Well....it's been almost a month since my last post. Not much has happened so I'll just fill you in on the big change. Remember the show where we had 3500 kids?? Well what I forgot to mention was that the floor was terrible, they pretty much just threw down a large tarp, and left all the wrinkles. Mark, our Scarecrow landed funny on his foot because of these divets and thought he sprained his foot, well, 2 weeks later he went to get it checked out at the ER and they confirmed his suspicions of having a fractured foot, the remedy is to limit himself to walking only....so...the Scarecrow is now playing the Wizard and the Wizard is now the Scarecrow.....Mark's foot is starting to feel better and he's hoping to go back in as the Scarecrow next week, I think the office is making him wait until the 10th though.
Our schedule is starting to pick up and now we only get one day off a week for the next few weeks...no more weekends off, the downside is really only not being able to sleep in, and I do love sleeping in.
That's about all on my side here.....BYE!!!

oh ya, I got my Wii Netflix disc in the mail and now we can watch movies when stuck in boring hotel rooms, in boring cities..... as long as the internet connection is good. Thanks Bernie.

Where to start, where to start....well as Julie Andrews once sang, "let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..." Well, almost the beginning.....we'll start with Wednesday in Tulsa...Wednesday sucked because we had to be at the van at 7:05am, usually it's 7:45am, our van call time means that's the time the van should be pulling out of the parking lot. The night before you probably want to get a lot of sleep cause you're waking up early....well not me, going to bed early is for losers, it's much better to whine about not wanting to wake up early and go to bed around 2am, but hey, that's how I roll :)
An early van time was the only thing that really sucked about Wednesday. We played at the Mabee Center for Oral Roberts University, where they have their basketball games. The place was huge, which it had to be because we were performing for 3500 kids. At first it was only 3000, I don't know where they found the other 500 kids a few days before. Hearing all those kids shout and applaud at the end kinda made me feel like a rockstar. I feel bad for the kids that had to sit in the nose bleed section, from that far away we looked like little ants.
After Tulsa we headed to St. Joseph, Missouri. It was cold again...it's always cold...the hotel wasn't too bad, it wasn't as cool as the Ramada across the street that had an indoor pool and huge water slide :( We should've just gone over and said "don't you know who we are?!?! You should be so lucky that we want to swim in your pool" The Missouri Theatre where we were playing was very cool looking, and we finally made it onto the Marquee :)
From there we headed to Boonville....it's exactly how you would picture a place called Boonville to be. On Friday, me, the Scarecrow Mark, and Wizard Michael, went on a little adventure. We found a park with Lookout Point...which probably turns into Make-out Point at night. We hiked down a hill and went walking through the woods where we encountered railroad tracks, which are always fun to play on....until we heard the train coming, we ran back into the woods, more so cause Mark said it's actually illegal to be on railroad tracks....what a stupid law...
Saturday night we went into Columbia, Mo about 25mins away to go party since that's where Missouri University is. We hit the bar strip and it seems a bit empty, we go into a sandwich place so people can pee and I decide to get the employees opinion as the where we should go. So I ask "Where would you go?" his response "No where, it's Spring Break and everyone is gone" well that sucks....we end up in some bar called Barcode....hahaha, so original.....it's empty, last time we went out the music sucked and it was empty...but then something magical started to happen, people started to show up. I guess all the locals were happy that the dumb college kids were gone and they could finally come out and play. By the end of the evening it was pretty packed, we ended up going to a dueling piano bar next door where Lia, our Dorothy, got us in for free....oh male bouncers how easily you are distracted.....it was pretty cool, and around 1am....closing time for everything in Columbia, we started for the door, only to not leave cause there is a fight outside. Looks like a normal drunken fight, thinking we could just walk around...then out of no where this guy gets thrown to the ground by 6 cops....yes 6 cops....the tackle him down and then he gets maced....right in the eyes, he's down struggling, they're on top of him and mace him....while this was going on, what I missed was that he was also Tased in the leg 3 times.....so much for a normal drunken bar fight. On our way out we saw a girl lead away in handcuffs and the cops were pushing the crowd further down the block. "Wow" was pretty much all I could say.
Hmmm, that is a very long paragraph, you editors reading this are probably going insane...at least I think I spelled everything right :-D oh...I also forgot to add that we went to the Science Museum in Oklahoma City and the Memorial Site of the Oklahoma City bombing.

