DC: we're not in Iowa any more...

So we just finished our stop in DC and let me take a little time to explain our title for this blog. The two biggest differences from Iowa and DC are: in DC there are other gay people, which I was happy about. However, our crew was nowhere as nice as any of our crews in Iowa, including professional and non-professional, which no one was happy about.

To give the Venue as many words as it was worth: we only used 25% of our set because of random rules the enforced. We almost didn't get lunch between shows, until Dave our Fearless leader pointed out they were in no position to discuss the details of the contract, since they were months late turning it in.  Finally, we gave two performances, one of which was to an audience of 20.

Now to the more exciting parts of our DC experience.  On our day off we went site seeing and exploring around the city. We went to the Smithsonian and saw Dinosaurs, the underwhelming Hope Diamond, and learned about Theories of Evolution. It was a really awesome museum. While looking at a nice display of the dinosaurs, I assigned Dinos to all present. Terry was clearly the one being eaten, I was the one watching him be eaten, Colleen was the fierce T-Rex (because of her claw hands from the hot glue incident), Dave was the Stegosaurus, Tia was the Brontosaurus (because it's really tall), and Miranda was the little tiny one, also watching Terry be eaten

After a long museum experience Terry and I cam to the conclusion that we would be great museum partners. See we both enjoy running through the museum to make sure we see everything there is to see. Sometimes we will stop to read three or four things and sit to watch the three-minute movies on evolution or Pangea.  However, the girls and Dave like to read things while walking in the museum. I don't know what that's about...

Next we wanted to find a nice snack place, like Starbucks because we were starting to get hangry. Hangry, is the period in which you are so hungry you because angry, it's in the dictionary, look it up people. So my good friend Nate who lives in the city gave us directions to a Starbuck. Miranda and I got a little confused by the map and got us lost.  Time was not wasted because we took this picture with a statue made by Mark di Suvero.  We wanted to climb on it more but feared being yelled at by the police.  Suvero also made Victor's Lament the huge red statue in the middle of Mulenberg's Campus, note the similarities. Finally we settled down for snack time in a Bruegger's Bagles, because the Starbucks we were directed to was closed down.  We sat in Bruegger's for quite a while discussing sex education form our younger years, how we first learned about it, which friends told us, what things confused us, and how our parent went about "the talk."

Latter I split off from the group to go meet my friend Nate and go to dinner. We were joined by his boyfriend Jay, and his three friends from work Ben, Mike, adn Don. Let me first say I love my tour mates, but sometimes I need a break from being around only straight people, especially after being in Iowa.  So we had dinner in a Bookstore that also was a restaurant. Next we were off to the Haunted Forest.  The Majority of our time was spent waiting to go into the haunted forest, which made us very cold.  Finally, after freezing to death, we went in. It was a typical haunted house, where most of the fear came from anticipation of what would be next. There were two awkward parts of this  event.  One was, as Ben called it, Birth number two. You walked into all this fabric that was being blown into each other trying to fight your way out as if to ask the question: "am I being born again?" The next awkward experience was in a room with a million hanging manikins.  There were so many, that I was sure I was being molested.  The scariest parts were when the people with fake chainsaws came running at us.  They may take the blades off, but the sound is still frightening.  It was at that point that I grabbed Ben's hand and ran from them.  One of them touched me with their chainsaws to which I responded "if you touch me with that again I will kick you in the balls."  The other scary part, which was scary mostly for Ben, was this section with a ton of clowns.  Ben was not Happy.  Since he kindly protected me when I was afraid of the chainsaw people I felt it only fair to pay him the same courtesy.  So I'm not going to get by writing this blog without saying the phrase "work it out." So I said it, that's all you get.  I will leave it at the fact that Ben and I did not stop holding hands after leaving the forest.  He was a really sweet guy, who made me feel very safe in the haunted forest.  It was an amazing night, probably my favorite day of tour thus far.  In conclusion I was extremely happy, because as I said earlier there are other gay people in DC, unlike Iowa.

