Not Tour Related...

But I think it is worthy of a blog post!

3 weeks ago The Kennedy Center launched a new initiative called "Arts In Crisis". Through this new program, non-profit performing arts organizations from around the country can sign up to receive counseling on everything from how to make budget cuts, to fundraising, to marketing helping arts organizations keep their doors open and their staff employed through this troubled economy.

The Washington Post Article named some staggering statistics on the suffering of arts companies around the nation.

In recent weeks, organizations from almost every part of the country have reported belt-tightening measures, or worse. The Baltimore Opera Company filed for bankruptcy. The Seattle Repertory Theatre asked its staff of 55 to take two weeks of unpaid leave. The Orlando Ballet cut live music for "The Nutcracker" so the dance troupe wouldn't be reduced. The Santa Clarita Symphony in California canceled its season.

Michael Kaiser, President of The Kennedy Center, has stated this program as an answer to President Obama's call to arms. The Kennedy Center is the Nation's leading Performing Arts center with programs ranging from Dance, Opera, and Theatre to Education and Outreach including two national touring family productions yearly.

This is not the first time The Kennedy Center has leant a hand during crisis. After Hurricane Katrina, they stepped into help the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra set plans in motion to keep their doors open. When The Dance Theatre of Harlem closed its doors due to financial difficulties, Kaiser stepped in and helped them reorganize to open again just 6 weeks later.

In this time of economic crisis around the Nation, few people realize that the entertainment industry is being affected as deeply as everyone else, as made apparent by the outrage at money set aside for Arts in President Obama's financial reform package. Over 9 Broadway shows closed this past January including blockbusters like Hairspray, Spring Awakening, and Spamalot and this year The Actor's Equity Association announced there are the least available weeks of contracts as have been seen in a long time. Millions of people are out of work across the nation, and since the arts are seen as expendible they have been hit twice as hard.

It is so great in all this darkness to see a place like the Kennedy Center take it upon themselves to help others in crisis and keep arts alive in this country. I could not be prouder than I am now to have The Kennedy Center on my resume.

I also cross posted a more indepth version of this on my Daily Kos Blog so check that out as well!

Southern Cross

I am currently sitting in the charlotte airport with a few hours to spare and couldn't think of a better time to get up to date on my blog!

Meridian, MS

We arrived in Meridian, MS Wednesday January 21st. It was WARM! It's been a while since I have traveled to the DEEP south and I forgot just how different it is down there. Not bad different, just different...

The first day we didn't really do much of anything aside from go to a laundry mat, at least that I recall over a week later!

I do remember the second day! We had two shows in the morning, then in the afternoon I decided I wanted to go on a little hike/picnic/outdoorsy time since it was 72 degrees out! So I looked up things to do in Meridian and found Dunn's Falls Waterpark, a historic waterfall and park. Sounds great right? If anyone ever looked after it it would be a pretty cool place, but it is in desperate need of a historical society. I was still glad to get out for a bit though.


Climbing the Falls


The rest of the group!

Everyone wasn't too keen on hiking the not so clear hiking trails so we headed back home and then I ventured out on my own to an old historic park in downtown meridian. It was a fun peaceful time.
That night, Jonny, Eric, and I went to go to dinner at Bridget's Restaurant behind the hotel but it had a sign saying it had closed due to economic reasons (ouch) but right across the street it was the grand opening of a new texmex place with 11 dollar pitcher margaritas, so it was all good for us!

Next up... MEMPHIS

I have been very excited for Memphis since we got the schedule so I was happy to finally be there. Margo left me :( but my mommie came out and we had fun exploring all that Memphis has to offer!

The first night we just went to dinner then she headed to bed and Jonny and I joined Rudy and Eric on Beale St downtown for a night out! It was Saturday night and the place was hoppin, sadly so were the cover charges. We checked out a few cool places and danced a little before settling in a karaoke bar. (my love!) anyone who knows me knows my love of Karaoke! Sadly, the DJ was a jerk and I (aka I handed it to Eric and he gave it to her) had to keep slipping her 20s to let me sing. UGH.

The next day a group of us headed to Graceland. Sadly, I forgot to charge my camera and have no pictures of it :( but it was pretty neat. The house itself is a lot smaller than I expected but the grounds are huge and there are a lot of different buildings with different things.

