Acclimation

We just got to Sacramento today, via short bus ride from San Jose.  The shows went fine in San Jose and the downtown near the theater was beautiful.  However, there wasn't much near the hotel, which was kind of a pain.
                                             Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose, CA

Ever since my first day on the job, I've been making edits to Notion.  And now it's safe to say that I'm just about done.  It's taken more than three weeks, but now I'm finding very few things I want to fix with each show that I do.  It's just another example of how "alive" theater really is.  Not just within one performance, but from show to show.  Understudies are still rehearsing and choreography/tech elements are still being refined.  The show is very much different from when we previewed in Yakima, and it will continue to evolve through April.

I'm becoming much more acclimated to our show schedule and the overall lifestyle.  We look forward to our Mondays with no shows, and usually have our workload on the weekends with two shows on Saturday and Sunday- basically backwards from a "normal" job.  The days are going by more quickly, which I view as a good thing; I'm entering a routine.  I've begun getting groceries, thus conserving money when it comes to food.  I'm considering sleeping more than 2 to a room in order to save money on that front as well.  Some other people on tour sleep four to a room in order to stretch their paycheck as far as they can.  It'd stretch even further if they didn't go out every night for a drink (which I can't really handle- I was in college once, and once was enough).

Don't get me wrong- I socialize......just in small doses.  I have quite a while to be around these people and get to know them.  I'm really in no hurry....

California/ What exactly do I do?

I'm in California!  For the first time!  We're staying the Avatar Hotel, which I've never heard of.  Contrary to previous thought, it looks nothing like Pandora.  But it is connected to an IHOP, with a Bennigan's adjacent.  IHOP, nay; Bennigan's, yea.  It's also pretty swanky, and has an outdoor pool surrounded by a few palm trees.  This hotel is about 7 miles from the theater, so the company has rentals cars for us, one car per four people.
                                                                      Avatar Hotel

You know, I get very entertained by the parents who take their kids down by the pit and try to explain to them what everything is.  Now, I'm not trying to be a high-and-mighty musician and make fun of peoples' lack of knowledge; I just get a kick out of what they say sometimes.  Many people look at all the guitars and call one of them a cello, or call the ukelele a violin.  Some people mistake almost any woodwind instrument for an oboe.  One of my favorites is when Jeff, our drummer, is practicing on a pad or something and people think he's actually drumming, but that the plexiglass shield is making it completely silent.

I believe people are most confused about my "instrument".  Granted, they ought to be.  Most people think that I mix the sound live or that I'm playing a synthesizer, which are admirable guesses.  When I tell people that it's where the strings, bass, double reeds, auxiliary percussion, and tons of other instruments come from, the magic suddenly dies in them and you'd think someone told them that there's no Santa Claus.  Sometimes, instead of explaining what it actually is, I tell them that I'm checking the band's Facebook pages and giving them live updates through their headphones, or that I'm leveling up my Ogre named Shrek in World of Warcraft and seeing how high I can get him by the end of the show.  Okay, I don't actually say these things, but it might be worth a try one of these days.

The best way I can put it is that I'm conducting the other dozens of instruments that you don't see in the pit.  The notes are their for Notion to play, and I'm simply giving it a tempo handed down to me by the music director.  Not too crazy.

Opening in Portland

Our first stop on the tour.  My life as a vagabond has officially begun!  We arrived in Portland this past Sunday via charter bus.  We took two of them, so we all had room to stretch out and be selfish.  We had that night, as well as the entire next day free to roam Portland to see what all the hip is about.  I mean hype......no, I definitely mean hip.  I've never seen so many super-tight pants in my life.  I wish it were only the girls.....Anyway, once you get past the...interesting people, Portland really is a beautiful city.  The buildings are tall, everything you need is within walking distance, and there are foods of dozens of ethnicities within a half mile radius.

Last night was our opening.  According to the audience, it was our unofficial opening because they were shooting "B-roll", or media footage, during the show.  However, the cast and crew treated it as our opening.  It's amazing how many shows you can have before you're officially open.  Probably about 6,000 people have seen the show already and it's not, in the strictest sense of the word, open.

                                                           Keller Auditorium, Portland, OR

                                           

  We had a run-through during the day to make sure everything ran smoothly.....and it did....except for my stuff, I guess.  Yesterday morning, the staff realized that my Notion equipment was in the truck of stuff that was sent away because we didn't need it.  Basically, it was in Las Vegas, which prompted many jokes from the company such as: "Notion ran away to Vegas and blew its entire per diem at the table.  We had to send someone after it."  They flew somebody out to drive it back, and it returned in time for Act II of our run-through.  Just a little scary.....

Our opening was very well-received, and we got opening night swag from the higher-ups at the company.