~Dany

Squirrels Over La Crosse

That's right. We've finished our first stint in the midwest. Tomorrow we leave La Crosse, WI and head back to the east coast. Aside from our stinky venue (very few crew, very few brains on the crew, and very little food), La Crosse has treated us very well. Yesterday on our day off everyone did a lot of relaxing. We hot tubbed, we ate, we watched Penn State beat Ohio State (ok well that was mostly me), and we found the best old fashioned ice cream shoppe across the street. Then it was time to go back to the hotel to settle in for a quiet night... or so we thought...

Dany was pretty high from the sugar in the ice cream (he ate all of his two scoops and finished my milkshake), and all of a sudden he demanded we play "flying squirrel." Hopefully no one reading this works for the La Crosse Holiday Inn because "flying squirrel" is the game of launching yourself from one hotel bed to the other and getting your body as horizontal as you can in mid-air. We must have all been in the midst of our own sugar highs because we not only embraced the idea, we took pictures.

Included for your amusement, The cast of the Velveteen Rabbit works it out, squirrel style.

~ Miranda

A Retrospective look at Decorah, IA

It's very easy to say that the job description of Technical Director on a 'one-night-stand' tour like this is quite simply; "Work it out!". Needless to say I've had a little anxiety in my life for the first couple of tour stops. Looking back on Interlochen, Des Moines and Oskaloosa everything went well but I still knew that in the back of my mind the dreaded Decorah, IA was coming up.

When I first looked at the contract I skimmed over the chicken scratched technical rider and didn't think much about it until my first phone call to the venue. When I started inquiring about rigging and our carpentry needs the venue TD, Tom Henning, paused and with possibly a little trepidation in his voice and told me that the venue was not a theatre, but more of a larger church or concert hall with a thrust stage and no grid or proscenium.

Tom assured me that they would "create" a proscenium for our show and that they would be able to hang and build the show just as I would in a traditional theatre. Also, being that we had a show the day before, there would also be no way to load in the evening before and we were set for a school matinee at 11:30 AM. Oh...and the 'theatre' had to be dark at 10:30 for church who was to speak for 20 minutes. (It was in the contract, and there are just some things you can't bargain around.) This put our normal 4.5 to 5 hour load-in with a professional IA crew and a theatre at a grand total of 4-hours even. I was skeptical and eating antacids like candy. I knew from my experience in arena shows and rock concerts that doing this properly was a colossal task, and much more complicated than I could ever expect from a student crew in a very small town in Iowa.

I WAS DEAD WRONG! And never more happy to be it. Tom, Kendall, Martha and the rest of the crew got our show up in 3.5 hours, looking exactly as it was in a large professional theatre. They flew a large square truss with 9 chain-hoists, put my electrics and carpentry pipes dead on the money at distance and trim, and hustled to get the show off the truck and in the air. As the 9 motors started creeping upwards around and hour and a half after the truck door opened, the set of the Velveteen rabbit in its entirety slowly unfolded until it was at trim and the whole thing in one glorious thirty second climb stood before me as if Landis Smith himself had waved a magic wand and made it all appear.

I was elated. This was one of the fastest load-ins we have had, all of the lights were circuited and focused and colored perfectly and it was in a non-traditional space to boot.

Then, just around the 4 hour mark, as the church organ was starting to play I discovered that the cross-stage data run, which in layman's terms makes all of the lights change color and the moving lights have motion, was run backwards. As I was trying frantically to figure out what to do, I stepped into the one place on stage that was not well lit and not 'railinged', far out of where I was supposed to be, and to add injury to insult... fell off of the stage. Great! A nasty bruise from a clumsy fall, and I still had to solve the problem of making the perfectly laid out and focused light plot work with absolutely no time to do it.

Tom, Martha, Kendall and the spectacular house crew stuck by me... with a ten minute house hold arranged, they guided me around the stage in a genie lift where i fought with the blasted cable to extract it from the mess that it was buried in. I was running out of time, and we had to open the house. I pulled a drop across stage just downstage of me working in the air and finished within 2 minutes of curtain.