That night, My mom and I traveled to Tunica, MS to gamble! It was my first official casino (other than the sun cruz in Orlando) and it was overwhelming! Apparently I am a good luck charm though because my mom got 340 dollars off her first stay at a craps table, more than she has ever won! After that we proceeded to blow most of it losing on blackjack and video slots! At least neither of us lost money in the end!

The next day we went to the Gibson Guitar Factory in downtown. THAT was cool. It was like being inside an episode of how its made! Nothing was behind glass or anything, we were just walking through watching people make guitars! I really learned a lot.



After that we went to the famous Sun Studios and heard all about the history of the beginnings of Rock and Roll! We stood in the same room and touched the mics and equipment used by the million dollar quartet! Also, very cool.

That night, Eric, Jonny, and I went out again, a little less successfully, not a lot going on on a Monday night in the winter in downtown Memphis, but we ended up back in our Karaoke bar with a much better DJ and without having to pay to sing! It was a fun night.

The next day Mom and I went to breakfast before she left then I went to pick up Margo and Kevin. We went to dinner that night and Margo and Kevin learned the beauty of smoking in bars and restaurants that still exsists in the south. BOO!!! It started pouring down rain so the rest of the night was a night in.

The next morning we awoke to a cancelled show in Memphis and a cancelled trip to Paducah, KY because of the ice storm that had ravaged the southern US. 4 of us had flights out of Paducah on Saturday to make it home for the Equity Liaison Auditions on Monday. I had purchased flight insurance so I figured GREAT no problem I will just fly home earlier from Memphis (where I was supposed to fly through anyway). WRONG. After people telling me it would cost me thousands of dollars any which way I did it and 4 hours on the phone I ended up just eating the price of my original ticket and buying a whole new flight for that night.

Home was GREAT. I did NOTHING. Michael and I hung out and watched movies and the Super Bowl and Kevin, Jonny, and Paul came over for a bit to work on audition stuff. It was a great trip home.

Today I had my audition which went very well! The auditors laughed audibly through my entire monologue which is a good sign. The space was pretty acoustically dead for singing but I think I made a good showing all the same. Public transit and me did NOT get a long today, at all. Needless to say I was supposed to arrive in Cincinnati over an hour ago but I am still sitting here in the Charlotte airport where I arrived at 5pm. LOVE IT.

Malls and Drives and Boring Dives...

SO!

In my last entry I forgot to talk about one of my favorite things from this leg of tour so far! On a lovely freezing (-10 was the high I think?) day in Eau Claire a group of us went to tour the Lienkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. It was really cool! Upon arrival we were given two free coupons for 7 oz beer tastings. We indulged in one prior to the tour and saved the second one till after. We had to walk over from the lodge to the actual brewery which was sooo cold! But the tour was very cool, it was like being inside an episode of How It's Made! We learned all about the history of the brewery, how beer is made, the different kinds of beer and what goes into them, and saw the bottling process. Very informative and very free! Here is the group on the way back to the lodge.



Anyway... on to Minnesota!

The Mall of America was fun! It ended up being Lindsay, Brian, Dave, Eric, and I. Dave was meeting a friend for dinner and upon walking into the mall Lindsay and Brian were attracted to a soap store whilst Eric and I leaned more towards the Sports Memorabilia store, so that ended up being the night! Eric and I immediately found the underwater aquarium to go to. I spun the wheel and got us 5 dollars of admission, only one tick away from an extra spin and 50% off, damn!

The Aquarium was pretty cool (number 2 of the tour! lets see what that number ends up as at the end). It had one of those big tunnels you can walk through and see all the fish! it was crazy.


The rays were very friendly! We got to touch them at the end which was cool. Overall 15 dollars well spent.

We then walked over to the amusement park to check it out. It seemed pretty cool but a little kiddish. BUT then we saw LEGO land and both made a BEE LINE. Ha we are losers. We played with some legos and tried to build things but it didn't go very well! Then we both realized we were hungry and went upstairs to the food court and had sbarros and swapped bad show stories. Then we just walked around the mall a bit, went into a western store where the woman was determined to get me to buy 400 dollar cowboy boots. She told me all the guys who came in for the Republican National Convention stopped by to buy boots... that was my sign to walk out the door! We also found this awesome store called Ragstock! It's like a salvation army but with non-used clothes as well, and nothing we saw over 10 bucks! We found this rack we lovingly labeled "death to the awful christmas sweater"



