Mulan 10 out of 12 was on Monday so we went from White Christmas to Mulan in less than an hour. After we did the changeover, we still had to stay and do shop hours till 10, but it was pretty relaxed so it wasn’t too bad. I gave one of my roommates the list of everything I needed to make Skyline Chili and she went to the store to get all the stuff on Sunday while I was in the shop, but I still haven’t had time to make it. I’m hoping to make it sometime this weekend. So Monday was our 10 out of 12. It’s kind of funny how we all actually look forward to 10 out of 12 because it’s one of our shortest work days. We were able to get through the show twice which was awesome. It’s only an hour and 15 minutes long though. There wasn’t too much excitement backstage for 10 out of 12 because there are two set pieces that come on and off, two things on the counterweight system, and two things on the variable speed. So I thought this was going to be a pretty chill show. Well, I was wrong. Our first dress rehearsal was Tuesday night. There are 11 people in this cast with a total of 92 quick costume changes. 92! Let me remind you that this is only a one hour and 15 minute show. In “Honor to us All,” there is one girl who has 3 costumes changes in that one song and two girls who each have 2 costume changes within the song. It is insane. We had to run that song at least 5 times before we made all the costume changes. The quote of the night happened when the director asked what the problem was with making the quick changes. The girl I help with her quick changes held up her sleeves and just said, “these aren’t American!” We all just burst out laughing which helped with the stress we were all starting to feel. Luckily we have 4 extra stagehands backstage for this show since the entire company is not casted because there is no way that me, the ASM, and the dresser could handle all these costume changes. We finally started making the changes in that song though. For those of you who were a part of “Christmas According to Scrooge” this past year...that costume change at the end was nothing compared to these costume changes. It’s full Chinese garb with wig changes and then they have props they are grabbing as well. The costume shop spent all day Wednesday rigging all the costumes with velcro and other little tricks to make the changes even quicker. At this point the actors actually have extra time before they go out on stage. From what I heard from someone who watched our rehearsal last night, it’s pretty amazing seeing someone go off stage and then come back on about 15 seconds later in a completely different costume. So, this show is all about the costume changes. And really the fastest costume changes are in the first 15 minutes of the show and then we get to breath a little bit and clean up the pile of costumes at our feet. In that same song, I also have to re-tape a mustache because Mulan’s father goes from being the father, to a merchant, and then back to her father. Every time the actor has to take off his mustache, I have to re-tape it so it will stick again. It’s not just a roll of tape though. It’s these little tabs that you peal off one side and stick it to the mustache and then peal off the other side to stick to the face. It’s a little difficult to do in the dark, but I’m getting better at it. The guy that plays Mulan’s father also plays the villain, Shan-Yu, so at the end of the show he has to change back into Mulan’s father. Well, we didn’t actually get all the way to end of the show Tuesday night because it took so long in the beginning. So when we had our dress rehearsal Wednesday night, we still weren’t sure how long we had to do this guy’s costume change. When we got to that part, he exited stage right and in the process of running around to stage left had gotten his belt off and when he got to us we just started pulling his Hun costume off and I pulled his mustache off his face and then helped him get his arms into the sleeves of his father shirt while another girl pulled off one hat and put another one on him and while he was snapping his shirt on, I was putting his other mustache on him and then I handed him his cane and we were done. We knew that we had the Emperor's song to do the change, so when we looked on stage and realized that the Emperor hadn’t even started singing yet, he just looked at us and said, “so I have more time than I thought.” :) That was my favorite quote of the night on Wednesday. But yeah...Mulan has some cool special effects in it. My parents are coming to see the shows at the end of the season though so I don’t want to spoil too much. :)

This week in the shop has been pretty busy. We finished building for Mulan a few days ago. We had pretty much finished painting for Mulan around that time too, but the scenic charge gets notes every night so there has still been painting to do. The shop has most of Secret Garden built now. Not a whole lot of Secret Garden is painted though. The costume shop was still doing stuff for Mulan today as well as props. The puppets were a big project for this show. I’ve been helping in every area this week as usual. Props, paint, carpentry, costumes, etc. I really don’t know why my title is Sound and Electrics Assistant. They should just call me what I am...Everybody’s Assistant. But anyways, days are kind of blurring together so I can’t really remember what I’ve been doing this week. The scene shop is turning into a maze though....literally. They are building the maze pieces for Secret Garden and they are all over the shop so it’s really difficult to walk through the shop. I don’t know how all these set pieces are going to fit backstage.