Phew, I thought I was done, and that I could now get the show off without a hitch. Then I realized that in all of the excitement I hadn't yet given the sound guy the show's soundtrack. As I was sprinting to the light booth I turned back and somehow laid down my prompt book as I was grabbing the show CD. I sprinted back up the stairs and at 1 minute late started the soundtrack and called house to half. Smooth sailing from there.... Nope. I hit go on the light board...and...nothing happened... again I hit go....nothing. The board locked up. The board that I had been using all day and the whole tour without a hitch...locked up. I rebooted holding the house at half and finally the show was able to start.

It has to be alright now right? Nope. As i took the first few lighting cues from memory I looked down and realized that I had left my prompt book somewhere else. I hit a cue with about 1 minute until the next and started to sprint backstage to find it. Just as I got to the top of the staircase, another Luther College angel, Trudy the custodian, was already there handing it to me. Shout out to you Trudy, for being alert, and saving the show. I will never forget you.

Don't ever miss the chance to get to Luther College and work with the best local crew in the country! Heck, the Dave Matthews Band didn't when they recorded their album 'Live at Luther'.

I'm a little more relaxed in the past few days, and I say this to the rest of the country. Throw anything you got at me. I'm ready and I think I finally have my TD stripes...even if they are black and blue.

~Matt

(Kendall (far left), Tom (center), Martha (far right) and some of the Luther crew. (Thanks for the photo Tiffany!)

weork it ourt@!

Wekll here I am typinhg my first bloig.. . .or rather henpecking muy first blog. You see, I am dowen to sixx working digitss. I had an encountefr with a very hot hot gljue gun. Thenn I had an encounwer with a veerty angry broken suitcase. Other thanj thesee battles lost and wonm (mostly losxt), life on the roafd is wonderfdul!^!

Worjk it ouht!!%*!
~Colleern!

La Crosse: It's Hard to be a Wing-Woman

First of all...i want to extend a huge THANK YOU and CONGRATULATIONS to the city of La Crosse...bravo! hurrah! you did it!!!!!!!...your Barnes and Noble worked it out!!!...yes, to all you readers out there...the quest is over...we have prevailed..."mean girls" is now in our posession and we couldn't be happier...so thank you kindly.

At the moment I am now fortunate to be rooming with a certain Dany Guy who has not yet worked it out albeit the constant cheering on from his fellow tour mates (although we are pretty sure he has broken a few closeted hearts around the country)...why has he failed to complete this mission? well...let's just say that we have not been in the best of locations to cater to his personal needs...however La Crosse has proved a pleasant surprise...

last night we all decided to got out as we have on a whole been pretty lame with the whole party scene...so we all got dressed up and enjoyed a fine dining experience at Fayze's bar and grill where we enjoyed cheese curds (billed as a Wisconsin must!) and local brews, except for dany who ordered a cosmo so he could "look adorable" while drinking it...unfortuantely our waitress was unkowledgeable on the subject of cheese as she had never heard of "munster" cheese....lame to say the least.

after dinner we headed over to "players", a dance club adorned with gay icons including audrey hepburn and marilyn...alas, no judy...we arrived a tad early so we sat down to scope out the scene and look for promising prospects for Dany. We shook our little bunny tails on the dance floor hoping that someone would approach our adorable gay companion.

finally, while taking a dance break, a fine looking fellow wearing a green sweater came over and sat down next to dany...miranda and i gripped each other hoping this would be the one!...unfortunately he dropped the "boyfriend" bomb and miranda and i died a little inside. Said boyfriend soon joined us. Miranda and i looked on as dany "conversed" with this couple...and by conversed i mean "was even more adorable than usual" which prompted said couple to argue...basically dany is a homewrecker as he was offered drinks and basically could have "worked it out" with green shirt if said boyfriend had not been around...maybs.

Miranda and i began to route for another prospective in the bar, but dany wasn't really feeling it....lame. But, he did offer his number as a consolation (how gracious of him, really). Needless to say, Miranda and i found out during the course of the evening that being wing-women is hard work...such a rollercoaster of emotions did we experience!

sooooo..no working it out yet...but we still have two days....

to be continued...

