Greetings Everyone,
I just thought I would take this opportunity to send a quick hello from “the road”. We continue to roll from state to state, working hard, laughing lots and giving our audiences one hell of a good show.
Everyday brings new adventures and new challenges. The strange things is, even though we have played in 43 different cities at this point, it doesn’t really matter to us “where” we happen to be. It’s just a name on the calendar. The other day I heard Kathryn (our Asst Carpenter) say to some of the local crew, “This may sound like a dumb question, but what city am I in?” As long as we know where our bus is in relation to the theatre, that’s all that matters. And a lot of the time that’s all we see, the loading dock, the local diner and the theatre.
From the crew’s point of view, Phil drives our bus through the night and we wake up outside the Stage Door. I usually get up first and talk to our truckers William and John (who are two of the best people you will ever want to meet). After a quick visit inside and some fast greetings with the local T.D., I go back on the bus and give the 20 minute wake up call. We gather outside and start to assess what kind of day we’re going to have: do they have a loading dock, does the local crew look like they know what they’re doing, how big is the stage, where are the power hook-ups, do we need to cut any set pieces, etc. etc.. At 8:00 the stuff starts rolling off the trucks and it’s “game on”. By the time we take our first coffee break I have usually hung all 17 drops, Kathryn has assembled all of the major set pieces, David has built and laid out the props, Sadie has mapped out the backstage, Alec and Justin have hung and cabled all four of the on-stage lighting pipes, Sara and Michael are setting up the dressing rooms and styling wigs, and Rob and Dan have the orchestra pit set up, the sound system in place and are ready to make noise. All by 10:00 in the morning. By noon, the stage is spiked, the FOH lighting is focused and we are down to little details and maintenance. After lunch we walk through the scene changes with the local crew, trying to teach them our show in about an hour, sound check as much as possible and finish focusing the rest of the lights. By 4:00 we are ready to do a show. Depending on their travel schedule, the cast usually arrives an hour before curtain to do a quick sound check. Before you know it, the show is done and we pack it all back up. Although our fastest time so far is 1 hour 33 minutes, we are usually done in about 2 hours. Then its back on the bus, have drink, laugh about the stupid things that happened that day and off to our bunks.
I cannot express enough how proud I am of our team. Not only are they extremely good at what they do, but they are the consummate professionals no matter what adversity we face. AND we’re having great time doing it together. Practically everyday someone on the local crew will say “y’all are so nice”. I don’t know what they’re used to, but they sure seem to enjoy us. They do look at as funny though when our head electrician runs the fly rail for the show and the head carpenter runs the lighting board and calls follow spots. We just say that’s how we roll at Drayton Entertainment.
Well, one show tonight in Wichita, KA then tomorrow it’s Columbia, MO, then down into Texas for a few days. Yee Ha!
I hope all is well back home. I’ll be thinking about you while I’m sipping a margarita on the beach in Corpus Christie.
Take care,
Jeff JC
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