                                                                           SWAG!!

 Then, they treated us to an amazing party on the fifteenth floor of a building, which consisted of an open bar, an array of Japanese-American hors d'oeuvres, and was largely an open patio with a 180-degree view of Portland.

It was a very classy affair, the pinnacle of which was an amazing Shrek cake.

Today, I got to play keyboard for a rehearsal in which the Dragon puppeteers fine-tuned their number.  Aaand that's the first time I've played a piano in about a week and a half.  They've just now begun understudy rehearsals, so don't you worry.  I'm sure I'll get plenty of time behind the keys.

Our First Preview, or Putting It Together

On Wednesday we had our first run of the show, in which we had to hold once for a technical fix, and in which a song was missing because all of the props and set pieces simply hadn't arrived yet.  These arrived yesterday, on our first day with an audience.  So, we teched that number yesterday and threw it into the show last night in front of 500 people.  It's crazy the way things come together here- when the stage manager calls "hold" and you just sit there for a bit while seemingly nothing goes on, there are probably a dozen or more people working to better what just happened so that it can be perfect.  And let me tell you, these people are damn good at their jobs.

                                                    Here's my set-up, by the way.

Last night went pretty well.  There was one point in which an off-stage singer's mic went out for two bars and we had to catch up with her when it came back in.  There were a few slight glitches with NOTION that I still have to remedy, but my portion of the show went pretty smoothly.  After working tirelessly to edit the programming within the software (yesterday I worked 13 hours), it made it all worth the effort to hear the audience go nuts when Shrek entered for the first time, or when Princess Fiona took on beauty's true form at the end.

We should tour this show or something.

Speaking of- I learned something interesting.  Whereas many tours have one coach which takes the cast everywhere and on which they basically live for months, we're hiring a charter bus to take us from point A to point B each time we have to travel.  NETworks will sometimes even be flying the cast to a new destination when the distance outweighs the time.  This way, I don't think we'll ever have to spend the night on a bus.  How neat is that!?

So now we just have two more preview performances and then we travel to Portland on Sept. 11th (what a wonderful day to travel...). So, goodbye for now, and see you in Portland!

NOTION/ Orchestra

Yesterday I had my first rehearsal, in which Hiro and taught me how to use Notion.  I learned the program in less than a half hour.  The tricky part was fixing/editing the files, which took me almost 10 hours yesterday, and about 2 more today.  There were a lot of glitches and wrong notes that I had to correct, along with typing in notes to myself.  It finally runs pretty smoothly.  Here's what I do:

It looks pretty easy, doesn't it?  It's actually not.  Running the Notion requires a lot of musical intuition and timing; it's really easy to get ahead of yourself.  You also have to program in your own rhythms that you're tapping so you can have more control over the pre-programmed music.  Without a strong musical and technological background, the learning curve on this program is pretty steep.

Today we rehearsed the orchestra and ran through the entire show.  It.  Was.  Incredible.  As you may guess, these players do this for a living.  Therefore, they bring an enormous level of professionalism and talent to the rehearsals.  The first time we ran through each number was nearly flawless.  Needless to say, today was a straight-up good time.

(Spoiler Alert!) I also watched some of the tech-in today in which Princess Fiona turns into an ogre at the wedding and levitates, and Lord Farquaad gets eaten by the Dragon.   So cool!!

Tomorrow, the orchestra rehearses again. We join the cast on Wednesday and have an invited dress Wednesday evening.  Then, it's onto our first preview on Thursday.
                                              
                                                  The Capitol Theater, Yakima, WA

Getting to Washington

After three flights and two layovers, I'm in Yakima, Washington.  I shared my last flight with Hiro Iida, one of the programmers of the software I'll be using on the tour.  He's worked on Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, as well as many NetWorks shows.  The main programmer of my software for this show was Jason Howland, the writer of the music for Little Women.  Jason called Hiro during our taxi ride to the hotel to tell him that he's done with the files.  After they hung up, I told Hiro that I was in Little Women a few years ago, and Hiro told me that he should have passed the phone over.

We checked into the hotel and I headed directly over to the theater where the cast was already rehearsing.  I met the music director, Kevin Casey, and he showed me around.  Then I watched them rehearse the song Forever, in which the Dragon falls in love with Donkey.  The dragon puppet is, for lack of a better term, freaking awesome.  The voice behind her is even more so.  I'm surprised at how young everyone is.  Even the director can't be out of his 20's.

Then Hiro got there and he showed me the setup for my "instrument".  I have a 25-note midi keyboard, 2 mac desktop computers, a small rack of hardware, and various other gadgets.  Tomorrow is my crash course in which I have my own rehearsals with Hiro and Kevin to learn this software well enough to rehearse with the orchestra the next day.  Can't wait!