~ Tia

Oskaloosa: a change of heart

i know we are now in La Crosse, Wisconsin but i just wanted to clear up a few things about Oskaloosa...i was quite miffed about the absence of "mean girls" in my life and i may have misplaced my frustration. I want to apologize to Oskaloosa by admitting that i was in fact angry at the Wallmart establishment, and not Oskaloosa in general. I know this apology comes pretty late, but i wanted to make sure it happened...i would feel awful to think that the slanderous comments i made about the great city of Oskaloosa which treated us to day after day of yummy hospitality tables as well as a "special" dinner at a local restaurant, would live in cyber world forever without any justification...soooo, again...i am sorry Oskaloosa...you were not the cause of all of my bumps.

~ Tia

MY PANTS ARE WET

So today we had one show after our two shows yesterday plus load in and load out.  All went well... Well I did forget to set my wind because the majority of my other props had be set for me when i was dealing with the merchandise. But all went well aside from some minor injuries.  We just got to out next location Decorah, IA.  We went to a pizza place call Mabe's Pizza, where the joke "mabes pizza, mabes not," was repeated several times.  Also Colleen and I meant to order different wines but ended up with the same which leading to both of us getting a free glass of wine.  Which led to my drunken state that you are now privileged to. After our rock star dinner at Mabe's Pizza I needed ice cream.  So i walked across the way to Happy Joe's where I purchase myself a milkshake.  I offered to give some to Tia which she responded by hitting me in the stomach.  OKAY that's not how it actually went down, but the important points are that I got a milkshake and Tia hit me.  It was really hard, like hard enough that a loud noise echoed in the establishment.  Also you should know that the milkshake resulted in many high kicks.  I was very excited about this peanut butter chocolate delight.  After everyone waited for my milk shake to be done and Tia hit me, we left Joe's to return to the Hotel.  On the van ride home i realized that there was a part of my milkshake that was neither chocolate, nor peanut, nor butter.  It happened to be a cherry.  I don't not know why it was a part of my chocolate peanut butter delight, but alas it was.  I eat the cherry and we are not sure as to whether I eat the steam as well.  Some how from point Joe's to point Hotel my pants became wet. I'm not sure why but the gods of spilling decided that tonight my pants were to become wet upon arrival of the hotel.  All in all it was a fun night.  I also forgot to mention that I did bell kicks while enjoying my chocolate peanut butter delight.  Apparently people in a bar were watching an laughing, but nothing could pull me away form my milkshake.  

~Dany

P.S. Tia Hit me hard, Like REALLY HARD

Prequel To A Tour.

This is my first blog with Bunnies Work It Out.  For those of you who know my gift for problematic situations... this tour is no different.  So let's start with my prequel to tour.

Every year I sublet my room so that while I'm out I don't have to pay rent on a place I'm not living in.  This year I posted on Craigslist to find a subletter.  Someone suggested the Philadelphia Theatre Alliance Listserv, but I was afraid that asking actors to sublet my place would be an invitation to crazy... I'm starting to think that maybe I'm the invitation to crazy. 

Within hours of posting on Craigslist I received inquiries from southeast Asia, west Africa,

and a man who was could have been a cameo on Will and Grace with a Paris Hilton designer

dog.  Which one do you think we interviewed?

I couldn't be around for the interview with Chris the fabulous traveling marketing exec and 

his sidekick snoopy the droopy designer dog however I was told that he was "crazy but he'll do."  According to Chris he has been bouncing around the east coast with his Baltimore-based marketing company for the past few years, is into conspiracy theories (9/11 was an inside job, the wealth of the world is controlled by 7 freemasons, and he thinks the DaVinci Code is a documentary) and finally he is a gay man who loves Sarah Palin (conflict of interests?).  

Ok.  So crazy the Will and Grace caricature of Oliver Stone can take my room.  Cool.  We learned before we interviewed Chris that his sister is going through treatment for cancer, probably caused by the radiation from the metal strips in all of our money that the Federal Government uses to track our every move.  The first day that Chris was supposed to bring over rent there was a family emergency and he had to drive to rural Pennsylvania to be with his sister during treatment.  So he re-scheduled to bring rent by the following Friday.  On Friday his car was towed by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, probably as retribution for revealing the true assassins of JFK; a rare collaboration of Jews, Freemasons, The KGB and American Mafia. Ay yai yai!

