And thus it ends!

With the tour over, we finally had a "family photo" taken. It's a bit blurry and weird, but apparently turned out better than the pictures Kathi had taken!After a final night spent together, we all went our separate ways on Monday morning. Doug and Steve drove back together, stopping in Viroqua to pick up Doug's car at the Ramada. Bill and Craig drove back to Milwaukee in the truck, to unload all the roadboxes and scenery carts at the Rep and the warehouse, where it will store until someone decides it's time to do the show again! And Kathi, Lee, Jimmy and I rode back in the van, stopping in Marshfield to "dig" Jimmy's car out of the snow!
It's certainly been fun... here's to a successful tour! Thanks for reading :)

As always, more pictures of the fun on the road can be found at this link. Enjoy!

Last Stop on the Tour - Red Wing, MN

We left for Red Wing bright and early again, after significant snowfall the night before. The drive was fairly unexciting for us in the truck...that truck can drive through anything! I hear it was a bit more stressful in the van, but all arrived safely. The drive itself is beautiful - much of it is spent driving north along the Mississippi River, with lots of tree-covered hills and even some bald eagles! Of course, I slept through most of it, but from what I was awake to see, it was some gorgeous scenery.

There were lots of "lasts" on this particular day, as you may imagine. Last load-in, last truck ride for me with Bill and Craig, last sound check, last SHOW, last load-out, last night for us all to hang out together... We made the most of it, and had a great time. The snow caused a slightly less full house than we had hoped for, but it certainly looked romantic outside of the theater!

The theater itself, the Sheldon Theater, is VERY similar to the Pabst in Milwaukee. We remarked upon this pretty much as soon as we walked through the door, and apparently there was once a third level to the house, which would have made it even more like the Pabst.

For the third night in a row, the theater provided dinner for the crew... this time, we had some great cheeseburgers and the like from a local eatery.

And our Burger King bobble-head, which has been with us since week 3, go the spot of honor that night, spending the entirety of the show in Doug's ice hole!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

During Intermission in Viroqua, the snow was starting to pile up outside the theater... Towards the end of the show, though, it was visibly worse! At this point, I locked myself out of the building and had to run around the block to try and get in a different door. No, I didn't have my coat on, and no, I didn't have snowboots on. Suffice it to say, after running through several snowdrifts my feet were VERY wet!
Keep in mind, these are the conditions we did a load-out in! Snow certainly adds a certain element of bonding to any given situation...

On our drive back to the hotel, we had to stop to assist some other hotel-stayers who had gotten stuck in a drift on their way into the parking lot.
We didn't have much luck pushing the car out, but soon Steve showed up with his truck and towline, and promptly dove into the snow to find a place to attach his tow-line to his car. This was the THIRD random car he helped out that day!

Back at the hotel, we waited nervously to see if we would even be able to make it to our last stop on the tour the next morning. And the snow kept falling!

Another long day in Viroqua

Because of the snowstorm predictions, Bill, Craig and I wanted to hit the road early for the drive from Marshfield to Viroqua. We met for breakfast at 7 am, and hit the road around 7:45. The roads were "snow-covered and slippery" but not bad. We made sure to stay on the biggest roads in the area, and aside from having to stop for the LONGEST TRAIN EVER, didn't experience much of a delay in our travels.

Load-in was a bit rough in the beginning, but after a delicious lunch of pizza and coffee and sour-dough bread our attitudes all started looking up and we did just fine!

The Temple Theater in Viroqua is another really cool old theater, with some fun touches. They were very eager to give us a tour, and show off some of the old touches still oresent in the building, including the awesome fire curtain covered with advertisements from the early 1900's. They are also very proud of their basement lobby floor, which is cememnt but painted beautifully to look like marble, and the bathrooms down their are a marvel as well!

In the dressing room area, there was a "secret" passageway to get to the front of house and the booth... but the door to the passageway is a bit small!






One of the first things we did upon arriving in Viroqua was call the board president of the Temple Theater to make sure that there was in fact going to a be a show that night despite the snow...which there was! The show was sold out, but only about half the house showed up. Luckily, the theater was able to earn some money by re-selling the unused tickets of season subscribers.

Fun was had by all though, despite the frightful weather!

Friday Fish Fry in Spencer

As mentioned below, this is the part of the tour where I misplaced my camera for two days and wasn't sure where it was... so pictures from Spencer are scarce.

Spencer is a little town right near Marshfield, where such famous such as Judy Berdan (Prod. Mgr. at MRT), Briana Fahey (Company SM at MRT), and Lee Ernst (Resident Acting Comp. Member at Mrt...Scrooge!) are from. In fact, our hotel was in Marshfield.

We had a great crowd here and really enjoyed everyone that we spent time interacting with here. I had my first Friday Fish Fry since I was a little girl, which proved to be VERY good! The crew brought it in to us at the theater because the wait at the restaurant was so long - above and beyond!

The theater is attached to Spencer High School, so we used a large classroom for our dressing room, which luckily for me had internet access. It also had a weather station, so we could monitor what was going on outside from the dressing room area! No snow yet....

After load out, back at the hotel, we were eager to check out the weather forecasts, which proved to be apocalyptic. Kathi read us some choice quotes from the forecast that she found online (and that you can access at her blog)... of course the worst hit areas were predicted to be along the Wisconsin/Minnesota border...exactly where we were driving the next morning!

An Eau Claire article

There was a copy of this piece waiting in our green room for us...

Eau Claire and ohhh, Leinie's!