Tonight is opening night for Mulan. It should be good. The show is definitely a kid’s show, but I enjoy it. It’s pretty cheesy in some places, but I think the actors have done a great job in making it awesome! Everyone here is just really easy to work with! We all have a blast backstage even if a show isn’t going too well on stage. I am so glad I am here doing this.

Secret Garden tech week starts on Tuesday! Last show here we come!

Article

Here is a link to an article in the Valdosta Daily Times about White Christmas.

http://valdostadailytimes.com/local/x2023226959/Peach-State-returns

Peach State Summer Players

I keep on forgetting to post this link. A couple of the guys in the cast are doing a "Peach Players Super Short Show" at every performance. This is the YouTube channel where they are being posted if you want to go watch them. You will get to see some of the behind the scenes of Peach State Summer Theater. :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/PSSummerPlayers

It's HOT!

Like really hot! The forecast says that it’s just in the 90s, but my car thermometer has been saying 100 and up the past week. As soon as you step outside you feel like you are walking through a thick wall of heat and your clothes stick to you immediately. It also doesn’t help with sleepiness because the intense heat makes me really sleepy. I grabbed a freeze pop on the way out the door today and luckily I had eaten about half of it before I got outside the building because the rest of it melted by the time I got to my car. It was crazy. I really wish I could just jump into a pool and then relax in air conditioning all day. I think as kids, we appreciate summer time, but we also take it for granted. I kind of wish that I could just lay around all summer and do nothing but watch movies and eat ice cream, but that’s a dream world. Once you get your first summer job, there is no going back. But, I should be thankful that I am working indoors in air conditioning. And I’m adjusted to our insane schedule now. Going back to school is going to be a breeze after doing this all summer. My stamina has grown a lot. And the funniest part is that our 10 out of 12 days are our shortest days so I can’t ever dread a 10 out of 12 again! :) Load-ins are also going to seem easy after this because that is only an 8 hour day. In case you have forgotten, I am working from 8:30am to 8pm every day with an hour and a half for lunch, but that schedule is over because the next two weeks are tech weeks so I will be working from 8:30am to 11pm pretty much every day until we open Secret Garden. After we open Secret Garden, we will have the days off and will only be running shows and doing changeovers. And now, I am off to another performance of White Christmas.

Rocks and Puppets!

So yesterday I had a flashback to Narnia as I was painting a rock. This rock is made out of plaster and newspaper and is mounted on a wood base and chicken wire. The day before yesterday, we were having to work outside to cover this rock in plaster, joint compound, and this other grey stuff that kind of had the texture of play-do, but nastier. Anyways, we covered this rock with all these mixtures with our hands so when we finished, I had discovered a new way to cast broken fingers. :) As I stood outside in the scorching GA sun, I realized that it was actually the longest I had been outside since I got here. The sun gave me an energy boost that was very much needed! Then, when we had nothing else to do, the Technical Director had us clean the tool room. We cleaned it really well, but it’s not going to stay like that for long. That night, I believe it was Wednesday (my days are getting confused) I went out to dinner with Genny (my professor) to a Mexican restaurant and then went back to her apartment to hang out and watch Mythbusters. She also gave me a tour of Valdosta and the rest of the VSU campus that I haven’t really seen. Since I’ve been here, most of my time has been spent in the Fine Arts building, my apartment, and the two roads between here and Wal Mart. So it was nice to see more of the town. We drove through downtown Valdosta which is very quaint and I want to go back when we get a day off in July to see some of the stores down there. She also showed me the dorm she used to live in and the house she used to live in which was kind of cool. Who gets this kind of bonding time with one of their professors?

Okay, so now to Thursday when I got to paint the rock. I was given a pretty bad elevation (colored drawing) of the rock and I had to paint it to look like that. Basically, the scenic charge (painter) didn’t want to deal with the rock so she just left me to do it. So I mixed the colors and did a gradation with the three colors I mixed to give it depth in the crevices and such. I was pretty proud of it, but then I had to do the detail work that was on the elevation and it was horrible, but we had to do it like the designer wanted it so I did it exactly the way it was drawn. It looks like dinosaur poop with some bird poop on it that is supposed to be snow. But hey, it looks like the elevation. Then I watched paint dry for a while because we had nothing else to do. Oh, and when we took our normal 4:00 15 minute break, the ATD was joking with me that my title should technically just be assistant. This whole sound/electrics assistant is really meaningless because I am assisting everyone. I don’t really do any sound and electrics stuff anymore. Last night we did stay till 10:00pm to focus for Mulan. I was really useless because I was so tired. That meant that I got two hours this morning off though.

