From Canada to Mexico…and coast to coast! (3)

11/14-11/20

This past week was pretty uneventful in terms of show drama.  A little rough for me at first…I finally started to feel the exhaustion of the schedule in my voice and body…but, technically the show's been running a lot smoother.  We started the week in Fort Smith, AR, which went fine and then moved on to Bartlesville, OK on Tuesday for another solid show.  Highlight of the week for me: my wonderful boyfriend Dan drove three hours from Kansas to see the show in Oklahoma and spend some time with me. =)  It was so nice to see him for more than a few hours...the first time since the summer we got to spend a couple days together!

We ended the week in Shreveport, LA and Conway, AR.  I was kinda wishing we had more time in Shreveport--there seemed to be a lot of history in the town, including a church from the 1850s and the theatre itself, built in 1925 as a vaudeville house.  Also, the hotel had a Starbucks in the lobby, a pretty lovely view of the bayou and Red River from the gym, and the best beds and towels I've experienced on this entire tour…so that didn't hurt. =)

View from the gym! Intersection of the Cross Bayou and the Red River

Loved the people in Shreveport, too--everywhere I went they were bubbly and nice, and our audience was one of the best yet--I got more entrance applause, which was so fun!  They clapped and cheered a ton, sometimes in places it's never happened before…and they went nuts when the witch melted later in the show!

The Strand Theatre in Shreveport...another beautiful one!

Conway was the next day, and a looooong day it was.  A few of us had an audition for Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre--a summer Shakespeare festival that just happened to be auditioning the day of our show, on the campus where we were performing.  A bizarre, and we thought fortuitous, coincidence...the latter remains to be seen!  I was thrilled to be able to be there, and we all felt our auditions went fine, but we literally got off the bus after a 4 or 5-hour ride without stopping at the hotel, changed at the theatre, and hurried right over to the audition.  It was completely exhausting...but we did it!


Later that night...in spite of our first technical delays of the week and a women's dressing room the size of the hallway in my New York apartment, we managed to pull off a decent show...complete with my roommate's long-awaited entrance applause!  She lives in Arkansas not far from Conway, so her fan club was in attendance. =)  We also had ushers in costume (the one I saw was dressed as the lion), and really cute munchkins once again!  I got to talk to them more than usual too because the only bathroom was in our tiny dressing room, and they were so funny--"How many wigs do you wear?," "How many characters do you play?," "How do you change from Auntie Em to Glinda so fast?"...definitely not a shy group!

Now, we're in California!  We survived what I've fondly referred to as "hell on wheels"--two veeeeeery long bus days Sunday and Monday--and we have two shows in San Bernardino, one tonight and one tomorrow.

As always, check out www.wizardofozontour.com for upcoming show dates and locations…lots of love to you all!

xoxo

Kelly

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. =)

From Canada to Mexico...and coast to coast! (1)

Sorry y'all…this is gonna be a long one…three weeks to catch you up on!  But, I'll post it in parts so hopefully it's a little less overwhelming. =)

11/2-11/6

After our weekend in Cleveland we left for Ogdensburg, NY for a show Thursday, November 3.  The Cleveland-to-Ogdensburg transition was another that exemplified this crazy life on the road...we went from the jaw-dropping Palace Theatre to a junior high performing arts center in the middle of nowhere.  Our hotel was in a rustic spot on the St. Lawrence River, and we could literally see Canada from our porch.  Laurie and I did somehow manage to score a two-bedroom suite at the hotel, but unfortunately we weren't there long enough to make use of it!

The Saint Lawrence River and Canada, behind our hotel room!

Our experience at that theatre was...challenging, to say the least.  The stage was tiny, more than half the set had to be cut, we couldn't fly, and we ended up called to the theatre early to re-space some of the bigger numbers.  AND our "dressing room" was set up in the school library...some of those books took me back!  After a whirlwind of preparation, including dealing with sound and light issues, and at the last minute, finding out about a service dog in the front row (which could have caused major problems for Toto!), we eventually started the show 45 minutes late.  But the battle was far from over...during the show, we dealt with more technical issues, including a local crew rumored to be ex-cons (never got a confirmation on that one, but it gives you an idea…), and the scarecrow's dresser up and left a few minutes into the show without telling anyone.  But, people loved it...it was amazing to see the audience so supportive when we felt like such a mess.

Middle school library or dressing room? A little bit of both...

Next stop: Rutland, VT...and what a difference!  Another beautiful old theatre (actually about the capacity of the theatre in Ogdensburg, but with much more character!), a great little town with cute stores, coffee shops, and delicious food...we were all wishing we had more time there!  The show went SO well--our local munchkins were super energetic, and it was one of the best audiences we've ever had--I got entrance applause when I came out in the bubble!  Just another instance that proved that sometimes our smaller, more intimate audiences are the best ones. =)  They clapped at everything, and a guy from the theatre came on the bus to talk to us afterwards about how impressed they were, and how pivotal our show was for the future of the theatre.

The Paramount Theatre in Rutland, VT!

