Two More Trips Down The Yellow Brick Road For Glenn

So back in October when we played in Miami, Glenn came down from Wellington to see Wizard (or to eat at Joe's Stone Crab. I have feeling that the later made the former all the more appealing, and who could blame him!) So when I found out that he was coming back to see the show two more times in West Palm Beach, I was a bit surprised. I mean Mom only saw the show three times after all.

So Glenn came Thursday night and brought Glenn (the housekeeper) and the Princess. One of the best parts of playing at the Kravis is that there is an upscale shopping and dining complex called City Place right next door. So before the show we met for a drink, and then afterwards we headed to The Cheesecake Factory for appetizers and cheesecake. Then on Sunday Glenn and Gwen came to see our last performance in West Palm, and after I had packed up my stuff I met them at (you guessed it) The Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

Sadly I never once thought of pulling out my camera. I need to be better about that!

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Once again I am breaking from the chronology of my blog to post in the present. Tomorrow is our last performance (#224) of The Wizard of Oz year one. I have closed many shows before, but this one is a bit depressing to me because I was not able to find a gig for the summer. I do need a break from the show though since I will be going out for year two in October. My hope is that I will get in a substantial amount of practicing, and lose my tour weight over the summer (before I go back out and regain it!). I do still have a fair amount of blogging to catch up on and I will post periodically during the summer. Here is what to expect from the rest of tour:

Orlando (layoff week)
Boston (layoff week)
Rochester (200th performance)
Madison (layoff)
Milwaukee
Dallas (opening and closing night parties)

Now back to West Palm Beach.

Performing In The Kravis Center (Or The Auschwitz Center As I Call It)

I was excited to perform at the Kravis Center because of all the times that I have visited Glenn, I have never actually seen the theatre. I have always checked to see if there was a show playing when I visit, but it has never worked out. Well now that I have played the Kravis, I hope that I never play there again. Okay perhaps that is going a bit far. If you saw the title of the post, you might have found it to be in poor taste, but that is the only way to describe the conditions in the pit. The pit was so hot with absolutely no air circulation that I felt like I was being baked alive in an oven! I will be the first to admit that I am a person who does not deal with heat very well. In fact I would gladly take 20 degrees and snow over 90 degrees and sun, but this was unacceptable. There were times that I felt like I was going to pass out because it was so hot. Patrons be damned, what about the performers?! Part of me was actually hoping that I would pass out just to make a point!

As for the theatre itself, it appears to have been decorated in the modern cruise ship style. After I analyzed it though, I realized that if there was going to be a theatre in West Palm Beach it should look exactly like the Kravis. Very fitting!

Two Weeks In West Palm Beach

So in preparing my entries for West Palm Beach, I looked through my pictures and discovered that I didn't take many. So my recollections will have to suffice!

To begin with we played a week in West Palm Beach and then had a one week layoff afterwards. Perfect! Since Uncle Glenn lives so close to West Palm, I stayed with him for the two weeks and saved on the hotel expense. Of course I ended up driving a big pickup truck, but it was a small price to pay to not have to pay for a hotel! Since this was my first time "living off campus" on tour, I was paranoid that I would be late to a performance, but thankfully I never was.

Anyone who has spent time with Glenn knows to expect the unexpected, but it turned out to be a fairly tame week. Mostly we stayed up late watching Family Guy and Futurama cartoons. We ran out to BJ's and Costco for a little warehouse club shopping. Considering the fact that I had a flight the next week, I limited myself to the essentials (batteries for my camera and allergy medicine). I also paid an end of tour visit to Pearle Vision to get some new glasses with my health fund money. In the end, it was a pretty relaxing week of being away from the tour folk, and spending time with Glenn and the animals.

Milo in a rare calm moment!

Missy contemplating whether she needs to climb into my flute bag or not!

Do They Make Diet Bird Seed?

Stopover in Jacksonville

Sometimes when we have a stopover city all you want to do is get in your hotel room and never leave (Meridian, Mississippi!). But occasionally we go someplace fun and try to make the best of it (Memphis, Tennessee!). Jacksonville, Florida was in the later category. Our hotel was right in downtown Jacksonville so I dumped off my bags and went exploring.