I feel so far behind in my blogging, sorry followers....So let's recap this week. On Tuesday we had a two show day in Atlanta at the Ferst Center for the Performing Arts. The first show was awesome, we had a full house, they even added seats to the pit area, there had to be atleast 1,000+ kids. The second show went well, but we had about 200 kids, which doesn't seem like a lot when the first show had no open seats, it kinda threw us when we started it just looked so empty, though mommy came to my show :) After the shows we went to the Georgia Aquarium, yea fishies :)
On Wednesday we had what we thought was a 4 hour drive to Mississippi. I drove for 3 hours and was getting tired, thought I'd pull over and have someone else drive the last hour. Figured that wouldn't be so bad.....what my navigator and I failed to realize was that we changed time zones. It really sucked to be thinking that we were only an hour away to realize we had 2 more hours left to go. It was totally time for me to stop driving...ugh...but it was nice when we finally arrived at our hotel that it had an indoor swimming pool and hot tub. Finally I get to use my bathing suit:) Thursday we headed to Arkansas and had a nice little pit stop at a park in Memphis along the Mississippi river where we played some football and just enjoyed being out in the sun. Friday we had a good show in Paragould, Ar but an 8 hour drive to Oklahoma, usually we've split up the long drives over 2 days, or it's just driving on a day off. After an early load-in, doing a show, and loading out, we all started to get a little stir crazy around the last two hours. People started climbing up the walls, or rather over the seats, but we survived and made it to Oklahoma and awoke Saturday to SNOW!!!! SNOW GODDAMMIT!!!! I took this tour to get away from the snow. We went to Florida, and Georgia and it wasn't warm, and now we have SNOW!!!! It's just not fair :)
Our Lion's sister lives about 5 mins from our hotel so we all went over there last night for drinks and food and to be entertained by her adorable kids. It was nice to actually be in a house, I think it made everyone miss home just a little.....HI KASSEY.....today we're going to try and fit in doing laundry, a wal-mart run, and going to the Science Museum...and cleaning out the van, if we don't clean out the van today I'm going to go insane and start throwing stuff out the windows, my OCD side is starting to go crazy with the crap everywhere.....

BED BUGS!!!

So, a few nights ago we were staying at a Super 8, it wasn't so bad, but in the middle of the night my roommate woke up cause something was biting her....there were little bugs in her bed, that when killed would leave blood behind. We switched rooms and went back to sleep. The next night a new hotel, a Microtel, pretty nice. This time I wake up cause I keep scratching my arm. I see bug bites and start looking for the mosquito who must be attacking me, instead I see those same damn bugs that Mary had. I called my dad at 3am and he confirms my fears that we have bed bugs, we switch rooms again, and sleep with the lights on. When we reached our new hotel Friday the first thing Mary and I did was wash our clothes and Lysol our bags, all that's left to do it lysol down the van. I'm hoping that it was just a coincidence that we both got bed bugs and not that we brought them with us. The only real downside is that since I swell when I get bit, it looks like I have tumors growing on my arm......oh the itching.....