We left Rutland early the next morning for a matinee in West Point, NY...one of the most exhausting days yet!  We had gotten back to the hotel after 11 the night before and had to be up before 7 to load the bus and drive right to the theatre for a 3:00 show.  Somehow in spite of the exhaustion I managed to have my best quick change to date--not sure how we did it!  West Point was a huge space, which was nice for us backstage but caused a bit of a disconnect with the audience...it was a way bigger audience than we'd had all week but quieter, and they just seemed far away...the show went fine, though.

After the show we got on the road to New Bedford, MA, where we had another matinee the next day.  After a bunch of delays totally beyond our comprehension we finally left the theatre, stopped for dinner, and arrived at the hotel two hours after our projected arrival time of 11:30 pm...only to pass out for less than 8 hours and get up the next morning to do it all over again. Thank goodness for an amazing mass and Dunkin' Donuts around the corner from the theatre to get me through the day!  And also, a crazy cab driver who managed to start the day off with a laugh--a total hippie with an almost comical Boston accent who began the short trip to the theatre stopped behind a row of parked cars thinking they were waiting for the light to change, and ended the trip asking us how to spell "cash" for our receipt--he was pretty sure it was 
C-H-A-S.  After all that the show went pretty well--another delayed start and we weren't able to use pyro, but thankfully another amazingly appreciative audience.

A recap of our first week back on the road!

I'm starting this update from Georgia as we're nearing the end of a 26-hour bus ride from New Bedford, MA, where we performed yesterday.  Didn't know I could sleep on the floor of a bus, but I can happily now cross that off the bucket list…

First things first: I've posted my first few albums of pictures from tour on Facebook!  Here are the links (you can see them even if you're not on Facebook):

Album 1
Album 2
Album 3

I've also recently updated my all-new website with pictures from my last few shows...check it out at www.kellykarcher.com!

Our first week back on the road (10/24-10/30) started in Greeneville, TN, and is honestly kind of a blur…our first week of one-nighters!  Meaning, we had one show in each town and drove to a new place the next day.  Tennessee was beautiful--we were in the Great Smoky Mountains, surrounded by gorgeous fall leaves in 70 degree weather.  Unfortunately we were inside for most of it, in brush-up rehearsals for our first show back!  And then it was on to Kentucky early the next morning.  Luckily, there was a Dunkin' Donuts right next to the hotel, so that got us through. =)

Welcome to Greeneville!

I feel like that first week back exemplified life on the road…our first three shows in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan were in high school performing arts centers (our "female principal" dressing room in Michigan--for me, Dorothy, and the Wicked Witch--at first consisted of some tables set up in the school's computer lab; we said we'd be happy to join the rest of the cast!); and we ended the week at the Palace Theatre in Cleveland, built in 1922 and at one time home to performers such as Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the Three Stooges.  It's interesting, though--I've found that some of the smaller venues can have the best audiences...there's an intimacy that I didn't expect to serve a show this big, but it does.  The audiences that are closest to us tend to be the most responsive and vocal even when they're small, which is surprising--but so much fun for us!

That week, more than anything, it just felt so great to be back at work!  We went from a choppy schedule before the break to our first 8-show week (a Broadway schedule…plus travel!), and it was amazing to see it all come together again.  Our first show back had kind of a weird energy--a little hesitant--but by the time we had our third show of the week in Michigan it felt solid again.

From Michigan, we went to Cleveland for the weekend, which was a complete whirlwind (5 shows in about 50 hours), but also wonderful--not only were we in an amazing space, but we were finally comfortable enough with the show to enjoy it!  We were able to play, and find new things...to make discoveries as our characters.  And both the venue and the theatre district were unbelievable...I take back what I said about Fort Worth; Cleveland's Palace Theatre is now the most beautiful theatre I've ever performed in...huge and gorgeous and so much history, and built like a Broadway theatre!  Here are a couple pictures taken by one of our cast members...there are many more on Facebook!

The Palace Theatre in Cleveland, OH!

The lobby of the Palace... =)

We fortunately were able to stay in Cleveland for Halloween...fortunate mostly because our hotel rooms were larger than my New York apartment (which has never happened and will probably never happen again)...thank you, Embassy Suites!  We trick-or-treated to each other's rooms and then had a pretty hoppin' party...complete with spooky decorations, dancing, and butterbeer!  I was Posh Spice, along with three other cast members and our wig/makeup guy as the other Spice Girls...and we won the "best overall" costume award!

Spice Girls!

The next day, we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for some more history...and ended the day at the Chocolate Bar downtown...mmmmm.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

One of my favorite parts of the tour so far has been the kids, onstage and off--there is always a girl (usually in the front row) dressed up as Dorothy, and we've had some witches and scarecrows and lions as well!  And the kids onstage with us playing the munchkins have been so much fun to work with…I remember, I think in Michigan, looking around during Munchkinland and seeing this one girl with her face lit up singing "tra la la"…she was having the best time!  And in Fort Worth, we met a little girl--maybe 2 or 3--in a restaurant after one show and she was shyly singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  In Cleveland, the doorman at the Stage Door told us his nephew saw the show--his first theatrical experience ever --and said, "This is the best day of my life!"  And another girl during our last show there shouted, "Glinda! Glinda! Glinda!" from the audience as I came onstage in my bubble…it really puts into perspective why we do what we do, and who we do it for. =)


Hope to post again soon with more updates from the last week and a half...lots of love!


xoxo


Kelly