Jacksonville by night

Oh I get it!

The Landing is an entertainment complex right on the river. It has seen better days, but we did go there for dinner.


The Times Union Center is the performing arts center downtown. It is also where The Wizard of Oz will be playing next year for a week. Joey is very excited because he is from Jacksonville.

I wonder if we will get our own special projection and green lights too?

The Wonderful Wizard of BoOZe

Having achieved their first plate at the Houston Flying Saucer, the Wizard of Oz Brew Crew became obsessed with getting a second plate at the Raleigh location. And well they did. Again I did my small part, but the brunt of the work was accomplished by a core group of 4 guys. This time around though we were able to have a celebration for the unveiling of the plate.

They do actually have an unveiling ceremony. It is a bit cheesy, but if you don't come back for the ceremony your plate remains forever veiled. And strange as that sounds there were several plates with veils in Raleigh.

Jason intended to have the Z in OZ capitalized also. The manager thought it was a misprint so he changed it to lowercase. Oh well. I think that the message still comes through.

Sarah and KC

Noah and Chris with the waitress. I'm not sure what Chris is doing, but I'm sure the waitress was glad when we left!

I was trying to recreate the picture I took in Tallahassee with the cut out of the Tinman and Scarecrow. Noah didn't really get it.

The heart and soul of the WOZ Brew Crew

Ain't No Party

So this year in Raleigh we were to have an opening night party which we didn't have last year. Great. It was to be located in the one of the nicer restaurants in downtown. Even better! The invitation said free appetizers and champagne while they lasted. Hmm questionable?! So we all dutifully got dressed up and headed to The Mint after the show. What greeted us was four plates of appetizers (two plates each of two different varieties) and a small table with enough glasses of champagne for most, but not all, of our company to have one. Lame! And then to make matters worse it turned out to be some publicity thing for a little girl who won a contest to meet the cast. Totally lame! It ranked right up there with Greenville's party. Well actually Greenville had plenty of food (even if it was gross!).

The chorus boys with two of the four plates of appetizers.

Raleigh Redux

Raleigh was a repeat city from The Wedding Singer so I won't waste everyone's time rehashing what I said last time. Suffice it to say that not much has changed.

I was excited to get a picture of the giant acorn this time. I missed my chance last year.

The Raleigh Memorial Auditorium is as strange as it was last year. I did get some better pictures this year though.

It is interesting how they took they the old building and built a complex of other performing spaces around it.

Stopover in the Land of Married Cousins

This tour has taken me to West Virginia more times than I ever expected in my lifetime. We had a stopover in Charleston on the way to Raleigh.

Hi-ho the glamorous life.

Leaving Chicago

So how did the show go over? Well let's see. We got a terrible review in the Chicago Tribune. I believe we were considered to be less than a high school show in Chris Jones's opinion. Reading between the lines though, he mentions the fact that we are non-union enough times to be suspicious, and there is also the stage of the Chicago Theatre. The stage is so shallow that even our show had to be downsized. (I will never forget the story of Disney leasing the Chicago Theatre for Beauty and the Beast only to realize that the set did not fit!) And now I don't love our set for Munchkinland but when you have to leave out a couple of set pieces then it looks even worse. Plus the back wall projections were tiny because they couldn't get the projectors back far enough. Now it is not that I disagree with everything he wrote, but I don't think his review was entirely fair. Especially given the Munchkin Parent's letter to the paper.

We had more problems with the local munchkins in Chicago than on any other stop so far. To begin with they were not prepared, and inattentive in rehearsal. Add to that, they were poorly behaved backstage culminating in one of the boys being punched in groin. So the management sat the kids down and explained that if any of them were to misbehave again, they would be taken out of the show. So of course at the next performance, two of the kids were shoving each other backstage, and were subsequently removed. This ended up with a letter being written to The Chicago Tribune complaining about everything having to do with the munchkins. The fact that the kids were not paid, the fact that they had to rehearse on their own (this woman swears that she paid $500 in rehearsals), the fact that they did not get fed between shows (actually only the crew got fed. I didn't!), and on and on. She even complained about the kids being threatened by the management. What she conveniently forgot to mention was the fighting backstage. Amazing how that happened! This letter read like an obviously one sided account of an event minus all of the facts. Everything she complained about would have been no secret when she agreed to let her kid do the show. That the Tribune should have printed this letter is pretty shameful. (Also just for the record, NETworks did not want a rebuttal letter written. I volunteered!)

