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!!!!! :)

Murphy’s Law...

It might be a bit of an exaggeration, but a few things definitely went wrong tonight. Tonight was our preview of White Christmas. That basically means it was our last dress rehearsal and it is open to the public. The last couple of days I’ve just been doing a ton of painting because there is sooo much scenery to paint in so little time. The shop has begun to build Mulan because all that’s really left for White Christmas is painting. So back to tonight. I will first say that there are a lot of super fast costume changes in the show and they all went really well tonight. There were only a few zippers that didn’t get up, but it all went great. I had to un-mute two mics tonight compared to the one mic I had to un-mute last night. It’s a pretty simple fix, but having to un-mute someone’s mic while they are trying to do a fast costume change is not quite as easy. Then my headset went out at the end of the third scene of the show, so I did not have my stage manager calling my cues for the rest of the show. Luckily I know all my cues and they are all pretty clear. It was still a little nerve racking. I was paying extra close attention all night because I didn’t want to miss any of my cues. Then, there is this huge train. I think I’ve mentioned the train before. Well, actors roll it out on stage, but me and the props guy have to roll it off. To get it off stage, we have to fly out the first legs (side curtains). Well, the main drop took longer to close, so it took us longer to get the train off stage, so the legs came back in too soon so one of the legs actually landed right in the train and got pulled completely backstage. I then had to push the leg out over the top of the train which sent the leg swinging so then I had to leap out of the train and steady the leg. The whole time I’m doing this, I am in complete view of the audience members that we had there. So needless to say, we had a few complications on my side of the stage tonight, but I didn’t miss any of my cues so yay! Opening night is tomorrow night!

We get paid tomorrow!!!!!!! Our plan is to go out to eat because we are tired of eating sandwiches and ramen. :)

I’m doing laundry tonight! For the first time since I’ve been here, I get to do laundry! Genny (my professor) had to go back to VA for a couple of days so she left me the key to her apartment and me and one of my roommates are going over there tonight to do laundry! I can’t wait to put on a clean pair of jeans tomorrow...just to get them dirty again in about 10 minutes of being in the shop.

I feel like there might be more to say, but I am exhausted and I still need to get up to go do laundry.