Saturday, November 19, 2011

Week One: Done

Greetings from the Charleston airport! We had a very successful week of rehearsals. It's amazing what we were able to learn and become comfortable with in only three and a half days.

Day two of flying was... painful. We learned a lot and it went great, but man oh man I cannot describe the pain I was in. If you follow me on twitter you can see a picture of the bruises on my arm from banging it against the wire. And that's by far not the worst of the bruises. But we got through it and over the next few days put the whole thing together. The associate choreographer was there to give us details for the rest of the number and we ran it over and over again. It looks really beautiful.

Yesterday the girls practiced what we're doing for the very opening of the show. All we do is hang upside down. I didn't think there's be anything to it, but it's a lot more frightening than you'd think. We're hanging about 40-50 ft above the stage for two and a half minutes. Not only that but for the tour, we'll have the potential to slowly spin around up there. I'm ok (as ok as I can be) when looking at the set or into the wings, but when I see the whole audience and the ceiling is closer to me than the floor, it's pretty crazy. Then we have to do a couple of back flips while descending and then run around and dance like crazy. That's gonna take some getting used to.

Our last day of rehearsal a half an hour later and were finished by around 2:00. That gave us a some time to explore a little bit of Charleston. We walked down to the old slave markets, which is now occupied by various vendors selling jewelry, candles, food, and lots of woven baskets. After a great lunch we headed back to the hotel to catch the shuttle to the airport.

This is where it gets fun... there were six of us scheduled to fly directly to LaGuardia at 7:10, getting in a little after 9. Our boarding time, 6:40, goes by. Then it's 7:15. Then 7:30. No one knows why we haven't boarded yet. They finally tell us that they have a maintenance issue and they don't know how serious it is but they'll let us know as soon as they know. We come to find out that there's an air valve or something in need of repair and there's no mechanic on site, so they have to call someone in. Who do you just call up to fix an airplane? I guess they didn't know either, because whoever showed up couldn't fix it so the flight was cancelled. Instead of lining up at the counter to change our flights we immediately got on the phone and got new flights in the morning. I think I got one of the last seats available because I'm in first class on my connecting flight, and two other people had to get another flight because the one I was on was full by the time they got through. So this will be my first time ever flying first class! I hope the flight from DC to NY will be long enough to enjoy it.

We were put up in a hotel near the airport, and got dinner - paid for by the AI production company. We also get an extra day of per diem for today, which is really nice of production. It's the stage manager's birthday today, I missed my sister's going away party, and a cast member's wife's birthday was yesterday and he missed it. We did make the best of our situation though. We even had a little jam session with another guy on our cancelled flight. He had a ukulele and one of our guys had a guitar, so we sang Good Riddance while waiting for the hotel shuttle.

Now we're back at the airport again. Luckily for me, that means an extra check in on Yelp and Foursquare. I'll be heading straight to my sister's place when I get in, and if all goes to plan we'll go directly to The Meatball Shop from there. Right, Sarah? Right??

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