Ultimately like New York, Chicago turned out to be pretty disappointing. I was glad that so many friends and family came to see the show. (Actually we had pretty terrible audiences. The morning shows were empty!) I also got to meet the writer from The Times who wrote an article about me in the newspaper. Playing at The Chicago Theatre was very exciting, but oh that schedule was crazy. Thankfully the company all seemed to have fun in Chicago especially when I dragged a group to Gino's East for pizza! Mmm Gino's...

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We're Off To See The Wizard

The best part of playing in Chicago is the proximity to most of my family and friends. Meaning that, I had a bunch of visitors see the show in Chicago at four of our eight performances. Thankfully, I remembered to pull out the camera each time. (Well almost every time)

Ever since Nate commented on the boyinthepit sweatshirt Mom wore in Pittsburgh for The Wedding Singer, it has become a thing. Now whenever Nate sees Mom he asks where the sweatshirt is. Little did he know what he was starting. This time we got the crazy green glasses incorporating pictures of both of us. Sadly, Nate is not returning to The Wizard of Oz next year. Whatever will Mom do?

The largest group come to the Thursday night show. (There was an advance discount code for that night!) From left to right it is Bryan, Amber, Mom, Zachary, Jennifer, Jamie, me, Dad, and Elsie. And actually there were four others there that night. They probably knew that there would be a picture so they ran off! Since it was Thursday night, everyone had to work the next day so we did not have time to go out afterwards.

My friend Tanya and her sister made the trip all the way out from Constantine Michigan. Afterwards we ran over to Elephant and Castle for some drinks.

Linda and Heather came to the 3pm Saturday show. Afterwards we ran over to Elephant and Castle for a little lunch. (Heather offered to take the picture)

Facebook is a crazy thing sometimes. One day I got a message from a former Round Barn alum telling me that she was going to be a dresser for Wizard in Chicago. I was very excited as I hadn't seen Laura in ages. So thankfully we had a bit of free time before the shows to catch up, but because of the crazy schedule we just did not have time to run out for a meal. Oh well. At least I got a picture!

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Oh and the fourth visitor? Mom came back again for the Sunday morning show.

Chicago Theatre Wall Tags

I was so excited when I walked through the stage door and saw all of the wall tags painted around the walls backstage. I tried to find the ones for all of the shows that I have seen at the Chicago Theatre. I found most of them:

Because of the schedule the crew was only able to do the stencil version of our tag instead of the full replica of the logo. I'm just excited to have my name on the wall.

It was hard to get a good picture of the Superstar tag because of the lighting backstage. The cool thing is that they modified the original when they came back the second time. I think I saw it both times.

Seeing The Pocahontas Summer Spectacular was one of the first things that I did with my nephews Stephen and Bryan. They were so young which means that I am so old!

I know that I saw Cats there. I assume it was this production.

It was hard to get a picture of the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor tag also, but this time it was also because the stage manager's hampers were sitting in front of it. I pulled them back a little so that I could get Donny Osmond's signature in my picture.

It looks like all the different children's choirs signed in the colors of the rainbow.

This is another two engagement tag. Again I think I saw both.

This one is my favorite. Starlight Express is the first show that I saw at the Chicago. This was also back in the day when I was really starting to become obsessed with musical theatre. It was so exciting to see Starlight Express, and as it turns out the tour did not last very long. The show was too expensive to tour so I'm really glad that I got to see it!

I one show that I could not find was Kiss of the Spiderwoman.

Chicago Theatre (interior)

And now for the interior of the Chicago Theatre: