S&US Tour Diary – April 19, 2013 – Back home & Tour Wrap Up
Friday morning, April 19, began relatively early as we were headed to the airport to head back to Los Angeles. It’s always a little bittersweet on the mornings after a tour because after so many days of traveling together, we start splitting up one by one. Brian got himself a rental car to head back to Orlando and go to Animal Kingdom (yeah, he’s a jerk like that), Tyler was staying in Florida to visit family, Greg, our production head, was headed back to New York, Sean Johnson was headed to San Francisco to meet his family and our awesome tour manager Julianna was staying an extra day to make sure the puppets got to where they needed to go. So, early in the morning we had to began to say goodbye. Luckily Patrick, Cameron (our lighting guy), Peggy and Dan were all still traveling together so there was still some remnants of the tour.
I will tell you this, this tour was filled with nothing but laughs. Nothing. There were no arguments, no fights, just laughs. Even during the tough times (the cataract bus, the Austin hotel, tech issues) we were all still always laughing. The perfect example was the emergence of Ed Wynn impersonations during the seven and a half hour bus ride to Hamilton, Montana. There were so many memorable funny moments on the tour. Even on the way home yesterday we had a layover in the Atlanta airport and just sitting waiting for the next plane there were several, laugh out loud, wipe away a tear moments.
Take this for example, on the plane flight back to Los Angeles, Cameron and Patrick sat next to each other and I sat across the aisle from them. Patrick gets a sandwich on the plane and, for no reason, using the paper from the sandwich and the labels that held it together created a partition to keep Cameron off his side of the row. Hilarious. Well, it was to us. Perhaps we’re just punch drunk from all the travel.
Once we landed in Los Angeles, it was a short shuttle ride to the Henson Company Lot. Even THAT ride was filled with laugher. It’s just a great group of people.Soon after we were all off on our separate ways.
This was a really fun tour. I had a simply amazing time. I got to swap into HDPS and I’Ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face, two things I love and always want to do more of. I got to lead the Alien Barbershop all eleven shows. I had so many funny scenes with ALL the members of the cast. Allan and I did a great slide show. Ted and I did a great Narrated Story. Peggy and I had a memorable New Choice scene. Sean and I graduated to recreations together with Face. Tyler and I did uproarious Bunny Talent show bits together and I loved playing his body when he did HDPS. Brian and I did a hilarious spot scene where the suggestion was ‘Deliverance.’ As in the film. I love working with every single one of these performers and would jump at the chance to do it again.
Let’s not forget Patrick, our fearless leader and my improv mentor. He’s incredibly important to me and, still to this day, I learn new things from him. I will forever be grateful to his time and teachings. He’s the best.
Julianna, our tireless tour manager. Den mother. She’s incredible. She gets us to where we need to be and tackles any problem head on. So grateful for all her work. The success of this tour is as much a result of her work as it is our. Perhaps even more.
Greg, our Production Manager, and Cameron our lighting guy. These guys are the best. They’ve seen every show and if they come up to you and say something worked, you can take it to the bank that it did. We’d be nowhere without them. And to ‘Bobo,’ our newbie tech guy. He fit right in with our insanity and we were so glad to have him along.
I love the facts for this tour that Cameron put together…
We travelled through all four time zones.
We played in seven different states.
We played in places where it was snowing, raining and pushing 90 degrees.
We logged over 8,200 miles.
We did eleven shows.
All of this in 16 days.
It could have gone ten more.
Thanks for following a long on this journey. It was fun to bring it all to you. Here’s hoping there’s more in the future and I can continue. For now I’ll just be dropping back to my regular Wednesday Words posts for the time being. Thanks again!
SU&S Tour Diary – April 18, 2013 – Closing Night
The bus pulled into St. Petersburg at about 3AM. I went straight to my room and right to bed. I’d been able to snooze a little on the bus, but got too into browsing the web to really get any real sleep.
I woke up about noon and headed down to work out. Others in the cast and crew were up early to check out the Salvador Dali museum that was right across the street and near the theater we were at. I decided to just take the day to regroup and get my head straight for the show.
I had really mixed emotions about this show. I love this show. I love everything about it. We genuinely have fun on stage. Even though last night’s show was rough, it was still some of the most fun I’ve had performing. When I get down about shows I have to remember that. It’s hard. So I was excited to be doing another show, but also bummed that this is the last show for, who knows how long. So it was bitter sweet.
After working out, I wrote yesterday’s blog post and checked in on some emails I had to get done. Just took my time to make it through the morning…er…early afternoon.