The next day we drove to Galesburg, IL. It was a HELLISH drive. We drove through the middle of nowhere!!! There were ground blizzards and cars flipped over on the side of the road every 2 miles. We stopped at State Line Pizza in Iowa... it looked like it was in the back of someone's house and it was also the home of a convenience store with expired food, and general store with fireman boots. It was interesting to say the least but we did eventually make it to Galesburg! We had a day off there, in the middle of nowhere, and nothing is open sunday's in the midwest, except Crappy's Pub! Where Eric, Rudy, and I spent the entire day watching football. Margo came and joined at one point and then Brian, Lindsay, Jonny, and Kevin came later but since my team lost and the Ravens were in the process of losing I didn't really talk to anyone. Eric got food poising so Dave took him home then came back to get Rudy and I. It was a sad day but I am glad I saw the games. That night we continued LOST watching in Margo and I's room, we are slowly moving through season 1 and everyone seems pretty into it!

The next day we drove to Springfield, IL and then a group of us went to give blood as our Call To Service from Obama for MLK day. Well Kevin and Jonny got turned down because of the archaic rule that gay men can't give blood. I somehow had enough Iron in my blood for them to take it but I didn't weigh enough for a full pint. So Margo, Dave, Lindsay, and I all ended up giving blood and Margo Dave and I didn't do so well with it. It made me a little feverish and the double shows the next day were ROUGH!!

Then we were off to Arnold, MO for a night. We were staying in Suites so we each had like a single studio apartment with kitchen and couches and such. So that night I made dinner for a group of us and then we watched some more LOST.

Yesterday we drove here to Meridian, MS. It is warm... that's about all the good I can say about it. I am not a fan of the south in general. We have two shows tomorrow then the next day it's off to Memphis.

Thanks for reading!!

and I thought -1 was bad!

How would you like to enjoy 3 straight days where the temperature never breaks above 0 and the windchill dips as low as -52 degrees?

WELCOME to The Phantom Tollbooth tours the Midwest.

Who would have known we would be walking into the coldest winter the midwest has seen in well over 13 years? Let me tell you, It's something else! The snot in your nose turns to ice after less than minutes of being outdoors, your hands and toes freeze through 3 or more layers, and people die 100 yards from their home from sleep walking.

What makes it worse? having lis LOVELY condition... http://www.jaoa.org/cgi/reprint/101/5_suppl/1S.pdf Yes folks, there it is, read all about it, that is the condition I have been blessed with. Cold Induced Urticaria and it means being allergic to the cold. I wish it was a joke, as people frequently think it is, but the more time I spend in this weather the more I realize how much of a painful thing it really is.

This morning, we performed in Eau Claire, WI where schools were closed due to the cold, but some faithful fans braved the cold and still came to the show so we performed. It was -22 with a windchill of -48 when we left the Hotel this morning and the venue s heating system was less-than-adequate. it was FREEZING. During mic check my hands swelled to the point where I was having a hard time moving them, during the show my arms turned red and starting burning so painfully I cried. Everytime I step outside my face swells up like a tomato and burns, my eyes even start to swell. I cant take a breath of air without breaking into a coughing fit and my tongue and throat itching. It is HORRID. I take my medicine but it doesn't do any good. I am trying everything in my power to play it off with a smile but at the end of the day I have never hated anything more in my life than this condition.

ANYWAY. Enough complaining. Aside from the blistering cold the midwest is not so bad. The people are very nice and the snow is pretty. I have never seen snow that looked like this. The flakes are HUGE and puffy and it looks like glitter falling from the sky. Whoever invented snowglobes must have seen snow like this.

I haven't been keeping up as well as I would like because I was very sick. I started tour with a bad head cold which progressed, despite my best efforts, into a bad chest cold that caused me to lose my voice. I went to an ENT in Madison, WI who prescribed me a z-pack and prednisone. Well all the drugs did not sit well in my stomach the next morning and I vomited my way through a two show day. It was MARVELOUS. But I am feeling much better now.

I have seen three movies since we left two weeks ago. The First was Marley and Me which was cute enough. A touch long for my tastes, there is only so long you can tug at my heart strings before I become immune to it. The second was Synecdoche, NY which was BIZZARE. Maybe I am just not artsy enough but I loved it for the first hour and then as the plot ran further and further away from me I lost more and more interest until, by the end, I felt as though I had been sitting there for 4 hours when it was really only 2. The acting was great but the story was just crazy. The third was Doubt which I LOVED. I saw it at National Theatre when it came on tour two years ago maybe? and loved it then and I loved it just as much this time. I was concerned at first because I felt one of the reasons the show was so powerful was that there were only four actors in it but little was lost in the full-cast screen version, likely because it was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley! Meryl Streep does some of her best work. Just fantastic.

