VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS...AND GRITS!
Sorry for the late entry but we got a little busy this spring.  More updates to follow this one!
Well, back in March we headed out for a state yet discovered by GRITS (Gals, that is...I'm quite sure they eat 'em there) and we headed to the lovely town of Suffolk!  It was the first time we had ever played in the great state of Virginia and we didn't know what to expect!  Because it was about 6 hours away, half of the cast and the crew headed out the night before.  We were going to need to load in and rehearse and for me wearing as many hats (literally and figuratively) as I do during this process, I find that I cannot do all of it if I have that long a drive SO...we headed out to parts unknown ahead of time!
We stayed in lovely Emporium, VA the night before....just outside of Suffolk.  My husband of NASCAR sports writing fame, informed me that this was the hometown of the famous Sadler Bros.! Too true, we found out fast enough, as we tooled through the town passing the Sadler Auto Care Center, Sadler Travel Center, Sadler Restaurant and so on and so on.  These were a welcome sight to us as we pulled into the city that was let's just say a little...sketchy.  It was pretty late and mostly what we had passed on the way in was the never before seen  "Slip-In" convenient store &  gas station.  As one of my more seasoned actresses put it.... "I'm NOT going to the bathroom in this town in a gas station called the "Slip-In"!  You don't know what you are gonna come out of there with!"  BUT... when we checked into a lovely Holiday Inn Express and all was well with the world and we were just a 45 minute drive outside of our destination.
We arrived at the precious town of Suffolk and at a theater that was more than lovely the next day around 11:00 am.  We were met with an interesting group of young men who were tech crew for the center.  As we pulled up in the truck hauling the pink trailer with "GRITS: THE MUSICAL" painted on the side, one young man asked, "You the GRITS ladies?"  I responded, "Yes...yes we are." and we were off and running.
Loaded in, set up and got my new stage manager up to speed.  Yep!  That again.  Turned one very promising assistant stage manager into a full blown, calling lights and running the show, stage manager that trip.  Training as we go is a must for this crew and this new gal was great.  I know she was scared, but she didn't show it and we just did what we had to do to make it work like we always do!  Was it a lighting masterpiece?  No, but it was solid and good and that was the most important thing.  The piece does not live or die by lights, it stands with basics just as well as with all the bells and whistles.  It's the material, music and cast that are what the people come to see.
As the rest of the cast filed into the super nice dressing rooms, we noticed a man that was coming in and out of the dressing room area.  Senior gentleman and very nice.  Told my seasoned actress that he was looking for his 5th wife and if there was anyone in there that he could spend his money on? Come to find out, it was Mr. Frank.  He was the custodial service manager and was very sweet.  He had been working at the facility for many years and was quite a character!  He fit right in with the GRITS Gals!
We moved onto the stage area to start out cue to cue rehearsal.  Had to have one...not for the actresses but for the poor new stage manager who had never called a light cue in her life!  We started going through the show and she was doing great.  We got to the song "Lipstick Sisters" and in that particular number we go down into the audience and hand out lipstick (really chap-stick in individually wrapped packages with the show name and website on it...WHAT? I have to market this bitch anyway I can!)  anyway...down we go, and stand before the empty house in the dark.  House lights should come up, but this new gal was just figuring it all out when POW!  Bright lights hit me right in eyes!  FLASH!  Another one...right in my face!  I am totally blinded.  I look at my co-stars to my right and left and they are laughing.  I finally regain my sight and I see Mr. Frank standing on the second row.  FLASH!  Again the lights...closer this time.  Mr. Frank. clicks a disposable camera and then  twists the knob to advance to the next picture.  He's up in my face like the paparazzi on Kim Kardashian.  I guess he thinks he's found his 5th wife.  Don't tell my husband.  We laugh and continue on.
Show time comes and it's a terrific crowd.  Almost all 500 seats sold.  We are all dressed and they fed us a wonderful meal and took pictures with us for their social media sites.  These were some charming folks.  We head upstairs to do the show and begin.  The crowd was SO into it.  You never know from state to state how the jokes and songs and text will be interpreted, but these Virginians LOVED it!    We are half way through the first act and I look over to the stage left wing and there is Mr. Frank again.  With his disposable camera.  Click!  Twist, twist, twist.  Click!  Twist, twist, twist.  He is in the wings taking pictures of us, Well...I am gonna say "us".  The rest of the cast would have said "me".  It was hilarious.  Luckily we were so in the zone and it was a cast that was so familiar with the show that it wouldn't have mattered what what going on backstage, so it was all fine.  We completed the night with a standing ovation and we shook hands and took pictures for at least and hour after the show.
We didn't see Mr. Frank after the lights went down and the trailer was all packed.  I'm kinda glad actually.  Not exactly sure what Mr. Frank was gonna do with those pictures and I'm pretty sure I don't ever want to find out, but we'll just chalk it up to a man who loves him some GRITS and leave it at that!

50 Shades of GRITS!

In honor of the upcoming V-Day holiday and the release of the highly anticipated love fest "50 Shades of Grey", I give you "50 SHADES OF GRITS!" Spoiler alert...the stories aren't so much about the GRITS Gals as it is about the GRITS venues we've played.  You'll see! 
Come with me on a kinky tour of southern theaters with, shall we say, naughty/creepy tales to tell.  All of these are 100% completely true!  I kid you not.  There is NO WAY I could make this stuff up!

We start off in small town, North Carolina.  What a lovely theater.  Sat an audience of about 350.  We had a lovely meet and greet with the town's art council.  We sampled shrimp and grits and looked at art in the lovely lobby, which doubled as a gallery. 
BUT...before all that we loaded in, like any other gig.  Sets, costumes, merchandise, etc.  Then they took us to the dressing rooms.  Then "Crystal", we'll call her, took us down an unusual open staircase, located behind the stage to the dressing rooms.  It was only on one side of the stage, which was odd because a theater typically has entrances to the stage from both stage right and stage left. 
We could see that the stage had been built atop a some very old stone rooms.  Like so many small town venues, this theater had originally been a vaudeville space, opened in the early 1900s.  All kinds of acts, including naughty burlesque, were its main attractions.  Later it became a movie house and then, as so many of them did, became an X-rated movie theater in the 1970s. 
"Crystal" was more than happy to chatter away about the theater's history as we descended the staircase.  When we arrived at the bottom and stood in the odd shaped green room, it felt as if we were somehow in a cave.  Some of the walls were stone. Not modern stones in a beautiful arrangement, but rather plastered together rocks, like an old cottage. Other walls were wood-boarded. You know, the cheap kind, like paneling, and looking totally out of place. 
Then, I'll never forget what happened next.  I looked over at a strange oval-shaped, faded red wooden door.  It didn't have a knob but looked as if there had been a place where a lock had once resided.
"What's in there?" I innocently asked.  "Crystal" replied, "Oooh...you don't even want to KNOW what we found in there!" 
You see, the theater had been abandoned after on-screen X-rated movies were replaced by more easily-accessible VHS videotapes. The seekers of smut had moved on.  BUT, apparently, they left some interesting sexy trinkets to be discovered by the town's historical preservation society!
"Crystal" explained: "We came down here and it was like a dungeon! Who knows what was going on down here?"
We all couldn't help ourselves, so we walked down the six creaky steps into this...cave.  Dirt floors, stones that jutted out like benches.  "Crystal" added that they'd found handcuffs.  I was in there all of five seconds before I was like, "I'm outta here."
I looked at "Crystal" and said, "So...I don't suppose this place is haunted?"  She just looked at me with a most serious look on her face and said, "Yes...yes it is."
That was the last we spoke of the stone cave room that night. Nothing weird happened during to show or as we were packing to leave, but the weird thing was, I don't remember any of us ever bringing it back up again.  You'd have thought we would've, weird as it was.  Maybe it was TOO weird...even for us.

Next!  On to small town Alabama.  YES!  We should all run, because this story has a closet, too. But what was found weren't sexy tidbits...but a person!  Read on, you wicked, wicked people!
Small town Alabama was the very first stop for GRITS in the Yellow Hammer State.  Being a Tennessee gal, I had some hesitation as we two states have been at odds football-wise for a LONG time. But I really loved this lady that was the manager of the facility.  She was so wonderful.  Full of life and energy.  We'll call her "Nadine". 
"Nadine" greeted us as we pulled in and she had a precious staff of young folks to help us with our sets and gear.  We loaded in as usual and had our sound check.  "Nadine" flitted about the modern auditorium-style facility, periodically checking on us.  She was darling.  Whew!  I thought.  No trouble here, what a delight.  I was taking video of this trip with my phone so I could put together some clips for our YouTube channel.  Backstage fun, side-stage view of the performance, that sorta thing when "Nadine" came in to check on us before the show. 
We were all sitting around in our costumes and she was chatting us up about their theatrical season  (we were her season opener!) and how great it was that this show was a virtual sellout. We asked her how her holidays been. She said in a hushed tone..."Not too good."  "Oh no!" we all said.  "What happened?"  What she would say next, I know if I bet you all a million dollars you would NOT believe. Fortunately, I let my camera phone roll so I got it all for posterity sake!  She didn't know and I'll never tell and no, you cannot see it.
"Well...over the holidays I got a call from the police!" she said, still slightly whispering. "Our technical director was found dead."  "Oh!" we all exclaimed, "How awful!".  "Yes," she said, "in the theater."  "No!" we all exclaimed.  Then her face went into this weird I-shouldn't-tell-them-but-I have-to-or-I'll-burst look. "You can't tell anyone this" she said.  (Oooops.) "But...he was found in the utility closet."  She pointed to the closet right outside of the dressing room.  The door was open so we could all see it as she revealed the next part of the story.  "No!" we all said.  "Yes! He had hung himself there.", she said.  "No!", we all said.  "Yes!  He had a belt around his neck."  "No!" we all said.  "Yes! And guess what he was wearing?" she said.  At this point we were all in shock.  I think I heard one of the gals in the cast stutter, "W-w-what?" This she said in a whisper, bent over, looking around, for whom I do not know.  Maybe she thought his ghost was gonna come get her for revealing his dirty secret of demise. 
"He was wearing women's panties!"
Then she gasped and covered her mouth like she, too, was hearing it for the first time. 
We all sat stunned in silence.  Then I asked (at least I think it was me), "What do you think he was doing?"  I knew the answer, but I just had to see how this story, as told by her, would end.  "I don't know!" she said.  "Was he alone?  Was he depressed?  Was it...sexual?" 
She whispered that last part like it was a dirty word.  No lady...it wasn't sexual, I'm sure the really depressed TD just thought that's how his suicide should play out.  With a belt around his neck and him modeling a thong.  Not sexual?  Indeed. 
After the story was over, she simple straightened her posture, smiled and looked at us and said, "Can you believe that? Hmph." 
Unfortunately, we can...yes, we can.

Lastly, I leave you with Small Town, Everywhere.  You see that's where we have our most fun.  The trips getting there in the GRITS SUV. Those times and talks shared post-show reveal many things about us.  Maybe too many.  It's amazing what a road trip, a snack bag filled with tortilla chips and cheese, and a soundproof vehicle or an anonymous Holiday Inn Express will make a lady share.  Here are my top sexy picks!

"I love a King-Tut!"
"I was not his Friday night girl!"
"How do you know you won't like it, if you don't ever try it?"
"What's old timey name for the devil?  Zeus?"
"I have too kissed a girl before!"
"Is this my bag?  I don't think this is my bag. What's this?  Oh."
"Oh no!  I forgot my bra!  Can you see my....?"
"Where do you want this glitter?  It's good luck to wear it during a show.  Uh...ok.  That really makes your cleavage sparkle! Yay!"
"No, I am not coving the room for you and your "friend" to share.  That's on you!"
"Here's a t-shirt for you!  We had it made!  It's airbrushed! Look what it says...."  "Uhhhh ladies, I'm sure I'll have a lot of places to wear the "GRITTY TITTIES" shirt.  Thanks.  And no...I am NOT writing that show."

