A Man, A Jeep, No Real Plan

Amazing Stories and Adventures

The Adventures!

A glimpse from the performers!

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Hello all, while the crew has been hurriedly working, our cast has been enjoying their journey and getting creative along the way. Here is a glimpse of what they have been up to courtesy of Jennifer Wilcove.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=UUEKFoMxKd5adtbZgjTb7vOw&v=QSlT9X0nGWo

Also, a serious thank you to all of Whoville who has repeatedly reached out to see how I’m doing and the technicians who have been helping me limp along. I have officially upgraded my condition from sick, to just feeling a bit crappy.

Now to finish loading in this show.

When calling in sick isn’t an option.

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Well, I find myself once again sitting in an airport waiting for my flight to the next city… Last nights load out was a rough one. Not for the usual reasons that a load out at the Fox in Detroit is rough. You know, the lack of a loading dock, no space to disassemble, the frigid cold… Nope it was rough because I somehow managed to become patient zero for a bug on this tour.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that when a roadie gets sick or hurt, they usually don’t have the option of calling in sick. Every show is unique, and that means the job that an individual is doing is unique and no one, including coworkers, knows exactly how to do the sick individuals job. I mean I once spent a week doing one nighters from a wheel chair when I seriously injured my knee. We literally added an extra hand to the call who pushed me around while I tried to instruct people how to put together my scenery through a narcotic induced haze. Allegedly I was very descriptive with my instructions. Hahaha

So, this round of illness started 2 days ago, I thought it was just a sinus thing. Then yesterday I felt a little feverish during the show run… Then load out hit. I’ll spare you the details, but looking at a local crew and basically saying, “these are your next 10 steps, I’ll be right back” and running off to hurl is not fun.

However, with a little bit of help from my road family, I made it through. My head LX donated some ginger tea bags to help offset the nausea, my props assistant made me said tea while I instructed locals on disassembling the last piece of deck scenery, and it was all hands on deck to get the soft goods down so I could lean against the rail and just call in the goods. That’s what I love about touring people, we are family. One big, dysfunctional, slightly incestuous family. When one struggles, we pitch in and get it done. We look out for each other, we take care of the sick/injured, usually… If you’re a dick we might put you on the equivalent of an iceberg and wish you luck. Good thing I’m nice to my coworkers. 😉

Well that’s enough rambling for now. I’m going to drink some more ginger ale and hope that I make it through work when I arrive in Madison this afternoon.

Welcome to Detroit

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Look at this, this is just a glimpse at the majesty that is the lobby of the Fox Theatre here in Detroit. It’s a heck of a lot prettier than their backstage. Hahahaha

At any rate, the first marathon of this tour is over. We opened in Detroit last night. The process of moving this beast is just as rough as I remember from years ago, basically the crew doesn’t sleep for 3 days. This one is particularly rough because we are doing 3 shows today, 2 shows tomorrow and then loading out (starting the move to the next city).

Throughout this entire process I have been doing the 7 black and white photos in 7 days challenge. Here are some of the photos that haven’t made the cut.

Well folks, it’s half hour to our first show, of the day, so I’m gonna go push some scenery around.

The Holiday Adventure is Underway!

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Well we have officially opened How The Grinch Stole Christmas. We spent the last half of last week and all weekend working out the bugs out of the show during tech and opened on Tuesday night. Of course opening a show means opening night gifts and party. The company gave us all these really cool insulated backpack/lunch box things and some other smaller swag before the performance.

Post show we had dinner, drinks, and elbow rubbing with the theatre community of Utica at the Fort Schuyler Club. Check this place out!

Of course now that we’re open, it’s time to earn our keep. Yesterday started at noon with a “load out meeting” followed by some final fine tuning of the show from 1 to 5. Show call at 6 and straight into load out. We finally closed the door on the last truck at 3:15… my day today started around 6am bus rolling by 7 and I’m currently sitting in the Syracuse airport awaiting my flight to Detroit. For our next trick we will be starting load in at 3pm, and around midnight I will finally get a bed… thank god I can sleep on planes!