Anyway I am off to bed before doing a double show tomorrow and then going to The Mall Of America. Thanks for reading and goodnight!

On The Road Again...

It is -1 degrees outside!

What a great way to start a blog entry right?!

So we ventured off again yesterday to the great midwest! We stopped in Montpelier, OH last night and made it to Wausau today at about 530 Central Time. So far, so good, except a few days before we left I got this nasty cold courtesy of the baby I was nannying for and being in a car for 10 hours when you have a really bad head cold isn't the most pleasant of things.
Speaking of things that aren't so pleasant, unfortunately we had to get a new van and they didn't have any 15 passenger vans left so we had to get a 12 passenger and take the back seat out for luggage so there are only two benches instead of three so two people have to share the back bench. It's not SO bad but we got spoiled by having our own benches to stretch out on for the first leg so we now are having a very difficult time learning how to get comfortable sleeping sitting up but hopefully we will get there. Or maybe we will get a new van?! A girl can dream...

So tonight we went to the Wausau Mining Company for dinner... it's a cute little local restaurant that looks like a mine, both inside and out! The food was pretty good and most everyone came so it was a fun welcome back to tour dinner!

Tomorrow we have a day off and we are trying to figure out what to do. There is a Ski mountain 2.5 miles from our hotel that a few of us looked into going to but I don't know if we feel like forking up the money, so we shall see! But regardless we are back in action. Phantom Tollbooth takes over the midwest!!

Continuing Through New England

So it is 1 o'clock in the morning and I am sitting at my desk at the Comfort Inn in Flushing, NY. I could be doing something productive like packing or sleeping since we have a 1030AM show but I think I would rather blog since I am so wired and have yet again been neglecting to... so here goes!

So sometime after our lovely trip to Boston ( I am quickly getting to the point where I am losing track of where I have been and where I am going) we were in White River Junction, VT on the border of NH where we were actually performing (in Lebanon to be exact). We were looking for fun things to do and talked to the nice ladies at the counter about their suggestions, we looked into horse back riding but it was finally starting to get cold and for 40 bucks an hour we figured we could find cooler places on our trip to horseback ride. We also looked at hot air ballooning but we wont even DISCUSS how pricey that was. SO we settled on something free! Specifically, Sugarbush Maple and Cheese Farm! They had a maple walk, a sugar house, and free cheese and maple samplings. PERFECT! So off we went (we being Myself, Jonny, Margo, Jeffery, and Dave)

The first thing we saw upon entering the farm was this handsome fellow...

Margo deemed me the horse whisperer since he kept trotting straight up to me and nudging up against me... I think the color of my coat attracted him!

So then we made our way down to the sugarshack where we learned how maple syrup is made. When we walked out it had begun to snow/sleet fairly hard, hard enough that it stuck around on the ground and my hair! So we decided to venture inside to taste cheese and maple and buy fun things like cheese and maple... I knew it was my kinda place when they had this great shrine to maple syrup!


We all bought way too much cheese and syrup products and then proceeded to the Maple Walk, a brisk walk through the woods where you can see how they make maple syrup during the season. It was lovely!


It was overall a very successful trip :D

The past few days we have been around and about New York City and on two separate occasions I have ventured into the city to see shows.


Day 1 in NYC
Kevin, Jonny, Lindsay, and Myself ventured in from Newark Penn Station on the NJ Transit to NYC Penn Station. Lindsay split off for dinner with friends and Kevin, Jonny, and Myself headed to the newly refurbished time square TKTS booth. Kevin wanted to see August: Osage County but Jonny had already seen it and I wasn't all about paying more money than I needed to to see a show (tickets were only 25% off to August and Kevin ended up just buying a full price ticket anyway so he didn't have to sit in the crap seats) so me and Jonny confired and decided we wanted to see either The Seagull, All My Sons, or Equus so we went up the nice lady at the booth and asked what she currently had the best seats for, her answer was Equus so we each set down out 64 dollars and that was that.

