From Canada to Mexico…and coast to coast! (2)

11/7-11/13

After New Bedford came a very trying 26-hour bus ride to Valdosta, GA.  We left right from the theatre and stopped for dinner, and then lunch (at a truck stop where they called numbers when people's showers were ready...), and dinner the next day...and finally arrived at the hotel around 11.  Fortunately our show was the next day so we did get some rest before performing again.

Valdosta was another blur of a day...more lovely weather that we didn't have much time to enjoy!  And it was another crazy show...with half the set, an outside backstage crossover, and many delays once again.  To top that off, a poor little local munchkin's skirt fell off during "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"...luckily she had a petticoat underneath and she handled it like a champ! And later, one of our jitterbugs slipped and fell and another danced his wig right off...yep, a crazy show.

That same day, we received word that we were flying to McAllen, TX the next day…surprise!  We had left Ogdensburg, NY across the river from Canada on Friday morning just four days prior and would be at the bottom tip of Texas only a few miles from the Mexican border the next day around noon....AND we had done four shows in the interim!  What a whirlwind...

Bienvenidos a McAllen!

Hidalgo was kind of a bizarre experience--our first, and I think only, arena setup…and we were literally on ice.  Covered ice, but still ice.  And what a strange experience to walk past skate rental on the way to the dressing rooms...  Oddly enough, even though we were in this huge space (3000+ people in the audience), there were a number of things we had to cut because of the way it was set up--fly, for one--and because of one particularly difficult set change the flying monkeys (myself being one of them) were told over the monitors just minutes before the show to "improvise" until we saw that the set was in place for the scene following ours.  We dubbed it the "monkey dream ballet" and it was actually pretty hilarious--my fellow monkey decided to be attacked by the fake Toto double he was carrying and his wig flew off in the middle of the struggle.  I guess that's the price you have to pay sometimes for making big choices… =)

Other highlights of the Hidalgo experience: finding a note left for me by one of my friends from the summer (she had been there with her tour a few weeks prior)…and also seriously the cutest kids we've ever had.  I mean, I've loved pretty much all the kids, but these were just so wide-eyed, inquisitive, and happy to be there…and they called me Glinda offstage as well, which was just hilarious.

State Farm Arena in Hidalgo,TX!

Galveston was next, and what a travel day we had to get there…stopped once at a checkpoint on the way where our bus was searched by dogs looking for drugs and Mexicans, and stopped again for lunch--in a ghost town with a single restaurant (an excellent Mexican restaurant, but in a bizarrely deserted town…).

Galveston was wonderful…one of my favorite towns to date.  Of course, it didn't hurt that we were across the street from the beach in 70-degree weather!  Our first night there, we celebrated my roommate(the Wicked Witch)'s birthday, complete with a nice dinner out and some time in the hotel's AMAZING outdoor heated pool.  The next day, I went for a looooooong walk on the beach, played in the Gulf of Mexico, and had the best lunch ever: Ben and Jerry's Coconut Seven Layer Bar ice cream.  Mmmmmmmm. =)

Hellooooooo Galveston!

We had two shows that weekend (Saturday and Sunday), which was exciting because we were in yet another gorgeous, historical space: the 1894 Grand Opera House.  And, the first of the two brought me my first visitors!  Sunday was even more fun…apparently, every Sunday is Beauty Mark Sunday which is not a thing I knew about before, and for the crew, this one was Mustache Sunday…so the whole cast drew subtle beauty marks on their faces, and the crew did the show with fake mustaches.  Never a dull moment!

!894 Grand Opera House in Galveston

More excitement in Galveston included...well, our first truly smooth shows in a while, a little girl dressed as Glinda (OK...she was in a Barbie princess dress, but we all knew what it was supposed to be!  she had a wand!!), and our male swing going on halfway through one show due to a minor injury.  Outside the theatre, my roommate and I got matching sweatshirts (well, she got it first and I really liked it!), I attended mass in yet another gorgeous historical cathedral, and a guy in the grocery store parking lot next to our hotel rolled down his window when he passed to sing to me about my cowboy boots...in a surprisingly hilarious and non-creepy way.  Yep, Galveston was one of my faves. =)