So we are to today now, Friday. I didn’t have to go into work until 10:30 this morning which was real nice! When I did go into work, I just cleaned paint stuff till lunch break. After lunch I helped the props master with the puppets for Mulan. All the ancestors are actually these huge puppets. They are very cool so I’m glad I got to help with them. They are long metal poles right now with a block of wood as their shoulders and there arms are small pbc pipes tied together so it has the elbow joints and everything. They are hard to explain, but I got to drill holes in the metal poles which made some really stinky fumes. :) I also destroyed the drill bit I was using so the last couple of holes were really difficult because I didn’t want to change drill bits because I didn’t want to destroy two. But I got to attach all the arms to the puppets so I was really excited to have a part in putting the puppets together. Then we practiced our first changeover of shows because we had been building the Mulan set on stage and we had a White Christmas performance tonight so we needed to get ready for that.

White Christmas was a little rough tonight considering we haven’t done it since Sunday and we have all been working on other shows during the week, but we had a lot of fun anyways. There was a lot of laughing, dancing, and singing going on backstage. I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a blast tonight.

One show open...two to go.

We had our first opening weekend this weekend. We opened White Christmas on Friday night, had another performance Saturday night, and then a third performance Sunday afternoon. Opening night was okay, but our best performance was Sunday afternoon. I’m enjoying being backstage for the performances. I feel so much more involved with a running crew position. At CNU, all I’ve done is design work so I haven’t actually been on a running crew yet. I’m getting to work a lot closer to the actors than I have at CNU. We really have an awesome cast and crew to work with. Everyone has a great attitude about everything which makes it a pleasant working environment which is really helpful considering we are all lacking on sleep and might just kill each other if we had unpleasant people to work with. Nothing too major went wrong with any of our performances this weekend. Just a few late/early cues due to us having to use walkie talkies instead of a comm. system because our comm. system blew up the other night when mine wasn’t working. I was lucky that my comm. went out at the beginning of the performance the other night because I didn’t have my ear drums blown up when the comm. system went. Running a show with two way radios creates a challenge because we can’t really respond to our stage manager because if we are talking and she is needing to call a cue, she can’t talk until we are done talking. But I love overcoming challenges! Challenges are sent so that we can learn! Also, having my comm. go out on Thursday night did raise my confidence on knowing my cues. The thing is that we had done White Christmas a couple times with comm. before we lost it, so doing Mulan and Secret Garden without comm. is going to be even more of a challenge. I say bring it on!

We had an awesome audience Sunday so I think that helped with everyone’s energy. We are all being worn down. The actors all got Friday afternoon off to rest for the show, but none of the techies did which doesn’t really make sense, but whatever. We are all running shows on very little sleep. It’s working okay, but it would probably be better if we got some rest somewhere in our day. We did get Sunday evening and Monday morning off though! It was a very nice rest period. I didn’t realize how little free time I had last week until I realized how grateful I was for 5 extra hours on Sunday and 5 extra hours on Monday. It made Monday a pretty great day! I slept in, got to build stuff in the shop, we danced to Backstreet Boys, Brittany Spears, and N’Sync while working, we all went out for pizza, and I got my first paycheck! My paycheck got sent here so I have to send it to VA to actually get deposited and taxes took about 50 dollars out of it, but it’s all good. I also went to the store and got some ice cream because the next couple of weeks are going to be crazy so I will be needing ice cream. :)

I have been working extra hard to stay awake today. It just seemed longer than our typical day. Probably because I was laying out and painting bricks all day. As in painting wood to look like bricks. That becomes a boring thing to do for 10 hours. At one point today there was only about 4 of us working in the shop because everyone else went to the warehouse so I got to plug my iPod in and play my 60’s playlist which was a lot of fun and helped wake me up for a little while. When the end of the day finally came along, I was very excited to be headed back to my apartment to rest. My roommate and I just finished making egg rolls for dinner so I am very happy right now and ready to go to sleep. :)

Oh, and I don’t know if I already mentioned this before, but I found Klove on the radio here so that is nice to listen to on the way to and from work.

Sleep time. Oh, and I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t wait to open Secret Garden because it’s going to be amazing!!!!! :)