So Sarah became a bit worried when Chris bailed on two different chances to make rent payments, so she went to www.ripoffreport.com.  This is a skeptic's best friend.  She entered Chris's name and... SURPRISE it came back with multiple hits.  There were multiple reports of a Chris ******* who charged deposit payments for lay-outs in gay publications then would skip town.  The reports were from Ft. Lauderdale, FL and in the reports they described Chris's personality to a tee, mentioned that he travelled with a dog and that he had most recently fled to Baltimore, MD; probably to escape the ever watching eyes of The NSA and The World-Bank.  

So, because of Chris's erratic personality, failure to pay rent twice in one week due to "emergencies", and then multiple, credible reports of fraud we decided to call the police.  The police told us to stop contact with Chris immediately and that we need to be more careful about who we let into the house and that we need to vet people more seriously who might actually live in the house.  

So now I have no subletter in my room and I am paying rent on a place I live not in.  I have since posted my sublet on the Philadelphia Theatre Alliance listserv and I'm waiting to hear back.  I figure no actor could be crazier than Conspiracy Chris the gay marketer and his canine companion who are constantly running from the biggest conspiracy of all, the American Justice System.  

This all happened two days before I left town.

It's gonna be a great tour!

-Terry 

Oskaloosa: my bumps

enraged. yes, enraged. despite the wonderful crew and the legit hospitality table and the even more legit lunch where again i was scared of the pasta...not because it looked bad but because...well...you know...carbs and such and the sweet lady at the front desk who is going to start breakfast even earlier just for us...yes...despite this i am engraged. why you ask? well...we have been on a journey which has turned into a desperate quest to find the movie Mean girls...you know...the one with the lindsay lohan (when she was pretty)...and we were most definitely sure we could find said movie at Wallmart...but alas, alak we have been forsaken once again...and to make matters worse, when approaching the ice cream freezer where i was pretty positive i could drown my lack of lindsay woes in ben and jerry's phishfood (clearly the best flavor) they...did not have it! ridiculous! annnnndddddd...to make matters the absolute worst ever when we decided on half baked (danny's favorite but obviously the inferior choice) ice cream literally fell on me...totally not sweet. i am now so anxious i have hiccups...

oskaloosa has let me down...its many road bumps have culminated into my personal bump in the quest for a simple, heartfelt classic about teenage girl angst featuring the one and only lindsay lohan pre blonde anorexic lesbian...le sigh. (danny just said we should have purchased cards at wallmart...but god only knows if they sell such a widely sought after item)

yes, i am being dramatic but it's what i do...oh, and the hot tub is broken...

conclusion: oskaloosa is failing to work it out.

~ Tia

Everything is Bigger in Des Moines

October 19th

Des Moines

This is an different type of tour.

Nothing against our touring experience.  It's not horrible.  I've just never had to deal with steam rooms, fitness centers and hottubs in upscale hotels.  It's a lot of pressure taking in all the luxury.  

I'm also adjusting to the whole "union crew" thing.  That's my awkward heavy box to carry.  Go find your own hernia.  All this, combined with waking up to 6500 happy people running a marathon right outside the hotel was just too much.  I think we all needed to de-stress.

Luckily there was pasta.

Actors like pasta... well not Tia...something about carbs...and with the help of a lovely young lady named Joanne See (she gave us plates) two girls and a Dany made a beautiful hotel dinner.  More than likely we'll have to put up with more jacuzzi shortly.  Well, we knew this wouldn't be easy when we signed the contract.  Hopefully, Newark will be better.  I think they have a YMCA.

~Dave

Our First Photos

Here are some of the first photographs taken from our tour so far. They include pictures in front of and inside Corsen Theatre at Interlochen Arts Academy as well as pictures from our drive to Des Moines, IA. Enjoy! 

~ Miranda 

Work it out!!!

We had our first performance. key notes: Dany had an interesting dream the night before, the show went well, Load in and out went smooth, and Matt worked it out!!!

till next time.

~Dany