Hey y'all! Sorry for the late post, there's been a lot going on!
First, here are the links to all my pictures from tour, posted on Facebook, as promised in my last post!
I also promised a recap of the last week of tour...so here goes! The short version, for once. =) We came back from a rather random layoff the second week of January and resumed the tour in Daytona Beach, FL. What a special show that was…a huge theatre with some pretty awesome dressing rooms, and some even more awesome guests…G-mom and G-pop brought ten of their friends up from Jensen Beach to see the show! It was so wonderful to have familiar faces in the audience for our closing week, and to spend time with everyone before and after the show. Oh also, our hotel in Daytona was on the beach…that certainly didn't hurt. =)
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| Helloooo Daytona! |
What did hurt was moving on from Daytona…to Richmond, KY, and then up to Toledo, OH and Flint, MI for the rest of the week. We went from beautiful beach weather to snow that did not help our progress from one town to the next. Fortunately, we got where we needed to be in one piece, but what a way to end the tour! Never a dull moment…at one of the venues that week, the dry ice never showed up…whoops! And for our first of three shows in Flint, Auntie Em looked a little young…my glasses got misplaced and weren't located till halfway through the show!
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| Next stop after Florida...Kentucky! |
We had a great closing weekend--Flint was a huge venue (four balconies, just like our opening venue!), and we had great audiences for all three shows. The last one was rough--not a dry eye onstage or off at the end of the show. But, we had a wonderful last night together--a big group dinner, and then a cast party back at the hotel: complete with a slideshow artfully put together by two ladies in the cast, and the Wozcars--our cast awards ceremony! I was presented with the Wozcar for "Most Oz Spirit"…it felt like redemption for all those senior superlatives I didn't win in high school. Mwahahahaha.
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| Our closing venue, in Flint, MI! |
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| Backstage in Flint, closing weekend! |
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| More backstage in Flint =) |
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| The lovely ladies of Oz! |
I've had a few weeks now to ruminate over my tour experience, and I'm left with a feeling or profound gratitude--for the experience, certainly, but also for the support I felt from friends and family literally all over the country--from Texas to California to Oklahoma to Philly to New Haven…I am just so thankful to everyone who made the effort to come out and see the show. You all made my tour experience truly unforgettable.
I've also been thinking about what I've gleaned from this experience…for one, I feel like I've learned what I'm capable of. I spent hours sleeping on the floor of a bus, often doing a show the same day, and I carted suitcases in and out of sometimes 4 or 5 hotels in a week. I did a weekend of shows in high altitude while recovering from food poisoning, and a full 8-show week with acute bronchitis. I feel like I've learned what my body can handle, and how to get it through situations it shouldn't have to.
But more importantly, I gained lifelong friends…my family of Wozians! I miss them like crazy already, but it's been amazing running into them at auditions back in NYC. We went through a lot of crap together, and a lot of wonderful, and they will always be with me…"like a handprint on my heart"…(obligatory Wicked reference!).
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| My beautiful cast, after our closing performance! |
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| Our final meal together...the whole WOZ family! |
And now, for a big, totally unrelated update…I'm actually posting this from Arizona right now! I moved back to NYC a week after closing, and was expecting to be there for several months until (hopefully) leaving for the summer again...and then two days after moving in I got a totally unexpected job offer! For a show starting rehearsals in less than three weeks, no less. So...now I'm back in Arizona...surprise! =) I'm doing Sunset Boulevard at Arizona Broadway Theatre in Peoria (http://www.azbroadwaytheatre.com for more info!). I'm in the ensemble and understudying Betty, the young female lead (you might be familiar with the 1950 movie it was based on, starring Gloria Swanson). We open March 2 and run till the 31st...and then I imagine I'll be back in NYC, but who knows?!? =)
The weather has been GORGEOUS, and the people I'm working with are just wonderful--a great cast, and a really welcoming company. We actually stayed in sponsor housing for a few nights this week, with one of the theatre's board members and his wife, while the show before ours was finishing up. They were so incredibly welcoming--making us dinner, taking us out for ice cream, shuttling us over to the theatre for rehearsals--it was just a lovely introduction to a great company! I'll be posting more updates in the weeks to come, including pictures of course…stay tuned!! =)
xoxo
Kelly
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