2005-09-18 - 4:36 p.m.
I'm in Cleveland right now. And I'll be there for another week. We were supposed to leave today, but our Producer (which is how I'm gonna refer to him from now on) had an epiphany when he realized that we were scheduled to go from Cleveland to Springfield today, meanwhile another one of his tour groups was scheduled to go from St. Louis to Cleveland. St. Louis being only an hour away from Springfield, it dawned on the Producer (eventually) that it just made more sense to keep us in Cleveland.
And that's pretty indicative of how this whole tour seems to run. The right decisions get made....eventually, but could definitely have been made sooner with just a wee bit more thought. The play comes together and all the actors start pulling their own weight....eventually, but not before the Director spends half a rehearsal bitching out the Female Of Our Cast because A) she's a terrible actor, and B) she's too self-conscious to even try to actually improve on it. Little lesson for all you aspiring actors out there- standing around apologizing for being such a bad actor doesn't endear you to anyone, and it sure as hell doesn't help the show. Get confident, stupid, and get working. Otherwise you leave people like me with no faith in you whatsoever for the next 10 weeks. She (The Female) threatens to quit and I'm stuck wondering how the hell she got the job in the first place (it turns out she didn't have to audition, just interview and probably do some horizontal negotiating. Did I say that out loud? Bad Ken!) The situation with our tour car gets figured out...eventually, but not before a lot of hassle because some genius put 2 people who don't have drivers licenses into the same 3 person touring group. (And no, I'm not going to be apologetic about the fact that I could have saved a lot of grief simply by actually having a license- I was upfront about that little tidbit from the first interview I had with The Producer. If he's too disorganized to remember, it's not my fault.)
Ugh. Yeah, I'm being obtuse with people's names. I know, I know. I'll work on it.
So the rehearsal period was interesting, in the sense that I was like "what the hell have I gotten myself into?" and kinda wanting to quit myself. Our Producer is disorganized, trying to run six tour groups all by himself, our Director was staggeringly mediocre, and it was in chicago, a city i've never really enjoyed, though to be fair, the place grew on me a lot last week. Downtown isn't so bad, it's just the residential areas that suck ass. I got fairly adept at navigating downtown chicago (red line to belmont and brown line to lakeshore). The biggest problem I had, and this is gonna sound weird, was that the area I stayed in was too fancy. They put me up at the Holiday Inn in City Center, which is actually a really nice hotel. I got a lot of fun out of having the conceirge do stuff for me. Problem was, the hotel was too nice for a continental breakfast, which is one of the staples of the diet of the poor starving travelling actor. Plus I was nowhere near a grocery store and had no refridgerator, so the end result was that I spent a week feeding myself at restaurants in downtown chicago (without a food allowance) If I ever want to do that again, I'm going ot have to sell children on the black market to afford it.
I got thrown out of a thrift store on MIlwaukee Ave (funnily enough) last wednesday when I was shopping for my costume (it was sprung on us that we were supposed to arrange our own costumes, though we would be compensated) I really needed to get a specific blazer from one of the stores, but apparently chicago has some dumb-ass law on the books that if it doesn't have a tag, you can't sell it, which i was unaware of.) I was running a bit short on temper that day anyway (this being the day after the BitchFest rehearsal) and so i wasn't exactly being understanding to the clerk. to be fair, though, she was being a bitch about it. She didn't really appreciate me pointing that out, either, nor did she appreciate my correcting of her language structure and syntax, though that might have been because she was obviously an immigrant, from India if her stereotypical accent is to be believe.
Translation- I was told to pay for my purchases and leave after i blew my stack and shouted, "Bitch, learn to speak English." Oops.
Friday I got to hang out with Roxy and go to the top of the Hancock Observatory. It was fun, but I liked the Empire State better.
My castmates are idiots. I've taken to calling them the Moron Twins. The Guy is merely annoying, while the Girl is some kind of retarded walking stereotype. "I've been writing plays since I was seven." "Don't mess with a punk rock girl from Boston" and these aren't said in jest, either, which is the sad part. seriously, who gets a tattoo of freakin' blink-182? Let alone 2? (One is a logo, the other is a song lyric) And still expects to be taken seriously by anyone? Someone shoot one of us. Please.
I'll elaborate more later. Right now i just needed to vent some. It's shaping up to be a long 10 weeks (nine now!)
but...
i'm having a lot of fun playing huck finn. it's a great role for me, and despite all that I have to complain about (which is definitely an uncharacteristically high amount for me....) the kids are really digging the show, which is awesome. Sometimes on the last tour, you could hear crickets chirping during the parts that are supposed to be funny, and you'd know that the kids were absolutely hating the show and only paying attention to avoid getting in trouble with their teachers. that's a pretty sucky feeling to have. Sometimes i could tell, especially with the middle school kids, that we never had their attention to begin with, and that wasn't helped any by the fact that the scripts we were performing just plain weren't very good. This time, though, we're working with a good story (though not the best adaptation you could do, but when life hands you crap, make crap juice)
These shows, the kids are really into what we're doing. Last tour, when the kids made a lot of noise, it was because they were bored and being rude. This time, they won't shut up because they so caught up in the story. half the time when we do the graveyard scene, the kids starting making ghost noises and won't shut up for quite awhile. And when Tom kisses becky, the crowd erupts into one giant "EWWWWWW" that goes on for a solid 2 minutes sometimes. It's always much more satisfying to perform for a captive audience, regardless of the other circumstances.
I guess I'll live.
More later, but I realize I've just typed a whole heap o'nothing with only one truly interesting anecdote that I stretched on for far too long, and there's way too much names changed to protect the innocent (and people who might fire me)
ken
