Columbia, This Time WIthout A Cold

Sometimes I find my blog entries getting very repetitive. I am not sure what to do about that. Touring can be very repetitive. Oh well here goes. Ditto what I said about Augusta: More performances = more time to explore. I was also better able to take advantage of my free time as I had a cold the other time that I was in Columbia.

I try to do research about the various places we visit if for no other reason than something intersting may be right under my nose so to speak. It happened in Tallahassee with the state capital building, and the same thing happened here in Columbia. The South Carolina Capital is just a couple of blocks away from the theatre in Columbia, and I had no idea on my first visit!

As capital buildings go, South Carolina's is not as grand as others (Connecticut for example), but it certainly is not as hideous as Florida's modern monstrosity!

Of course there is a statue of a palmetto tree right next to the capital building. (As is the real palmettos all around the building were not enough!)

The University of South Carolina home of the Game Cocks (and a rather uninteresting campus).

Theatre and Union on campus

The Koger Center? Well it's red.

Only The Best...

Duct tape for us!

I Love My Camera Sometimes

You Know That You Are In A Classy Hotel When...

they use a gold sticker to hold down the tringle tip of the toilet paper roll. I wonder how many stickers get stuck in the hotel's plumbing?

Augusta Again

Augusta, GA is a city that I have played once before, but did not mind coming back to again, especially since we did not have much time to explore on our first visit. Like most of the cities that I have repeated between The Wizard of Oz and Beauty and the Beast, we played one more performance in Augusta so that gave me an extra day. I used that time to walk along the river walk and see the nice houses on the other side of the river...

and the various points of interest along the way.

(Not to mention the riff raff hanging out on the river walk)

We also got to take better advantage of the fun assortment of restaurants downtown. I also got to take more pictures of the cool architectural detail in some of the buildings.

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The one thing that I forgot to do was the boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson. Oh well, maybe I will be back a third time.

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As I was taking pictures of the theatre, one of the locals came up to me. I thought, "oh great here we go again with someone questioning why I'm taking pictures", but no he just wanted to talk about the theatre.

I felt a little bit bad because he was proud of the theatre and its history, and I had been thinking how dumpy and uninteresting it was. I did learn though that the seating capacity is actually larger than what they use. The back wall in the picture above hides another section of seating. Given how poorly the show sold, they could have put up another false wall!

Seeing Tallahasee

I was glad to have the chance to return to Tallahassee with Beauty and the Beast having been there once to visit a friend and once with The Wizard of Oz. On both previous trips I was not in town long enough to be able to get out and explore much. Since Beauty was in town for two days, I went in to the theatre early on the second day so that I could take my camera and walk around town.

There is not that much to Tallahassee. Aside from the State Capital and Florida State University, I did not really find much of interest to photograph.

Florida's State Capital Building is a prime example of why newer is not necessarily better. The old capital building is still standing, and it is a charming building with nice awnings over the windows.

The new building seems to have been transplanted in Florida straight from Communist East Berlin. It is so sterile and functional that it reminds me of the remaining Communist buildings that I saw during my visit to Berlin.


The dolphins do not really help matters much! Nor does the fact that the beautiful Supreme Court building is right across the street!

I did get the chance to walk around the Florida State Campus for a short time. There are some nice buildings, and I of course had to walk past the music building!

Elephant Door?

Time To Hit The Locker Rooms

Having played Tallahassee with The Wizard of Oz, I knew what we were in for. And if you read my post from then, then you know what we were in for (with two exceptions).

Once again we were in the basketball arena.

The first difference from my Wizard experience is that we actually played two performances. Tallahassee is mostly a one nighter sort of town.

The other difference is that the pit was in a remote location, or in other words not in front of the stage. On Wizard we were in front of the stage and it was a most uncomfortable two and a half hours. Because it is an arena obviously there is no actual orchestra pit so we are on the same level as the majority of the audience. Therefore they have to look through the drummer's plexiglass shield, the top of the bass, and our heads to see the stage. Being remoted is nice because not only does it solve those problems, we do not have to change into our black clothes (in the locker room)!

Sadly the actors still needed to see Carolyn's conducting, so she had to sit out front. We then watched video monitors to see her conducting.

Then of course there was the party, and it was every bit as nice as Wizard's opening night party. In fact I recognized the crazy old ladies from last time who pointed out that Cassie (Dorothy) only broke character 4 times in the show that night! Classic!!

"The Picture" or a photographic essay into my weight gain.