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!"