Well...there you have it.  Just a lil taste of our fun naughtiness.  Of course, I didn't write any of the REALLY good stuff.  There is such a thing as producer/cast confidentiality!  "GRITS on the Road", stays on the road (I'm getting that trademarked for my TV show I want to produce!  After reading this, wouldn't you watch that show??? I would!  Don't laugh...it could happen, right?)
Anyway, I hope this made you smile and I hope you all have a very special Valentines Day!  I don't know if this was as sexy as it was scary, but the way they are talking this "Grey" movie up, apparently they are one and the same!  See y'all next month for more GRITTY adventures!

Christmas GRITS! Hot holiday happenings!

Well...this is the second installment of "Pink Trailer Chronicles" and I am just now to the point where I can write about all that happened on the road this holiday season.

As soon as I came home from the "Cinnamon GRITS" adventure, I was thrown into the church Christmas pageant which I stupidly agreed to write and direct this year (It was pretty cool though, complete with dancing GEICO camel...but that's a whole OTHER blog!). But I have now relaxed enough after the holiday cooking and wrapping and entertaining.  So much so, that a cold virus has grabbed hold of me and thus this entry will be drenched in Vicks Dayquil medicated text.  I'm sure you'll love it!

ANYWAY...we visited three cities and played several shows and let's just say it was...challenging.
We started off our deal a few nuts shy of the fruitcake.  My assistant stage manager was the one to flake out this time!  A freshman in college who decided to make a change and move away (probably failing out).  No worries, she says! She was to leave AFTER our tour, not before.  The day we leave I get a text from her after we were heading down the road to our first gig.  "Sorry...my Mom says I can't go.  Merry Christmas!" Well...since she didn't show when the truck pulled out, I figured she wasn't coming.  No problem!  I'll just be IN the show, run the slide show from back stage AND sell the merchandise in the lobby, too.  I can do that, right????  Merry Christmas?  Indeed.  Guess what? She, like the absent rugby-playing stage manager from last month will NOT be getting a reference from me!  Or a Christmas gift for that matter!  Hell...I'm de-friending them on Facebook as I type!

Some of my actresses this go-round were an interesting combination of trauma, drama, insomnia, and dementia.  One had personal issues that had her distracted (understandably so), extremely tardy from rehearsals or shows (one time with permission...but the next three times???) and unprepared.  She wasn't the only one, though.  We had a new member of the cast that had a hard time remembering...anything.  Precious person, just not ready for this.  These jingle "belles" were tired and sick and sad and late and hungry and mad and frustrated and not liking the hotel rooms and...well...you get the picture.  This was throughout the entire trip.  Keep that in mind as you continue to read the exciting and glamorous GRITS happenings!  Too many to put down, but here are some of the twinkly highlights!

First leg of the tour we visited lovely Southport, North Carolina.  We've played there before to packed houses.  Lovely people in Southport, wonderful city on the water.  The venue there is, let's say...rustic.  A family-owned establishment, they are renovating as they go since the space had fallen into disrepair over the generations.  Last we visited, I warned the girls that this was "not an ideal situation" (that's what I tell them when we find ourselves in a pickle).  That can mean a number of things.  In this instance, it meant that we would have no dressing rooms, no backstage and no bathrooms (unless we wanted to trot out into the lobby and stand in line with the audience).  So I actually blocked into this show run: "Go out into the alley behind the theater and change into the hoop skirts" since they wouldn't fit into the tiny space on the side of the stage.  For real.

When we got there, we were informed that the loading area they "shared" with the next door bank was no longer available.  Seemed they didn't like us actor types using their dumpster parking spaces to load in on so they built a wall 6 feet high around the lot.  "I guess you could throw the set pieces over it?", the theater owner offered.  "Ummm...I don't think that'll work." I said.  So his solution?  Stop traffic on Main Street and load in from the turn lane in front of the theater.  We were darting in and out of traffic for 40 minutes unloading what looked like a pink trailer throwing up a sea of decorations, trees, hoop skirts, sound equipment and a projection screen.  We made it inside unscathed, although the wind did knock the trailer door into me and a suitcase fell on my big toe crushing it, but no one was run over by a car so that's something, right?

Ticket sales were not great.  Horrible in fact.  Why?  The venue owners daughter just HAD to have her own show the previous two weekends. Which one do you think they promoted?  Did we know about this?  No.  This particular production scenario was a revenue share (we share the ticket sales). Let's just say that will be the last time we produce a show in concert with someone else.  As my husband likes to quote the famous NASCAR driver/TV personality Darrell Waltrip as saying, "I'm pay-per-view...if you want to view me...you got to pay me!"  That is the GRITS financial motto from now on! Cash money up front!  Learned a lot of valuable lessons that trip. Every time we go out, I learn something new.

NEXT STOP...Toccoa, Georgia.  Sweet town...great little downtown area.  Old space and also mid-renovation, but at least we knew walking in that the show was almost sold out even before we arrived.  I had my new awesome stage manager advanced the show (remember I taught y'all last time that means calling ahead and setting things up!).   She assured me that everything in our rider (that's the fancy paperwork with all our technical and personal requests we send to the venue ahead a time) was taken care of!  Yay!  Sound equipment...check.  Projector....check.  Screen...check, load-in staff...check!  Well.....UN-check.

We get there and there is no screen that we can use.  They want to shoot the projector that had just arrived into the old-ass screen with a giant crease in it from the orchestra pit.  It's not a rear projection screen.  What do you think might happen to the image as we walk or dance or sing on stage in between the screen and the projector?  Shall we make Christmas finger puppets or try and incorporate shadows into the choreography!?  Load-in staff was a cast of one.  A man who didn't show up until we were almost done loading in.  He had a baby strapped to him...A BABY!  And spent the entire time noodling on the old piano in the orchestra pit like he was Doc Holliday at the Earp's Saloon.  I almost hollered out, "You know any Stephen Effing Foster?!" but I was a little too busy setting up MY screen and MY projector and MY sound equipment that I was glad to hell that I decided to bring "just in case".

Luckily...as we were promised, this was a GREAT crowd!  Wonderful audience, virtual sell out.

LAST STOP...Western Carolina University.  It was a Christmas miracle.  They are one of the finest venues in all of North Carolina.  Technology and space divine, but even better than that...the staff.  It doesn't hurt to have all the luxuries of a state of the art facility, but I tell you even if that is not there, when the staff is like the one at WCU, you feel like your getting star treatment no matter where you are.  In this case, though, best of both worlds.

On the way there I had broken one of my set pieces driving the truck and trailer over a curb making a u-turn (don't ask and don't tell my husband!).  The staff took it into the set shop and fixed it for me!  What???!  "Would you all like to use these beautiful fresh plants left over from the nurses' graduation last night?"  What???!  Dinner was a wonderful meal of pot roast and veggies and rolls.  What???!  It was a virtual sell out as well. 650+ showed up that night to see our "Cinnamon GRITS: Christmas in the South".  A priest stopped me after the show and thanked me for the spirituality I kept in the show.  A woman grabbed me and said, "now Christmas can begin for me."

I have to say...this was the first time I have questioned what exactly is the reason I am doing all of this.  I was truly pushed to the limits on this run.  The weight of it all was simply too much for one person.  (Did I mention I had carted a bottle of wine around in my backpack to open after the last show, only to find that it had burst in my bag and drenched all the paychecks? I cried like a sad wino in parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express. Its miserable fragrance still lingers in it today.) But I was encouraged by those audience members' words to me on that last night of the trip.  I know that people were drawn into the holiday by what we were doing, but the "noise" that accompanied this run sometimes seemed simply too loud to be drowned out by holiday cheer.

After returning home, though, I had a chance to think about what it was that we managed to accomplish in that two-week time frame.  We entertained almost 1,200 folks across two states.  We shared MY music with them in an original holiday show that I wrote about the South and the history of Christmas in our region.

