"Abused mortals! did you know
Where joy, heart's-ease, and comforts grow;
You'd scorn proud towers,
And seek them in these bowers,
Where winds sometimes our woods perhaps may shake,
But blustering care could never tempest make,
Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us,
Saving of fountains that glide by us."
-Sir Walter Raleigh
It's a scene out of a storybook: rolling hills of green, winding country roads, street signs instructing the traveler to be mindful of the horse-and-buggies. Amish country is renowned for its handcrafts, soft pretzels and peaceful inhabitants. The venue we played last Friday could not have been a more pristine example of this quiet area. A beautiful new high school, run by the Mennonites. It's theater was resplendant with glistening white walls and polished pine benches. The students were infinitely polite, helpful and disarmingly innocent. There was a chapel service going on in the auditorium while we set the stage behind the main curtain. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the whole morning. We thought surely we would have a quiet, tranquil end to our otherwise tumultuous week. 'Twas a vain hope, and we were soon learning that our bad luck was not going down without a fight . . .
To list the mishaps of that particular performance would be impossibly exhaustive; here are some of the highlights: the curtain was installed sideways, which made it extremely difficult (read impossible) to close. Our local crew, comprised of the enthusiastic high-schoolers, seemed incapable of doing anything but get in the way. The dam broke when, at the end of Sleepy Hollow the scrim refused to be pulled out, and the Headless Horseman was forced to enter by scurrying underneath said scrim while it was held aloft by two frantic actors. I of course was not aware of this, since I do not look back at the Horseman until the end of the scene when we are supposed to exit together--at the precise spot where the scrim was still hanging. So after our elaborate disappearing stage-trick, Ichabod helped the Horseman underneath the scrim and then both scurried off together. So much for dramatic tension.
The calamity only escalated from there. Mustaches flew off, curtains were caught on scenery, mics failed and performances were lackluster. All of which was received by the audience with absolute silence. We did not hear so much as a peep out of them for two solid hours. While we did appreciate their respectful attention, it's never fun playing for corpses.
It makes sense, I suppose, that after the ridiculousness of the week's begin, it should end with a bang. Suffice to say that by the end of the performance we were all disgruntled, tired, and simply glad that the nightmarish week was over.
We stowed our gear, tied down the hatches, performed our cross-checks and fired up Matilda's engines.
I found myself for the first time in the truck, navigating for Erin. We jammed out to the 'Across the Universe' soundtrack and busied ourselves deciding on a proper eponym for our as-of-yet unnamed truck. After some deliberation we settled on 'Lenny'. This came from the truck's similarity with the abonimable snowman from Looney Tunes, and because it sounded good in concert with 'Matilda'. The rest of the troupe also found it fitting, and as quick as a wink, our caravan was complete.
We stopped in Harrisonburg, VA for the night, and rose the next morning to push on to North Carolina.
Already we could see that a good night's sleep, and the prospect of two days off had done wonders for our spirits. It also helped that we had biscuits and gravy that morning on the breakfast buffet (a first for some of our cast members) Welcome to the south!
At the wheel was Metro Meg Mark, who got us on the road and settled in to the five hour trip while our superb soundman Nate played DJ and navigated. After lunch, Nate switched with Meg, put on his driving gloves and prepared to supercharge us through the Appalachians. To accompany our descent through the mountains, he popped in the new Radiohead album, 'In Rainbows', which had just come out a few days before. The rolling drumbeats and distortion mixed with Thom Yorke's vocals created the perfect soundtrack for Nate's expert piloting. The whole world opened up outside the windows with endless mountains vistas as Matilda hugged the curves and screamed through the hills, Lenny trundling faithfully behind.
We arrived that evening in Hickory, NC, where the accents are as thick and sweet as the syrup they serve in the mornings. The hotel clerk was terribly excited by the presence of traveling actors. He was something of an actor himself he told us, and had been in over 12 community theatre productions. (!!!) He was assisted by the sweetest southern queen imaginable, by the name of Tatiana. She was all smiles and elongated vowels, happy to supply information about the area. I was so fascinated by her accent that I would ask questions I already knew the answers to, just to see what she would come up with next. The gentlemen of E3 absolutely adored her and she was a common conversation piece over the next two days.
Other than the accents and the fried chicken, not much to say about Hickory. A general malaise settled upon us, as the hotel was not near anything of interest, and the van was in use half the day running errands for the tour. It was an incomparably beautiful day, with plenty of sunshine and white poofy clouds, so we did what we could to enjoy it, ending the day at Cracker Barrel for some soul food.
Monday began a new week, and a fresh start to the performances. The first positive indication was the lack of technical difficulties, and the extremely responsive crowds. The audience was laughing and reacting to the shows, and it was certainly a welcome change.
Tuesday saw us in Pfafftown (pron. Pahf-town), at an out-of-the-way high school with a tiny house. Although it was a trick adapting our production to the space, the audience was lively and our hosts were gracious and helpful. We even got a free meal out of it.
With two more notches in the proverbial belt, we headed into the state's capitol: Raleigh.
Although we knew we would be performing in a proper venue this morning, most of us were not prepared for the grandeur of the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. Situated downtown just a few hundred yards from the capitol building, it is a majestic white stone structure, gleaming in the morning light, and exuding the august austerity of a world-class cultural institution. Upon finding myself inside the building ten minutes later, I was amazed to see that the reality surpassed even my own romantic imaginings.
We were greeted by an extremely competent union crew, in a pristine and totally state of the art loading dock. There were uniformed personnel everywhere and as we headed on to stage, I was immediately overwhelmed by the size of the place. The stage itself was huge, but even more impressive was the house, with thousands of red seats cascading back three levels up and more. There were two enormous chandeliers, suspended stories above the seats. Upon asking, I learned that they were each fifteen feet tall, twelve feet in diameter and made of real genuine (pron. gin-u-WINE) Austrian crystal. Magnificent.
With the crew's help we had the set loaded in record time. We each had our own dressing rooms, and I was amazed to see that there were two coffee pots with gilded brass legs that curved gently to the table below. Even the coffee pots were classy!
Verily, our performance rose to meet the superior standards of the theater, and we had our best run yet. The audience was excellent, and our show was spot on. After last week, it felt so good to load in like a bunch of pros, and bang the boards with a performance we could all be proud of.
We performed there again the following morning, and the house was filled almost to capacity. They were a rowdy lot, cheering raucously and commenting on the shows, but still very energetic in the best sense. We rocked out one again, and after a quick and painless load out, said our goodbyes to that beautiful building.
We then took our leave of Carolina and rolled along northward, knowing that we had left many young hearts and minds lightened by our passing.
Our next installment of adventures takes place in Virginia, and is full of ivy wrapped columns, dead presidents, and our own rock-solid theatricality! For now we depart our second full week on the road, and await the solace of a weekend well earned.
-ICHABOD
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