Soon it was time to meet in the lobby to head to the venue. The venue was directly across the street so we were there in no time and went through an easy soundcheck and tech rehearsal. All that was left was dinner and to perform.
Right before the show began, I was sure to stand center stage behind the scrim, look out towards the audience and take a big deep breath. I was determined to enjoy every second of this show.
The show was awesome. A great way to wrap up the tour. The crowd in St. Petersburg was fantastic. Their suggestions were great and they were extremely into the show.
I had a great first act. New Choice with Peggy had our characters cooking meth. The Digital Puppetry section had me telling a story called The Henson Dropout, about an intern who had dealings with a Sara Lee bunt cake and a resurrected Adolf Hitler who shopped at Lane Bryant. Alien Barbershop was okay. The topic was Cannibalisim.
Trapped in a mine.
No food to eat.
We were getting hungry
So we dined on Pete.
Meh. So so.
I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face went the best it’s gone. Would love to work on this even more and be able to put my own touches on it. Right now I feel I JUST have the basic mechanics down. I’d love to work on it more to really get it down. The audience loved it though and Patrick said it was our most violent version yet. It was fun working on it with Sean Johnson. He’s a fantastic puppeteer and as two of the younger members of the cast, it was fun to get the nod to do these recreations in the show.
In Act II I did a fun spot scene with Brian where the subject was Deliverance. The movie. I had a fun time making Brian’s character extremely uncomfortable and, of course, told him he had a pretty mouth. It got a great reaction.
The rest of the show was great fun and, again, the audience was really great. After the show we did a VIP Meet and Greet which was fun.
Arnorld, our producer from Westbeth Entertainment and Lenny our booked were in town for the show and they said they both loved it and it was the best show they’d seen.
After we left the theatre we all journeyed to an Oyster Bar to have a closing night celebration. It was fun but, again, bittersweet. Really don’t want this tour to end at all.
After much revelry, I said goodbye to those who I wouldn’t see in the morning and walked with a group back to the hotel to put a cap on the last performance day.
S&US Tour Diary – April 17, 2013 – Fort Pierce, FL
The day started super early in being woken up as the bus pulled into our hotel at Fort Pierce. I was so out of it, I just walked off the bus, grabbed my suitcase, walked past the front desk where all our keys were laid out and walked to my room to go back to sleep.
I woke up,unfortunately around 9:30AM. I couldn’t quite get back to sleep, so I got up and worked out. Thirty minutes on the treadmill. I then went up and wrote yesterday’s blog post.
That, and just moving rather slow, took me right up until it was time to get over to the theatre in Fort Pierce. Tyler and I took the runners car over to the theatre which was the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce. COol because just days before “Weird Al” had been through. Not sure how he and his crew fit on that stage. It’s tiny. We barely fit.
Didn’t get to walk around Fort Pierce much. I wanted to, but those who’d already come over earlier, as there was not much to do around the hotel, had said the town was pretty much closed up. Not much was open. So I just hung out at the theatre until show time.
The show last night was an odd beast. The audience enjoyed it tremendously. We got a standing ovation, again. So, obviously, the crowd loved it. But right from the top there were audio problems. Problems that weren’t around at all in soundcheck. I just could not hear anyone during any scene. All I could hear was the house speakers echoing back to the stage. None of the rest of the cast was coming through the monitors clearly. This threw me big time. Improvisation is 90% listening to what your scene partners are saying. It just doesn’t work if you’re fighting to hear them. As a result I was off the whole first act.
At intermission I found out I was not alone, everybody was having the same problem. Our tech crew, which is awesome, went to work on it, but we’re using the house sound so sound is always a crapshoot. They tweaked it a bit, but the problems persisted into the second act.
As I said though, the show was good. I just felt off, not connected, disjointed and the harder I worked to reconnect, the worse it seemed I spun out. There were a few spot I thought I did a passable job. I had to improvise a song during the HDPS segment which I did okay at. Peggy and I did a fun scene using the suggestion ‘Graduating from the school of Tourettes’ which ended in a song. I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face went well. Sean and I weren’t spot on, but the scene got laughs from the audience. I’m growing more and more comfortable with it each time.
Alien Barbershop was okay. Not my best. Subject was Stripping and I, stupidly built my rhyme around ‘Strippers’ which was not the suggestion. I realized my error right as we were about to sing and a last minute line change threw everything out of whack.
I like stripping. (Original line was strippers)
Especially south of the border.
Because the strippers there,
Always accept quarters.
Blech. Horrible.
After the show we all loaded back up onto the bus for our final drive to St. Petersburg for our last stop on this tour. Here’s hoping we go out with a kick ass final show.
S&US Tour Diary – April 16, 2013 – Ocala, FL
After yesterday’s adventures, the cast and crew seemed ready to refocus and kick a little butt in our show tonight. I woke up after some much needed sleep and then got in touch with Brian Clark, Sean and Tyler and we walked over to a Cracker Barrel that was near the hotel. Cracker Barrel is always an experience.
After a decent breakfast we all returned to the hotel as it was time to pack up our belongings and get headed to the venue. There were several reasons for heading over early. First, is that since Brian was rotating into the show, we wanted to do a little brush up rehearsals. Not that Brian needs it at all, it’s just that there are some technical things that needed to be worked out with Brian now here. Secondly, the show tonight was on the Central Florida College Campus at Ocala and part of the deal was us doing a puppetry improv workshop for any interested students.
The workshop was fun. There were only a few students and they were eager to learn. People love getting the chance to play with puppets and when they are Jim Henson Company puppets, they are super excited. The students worked hard and did a great job. I also feel it was a good experience for me to just go back to the basics when it comes to improv. It’s a good refresher course.
After the workshop we had to return Brian’s rental car which became an adventure in itself. The workshop ended at 4PM and we had rehearsal at 4:30PM. About that time I realized I’d left a show shirt in the closet of the hotel. Then Peggy needed half and half for her coffee. So Brian and I headed out to do all these things AND fill the rental car’s gas tank. We only got two of those things done before we had to turn around and come back for rehearsal.
Rehearsal was fraught with audio issues so we didn’t get nearly the number of things in that we wanted to rehearse. It was then time for dinner and Brian and I headed out again to get the rental car returned. We drove to the sprawling Ocala airport. I say sprawling because the Ocala airport is just one building. One building and a control tower. One building, a control tower and several guys who look to be about 60 or 70 standing around out front with their arms folded. An international airport it is not.
We got the car returned and met our ride back to the venue and it was dinner time. We were running way late but fortunately/unfortunately more audio snafus delayed curtain by several minutes and gave us more time to get ready and set for the show.
The show was great. One of the smaller venues we’ve played on this tour and the crowd was light, especially compared to places like Milwaukee or even Hamilton, but the crowd was great. They loved the show and had great suggestion. The litmus test was the very first scene, New Choice, that Peggy and I did together. Patrick asked the crowd for an activity that the two of us would be doing together and the suggestion was showering.
I immediately thought, “Two people showering together. Hippies trying to conserve water.” So at lights up this is how the scene went…
ME: You know Sharon, showering together is such a great way to conserve water.
PEGGY: You are so right…dad.
HUGE laugh from the audience. We were being wrong and they loved it. Something we were worried about as it seemed the audience was skewing a little older. But again, they were loving it.
So many funny scenes, adding Brian to the mix stirs everything up. He brings a completely unpredictable energy to the show. The Hot Dog scene about a bank robbery was great fun our Noir Scene was wacky. I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face went even better, excited to give it a go again tomorrow.
Alien Barbershop was fun. In fact, the whole Puppet Talent Show was fun. The first suggestion was Baton Twirling and Flatulence which became the act Toots & Twirls! Then Peggy and Sean did a great scene as two competing Wilford Brimley impersonators and then the ALien Barbershop suggestions were reproduction and sex. Here’s the rhyme…
I love reproduction and sex.
I think they’re really hot.
The only thing I hate,
Is sleeping in the wet spot.
Yeah, way over the top but the audience loved it.
After the show we welcomed the arrival of our big Sleeper tour bus. A real ‘rock n roll’ style bus with bunks and everything. We had one of these last time we were in Florida and, while most of the cast hated it, I actually liked it. It seemed that this crew that’s currently on the road really embraced it.
It’s a brand new bus and had us riding in style for the three and a half hour trip down to Fort Prince. We made our, now traditional, stop at Wal-Mart to stock the fridge on the bus and then hit the road. The cast and crew stayed in the lounge for an hour or so and laughed and chatted, then one by one people returned to their bunks and the vibe mellowed out. I slipped off to my bunk with about 30 mins left in the ride and enjoyed be rocked in my tiny little bunk by the open road.
I really love being on tour. I love seeing new places, meeting new people and making folks laugh. The ‘End of Tour Blues’ are setting in hard. Only two shows left. I wish it was twenty. Luckily I have the upcoming week in Austin with Leslie Carrara in May. That takes the sting out of things a bit.