That, I have to say, I am pretty darn proud of.  We managed to make the season a little different and, dare I say, special to some of those folks.  We pray before every show that we do.  I always mean every word of every prayer that I say to my cast and crew.  Hard or not, it is a treasure - a Christmas gift - to be able to share the things that you love with those that you love.  That is what THIS holiday season was all about to me this year.

Happy holidays to you and yours and we'll see you after the first of the year!  Y'all have a great 2015! More GRITS to come!!!!  Don't know if you did, but some say they could hear us exclaim as the pink trailer drove out of sight, "Merry Christmas to y'all...keep your hair high and tight!"

On the road...again!

These are the tales from the PINK TRAILER!  I have been asked to write down the adventures of the "GRITS Gals" as they happen on each of our trips to productions here and yonder as they are stories that you couldn't make up if you tried!  From secret dungeons found in the basement of venues, to stories of technical directors ending up deceased in a broom closet.  From stage managers running off with the merchandise sales money, to divas throwing punches backstage, I have seen it all!  Now I am gonna get it ALL off my chest and share it with you!  So strap on your girdles and jack up your hair cause these are the tale of "Girls Raised in the South-GRITS: The Musical" and I am NOT playin'!
FIRST-
This past trip was to Louisburg NC at Louisburg College.  Wonderful folks, but the road to get there this time was not so great! To "band" or not to "band" that is the question.  The venue for this gig requested a band.  Now, we gals have not used a band with our show in two seasons.  When the economy went by the waste side, so did the band.  Thus, the track show was born   No one could afford the price tag that came with the band so we had to do without testosterone for a while.  Us gals didn't really need it anyway.
WELL!  We needed a band for this show and so I set out to find one!  Asked around...nothin'.  Craigslist...nothing'.  Finally got some boys out of a nearby college. They showed up and weren't too bad so we offered them the job.  Two days later....gone.  Can't do it.  So sorry, but we're out!  11th hour, got some old friends from my former homeland, Knoxville, TN.  Those boys drove 6 hours to get there.  It was a sweet deal.  Could we have used a little more practice from them?  Yes.  Did they pull it off with out a hitch?  Yes! Live music is always great and these boys delivered when it counted!
SECOND-
My stage manager calls me the day before we leave to announce he's gonna play in a rugby game...match...whatever (it's NOT football.) instead of working for me! Good luck lady, with the lights and the sound, he says!  No matter he's been setting up the show ("advancing" as we call it in the biz!) for the past month with the venue.  Ta ta!  See you later sucker!  Students. 
WELL!  The theater gods smiled upon me and a new stage manager was born at 10:45 pm the night before we left.  She was a jewel from Fayetteville, NC, showed up, called the show, got us together and was a little bit of a hero for me!  No to mention when we arrived at the theater, the staff was just precious in every way!  Bless their hearts!  Looked like the "show would go on!"  (Spoiler alert....it always does.)
When I asked the theater director how ticket sales were going before the show began, he said, "Well...you're doing better than Rubin Studdard (from American Idol fame?)" I said that should be our new tag line for marketing purposes..."GRITS: The Musical"...We're doing better than Rubin Studdard."
650+ people showed up that night!  We didn't get every word of the script right, every note was not played perfectly, entrances were not timed exact, but we entertained the socks off those folks.  We had audience members hollering out things and at the end of the show, one woman came down to the front of the stage, beat her hands on it and said, "I need to talk to y'all!"  Told one of the actresses some new material she thought should be in the show. 
That's what I love.  We spend a couple of hours with these people and they feel like they know us, want to be a part of the production.  And they are.
There's usually more drama off the stage than on so I'll keep writing it down, for your backstage amusement.  This one was mild...who knows what's gonna happen this holiday season when we trot out "Cinnamon GRITS: Christmas in the South" Wheels up on the pink trailer Dec 3rd.  Check back in mid month for more crazy fun!
Show dates, times and locations at www.gritsthemusical.com