As you may have guessed, we couldn't pass the opportunity to stop by Chippewa Falls while we were in Eau Claire and go on the Leinenkugel's Brewery tour. It proved to be a great pit for us to throw our per diem into, as we bought wonderful and important items like this sign that Bill found! Our tour guide was cool, and reminded us of several people back at The Rep, and yes, he HAS seen the show! It's important to get the Leinie's love out there, because, as well all know, it's da best beer in the whole U.S. of A.!

At this point I misplaced my camera for a few days, so I don't have much in terms of what the theater looks like. 1100 seats, dark house!

We did two performances in Eau Claire, and really enjoyed the downtown area that we were in. Our hotel, the Ramada, was just a block away, and there were some fun eateries and bars nearby (yes, there was karaoke). Wednesday night at the hotel bar was ESPECIALLY fun, perhaps in part because Bill, Craig, and I had all been up and working since 6:45 am! The grand tally for the day was that Bill and I spent about 18 hours straight together...

In other news, we had a guest pianist in Eau Claire, Jake Endres, who has done the show with these guys before. It was really cool to hear someone else playing Jimmy's music; we noticed different accents here and there that we hadn't heard before.

Next up...3 days straight all in different venues and a blizzard thrown in for good measure!

Baraboo

This theater was another oldie but a goodie! It hasn't seen the great restoration that the theater in Stoughton has, but you can kinda see in a few of these pictures that on some panels they have done exmaples of what the theater would look like if it WERE restored.

The dressing rooms were especially unique... I believe the terms I'm supposed to use are "historic" and rustic". They were in the basement, and yes, rustic would describe them!

In our two days in Baraboo, we had quite a bit of excitement.

First, we found THE BEST buffet lunch ever in the world, for a mere $7.

Comps were fun here - Bill, Steve and I spent a good part of half hour putting chairs like this one from the dressing rooms into the theater's orchestra pit to ensure that everyone would have seats!

And of course, it was a brilliant moment when, just a few seconds before he had to go onstage, Doug came up to me frantically asking where he had put his gloves, hat, and scarf! We managed to find them in the dark (he had put them on a nearby garbage can), but I laughed for about the next 5 minutes straight, and was only able to tell the others over headset that "Doug lost all his clothes"... they were a bit worried about what they might see when the lights came up onstage!

Then, the REAL Cubby Cuvernon was in attendence. 'Nuff said.

Valentine's Day...and then some... in Hartford

Hartford boasted one of the most comfortable Green rooms we've seen in a while. A good thing, since we were here for all of three performances!

We made ourselves quite comfortable at both the theater and back att he Hotel in this time period... staying in one venue for three performances felt like a break! A relaxing time period in which we spent one whole day without having to do a load-in or load-out!

The theater is an old renovated canning factory - the beams that you can see in the pictures are a really unique touch that adds a lot aesthetically.

We had some fun in Hartford, spending both Wednesday night and Friday night at the Mineshaft, Wisconsin's biggest (?) restaurant, where they had (go figure) karaoke. Karaoke is following us around the state; we couldn't escape it if we tried to!

not an update

One of these days I'll update with fun-ness from Hartford and Baraboo. In the meantime, check out the article linked here, with interviews by Mr. Mancheski and Mr. Kaplan :)

Also, check out what a rockstar I am when I wear Bill's sunglasses (I have a habit of NEVER bringing mine on the road with me)

Stoughton

Ah, Stoughton... what a beautiful theater! This was the first stop all week that we actually got to stay at for more than a day, so load-in and out were for once NOT on the same day. It's about time, as that schedule becomes very exhausting after a while.

The Stoughton Opera House was quite the unique little setting for our skit though. Built in 1898, it's a gorgeous, very cute space... that unfortunately is in the second floor of city hall... in a building in which there is no freight elevator. Our roadboxes and shanty walls just BARELY fit onto the elevator, one at a time, of course. Meanwhile, our show deck did NOT fit, and was definitely too heavy to be carried, so we did without it in Stoughton. And, as you can see, this meant that we did without our ice holes, as well.

Once the roadboxes were unpacked, they had to go back onto the truck, which had to be parked several blocks away. Normally we can just leave them backstage, but here, not only was there no space for them backstage, but there wasn't even a way to get them TO stage. We unloaded them from the back of the house... it wasn't the most efficient of load-ins, but I think we did great given what we were up against!

Because the theater is so old, it had a lot of charming characteristics. Many of the walls backstage and leading to the dressing rooms were graffitied with signatures from previous shows, many of them dating back to the beginning of the 20th century! The seats, although they certainly don't look as comfortable as many other seats, have the added bonus of top-hat holders, as you can see on the bottom of this seat. I thought perhaps I should be weary of backstage ghosts, but was instead told that I should be more worried about bats... the building literally has bats in the belfry!

On Monday, we had plenty of time to kill before Hotel check-out and show call, so Kathi, Bill, Craig and I drove down to New Glarus for the afternoon, wanting to hit up the Brewery Tour there (they make Spotted Cow, one of my favorites). The town itself is a wonderful little Swiss town; I felt like I had stepped into Europe. There were certainly plenty of cowbells hanging around, and all of the shops on the main street were a great diversion.

We had a smooth second show that night, followed by load-out. This took a bit longer than

usual as you may be able to imagine, seeing as

how we had to bring all the road boxes back from the truck to the second floor, pack them, then send them back down again!

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, we were impressed by both the security system and fitness center. I'm not sure that my picture captures just how sad this little camera was (doesn't it look shy and a bit timid?)... and please note, there WAS NO exercise equipment!

Finally, just so you know, if your laundry detergent ever freezes, a hair dryer will do the trick!

A few more pictures of the week can be found here.