6 Shows, and a whole lotta old people

Monday: We opened at the world famous Polk Theatre in Lakeland Florida, to a sold out show of 1400 kids. It was a great first show. Everything went off without a hitch, and the kids loved it. It was nice to do a show and hear the kids laugh....basically run around crazy, shake your butt, or say "guts" and they go crazy.
Tuesday:.....oh Tuesday.....I'm glad that Tuesday wasn't our opening show. It was so nice to have a great first show, it made Tuesday seem almost not as bad....I said almost....We played at a Convention Center in Fort Myers. Tuesday started with a nice rain shower, luckily we could pull the van into the loading area and didn't have to load-in in the rain. Our stage was a high platform with curtains, like the ones we used at the zoo to hold our backdrop. As the first scene change approaches it is clear to me that we didn't discuss where the flats would go, Michael and I learned very quickly that the set doesn't fit under the curtains, the top pole was knocked down and hit Michael in the face, there was nothing else to do but to get on a stool and put it back up, there was no way to be sly about it and make it unnoticeable, fast forward to the next scene change. It was time for Ryan to learn that the set doesn't fit under the curtains, unfortunately this time a rod didn't just fall down, the whole right side started to tip over, and off the stage. Lindsay and I quickly grabbed it, and started to wiggle the legs back over so it would stand up straight, while this was happening I was supposed to help Michael bring on the big Wizard head, but I couldn't leave because the curtain would've fallen so he was sadly forced to do it himself. After all that I think everyone just gave up on the show. The kids loved it, and didn't seem to mind that much, but it's nicer for everyone to just believe that that show never happened.
Wednesday: we played for some 450 kids, at a community college in Bradenton. The space was really nice, and it was nice to have a dressing room right backstage.
Thursday: We had our first evening show, at 7pm, which means we get to sleep in and relax right?!?! Wrong, we get to check out at 11am and try and kill 5 hours before we had to be at the site. I did however finally get my zebra....I mean white tiger stripped Snuggie, and the van has never been the same:) We ended up in a park down the street where we swung, climbed trees and tossed a Frisbee around. We had an interesting show. It was at a Lodge, well, basically it was a big open room, much like a cafeteria, but my dad came :) The kids were sitting right up to the speakers on sheets and eating popcorn and they loved every minute of the show. Even though the lights stayed on, and you could clearly see the Wicked Witch on the side moving set pieces, even with that, it was a great show.
Friday: Day off...woowhoo.....of course it would have been more enjoyable if Florida warmed up and we could've gone swimming.
Saturday....ohh Saturday. The show was good. It was a nice space, and the dressing rooms were right backstage again. Our load in time was the shortest it's been, with only taking up 30mins to set up.....and then the goodness stops. First the office sent the theatre the wrong contract, we're supposed to get food at the AFT shows, the contract they got said only water, tea, and coffee, which the happily supplied us. Lindsay our Stage Manager went out to get us food which was nice, but strike one. After load out we got in the van and headed to Georgia. I drove the first 3.5 hours and it was fine. I even got to see a pig on the side of the road. After we stopped for dinner Lia got behind the wheel, and Cordelia our GPS system thought it would be fun to waste 20mins having us drive in circles, oh strike 2, the 3rd strike came when Lindsay called to tell us that the Super 8 we we're supposed to be staying out gave away our reservations. That's always great news after a 6.5 hour drive, getting in at 12am. We sat in the van as they tried to find us a place to sleep, and then were sent down the street to a Holiday Inn Express, we were excited for the prospect of a nice warm breakfast, unfortunately they wouldn't let us in either. At 1am we finally were checked into an EconoLodge, a very nice hotel if I must say so.

Hopefully I'll get better at this blogging thing. I like to use the excuse that I've been too busy with tour. At first I thought rehearsing for only a week was crazy and the show would never get it together, but the magic of theatre pulled through and we're good to go. In fact we go tomorrow. After our last rehearsal we change, load the truck and head out to Fla, with a stop in Richmond, Va and Savannah Ga. The only part of this plan that seems iffy, is that there is supposed to be another snow storm tomorrow where Pa is supposed to get 6-12 inches of snow...that should be fun to drive in, and then we get to deal with rush hour on the beltway...I just have to keep reminding myself that we're going to Florida.

I was able to go to a dance store on lunch the other day and pick up a new pair of shoes...my feet sighed and said thank you when I put on the large size. They're so comfortable, I'm not sure why I didn't get new shoes earlier. Yesterday at rehearsal I used the green make-up for the first time, it looks pretty good. I'll get a picture up of it soon. It's almost 12:30am and I'm tired so I'm headed to bed....next stop Richmond, Va.

And a one two three.....

Sooooo. Hi everyone, welcome to my blog and my journey as the Wicked Witch with AFT's Wizard of Oz. Let me start by saying that I've felt like a crackhead looking for a hit for awhile, my drug being theatre. Just thinking...."I just need to do a show, just one show..." Well, I finally got my hit :) Being back in rehearsals feels so good. My feet hurt cause my shoes are too small, but it stills feels nice.
I checked into the hotel Thursday afternoon, at first thinking that the taxi took me to the wrong hotel since it doesn't look anything like the one on their website, but then I walked in the door and there was a nice sign welcoming The Wizard of Oz...and other shows that aren't as important, of course. I officially met everyone Friday morning and then we were off to the rehearsal studio...driving in our brand new van...it even still smells new.
I get to spend a lot of quality time with the Wizard and Glinda since we don't do much in the show. I think that will all change when we start moving set pieces.
Like I said earlier my shoes are a bit too small. I'm not on my feet too much, but I'm not sure my feet will last for 3 months, luckily there is a dance store close to the studio where I can pick up a new pair. Which means if you count the flip-flops, and character shoes I will have packed 6 pairs of shoes....what's a girl to do?!?!?