August started at 7:30 since it is so damn long so Kevin headed off to the theatre whilst me and Jonny, having a bit more time, headed to my favorite little spot in Time Square...Bella Vita pizza on 43rd between 8 and Broadway. We got a cheese pizza and shared their FANTASTIC moose/cheesecake/strawberry heaven dessert and walked over to the theatre. We had pretty great seats in the third row of the mezzanine and the show was FANTASTIC. We ran into Eric in the bathroom line at intermission, who was sitting in the Orchestra, and this made meeting up to take the train back together all the much easier. We enjoyed the rest of the fantastic production (seriously, the lights, the direction, the acting, the lights, the script, the innovative horses, and did I mention the lighting?) were all just spot on, really delivered the powerful score and made it really ring even in a modern day. At the end of the show it was Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights Aids (it seems to be everytime I go to the theatre) and ontop of the usual donate this much money and get a signed playbill or this much money and get a signed poster they also did an auction... specifically for Daniel Radcliff's Pants! Someone paid 1 grand for the pants he wore in the show signed by him, if only I had a grand to spend on pants! It was great though and we all met up and took the train home.


Day 2 in NYC:
Last night (4 days after the initial NYC trip I think...) Margo, Kevin, and Myself again ventured into the city in search of cheap tickets and good time. We looked at the student rush and decided to go see All My Sons, and even though Kevin didn't have his student ID since they didnt really seem to care (the didn't even look at mine) we all got our happy 26.50 tickets to the show. Alas it was only 430 at this point and the show wasn't until 7 so me and Margo went to find a salon to get our nails done and Kevin went off to Colony and some other shopping trips. We found a place called Classic Salon on 48th between 5th and 6th that had a special 24$ manicure and pedicure between monday and wednesday so we went! The ladies there were very nice but also very pushy and I made the mistake of mentioning I had thought to get some waxing done before my trip to Key West next week and well needless to say 2 hours and around 100$ each later we walked out of there spiffed up and groomed up. We met Kevin and walked to the theatre. This production...well...wasn't quite as fantastic as the first. First off Diane Wiest wasn't on that night, her understudy was, which is always disappointing. Secondly, poor Katie Holmes was obviously given very little coaching as to how to project on stage so she was forcing and yelling quite a bit and you could hear in her voice it was leaving its mark of damage. Thirdly, and most importantly, all these great actors and this great script were simply swimming through soup trying to fight through what is obviously a very poor directing job. The director is some "innovative" director from Europe. The problem being most European theatre is Presentational whilst American Theatre, especially the plays themselves, are Representational so there was a lot of unfounded acting moments and meandering around the stage as if he was uncomfortable letting them just sit and be in the characters. It was awkward to watch at times but overall I am glad I saw it, and glad I only paid 27 dollars for it.

Sadly whilst in my purse over the past week my Camera got impailed by something and has suffered significant damage to its LCD screen. The screen itself is intact but the pixels behind it show where it got hit and the effects. Needless to say, I need a new Camera.

Two days till I am home for Winter Break!

Keeping Up To Date

So in an attempt to keep up to date and maybe encourage myself to write more often I am going to skip over the everything I have left up to this point and just jump straight to Burlington and Boston. SO HERE GOES

Earlier this week we were in BEAUTIFUL Burlington, VT. I drove there and everyone in the car was resting, I had my music playing as I drove up over the hills and mountains with the New England fall leaves and distant farm houses as my scenery. I was officially in love!

In the Car Margo discovered the "Let's Go USA" book that tells you about a bunch of US cities and what to do when you visit, she was elated. So that evening we went to an Italian Restaurant downtown and enjoyed a simply fabulous meal, one of the best we have had on the road so far. The building was designed to look like the inside of a rustic ski lodge and it was just a very calm, nice atmosphere for our supper. Lovely.

The next day, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather in Burlington, Margo, Jonny, Jeffery, Dave, Eric, Rudy and I enjoyed a lovely hike a few miles outside of the city. It was ranked as easy to moderate but I would say it was more along the lines of moderate to intermediate, nothing we all couldn't handle but defiently some make-your-butt-sore-the-next-day uphill climbs.


The trip was well worth the view from the top though. It was a touch hazy that day but you could still see the Adirondack Mountains in the distance as well as the beautiful view of rural VT.


Here is the whole group (minus Eric who took the picture) at the top!



On the drive home we passed by the Vermont Teddy Bear factory and with just a look we all knew it was necessary we stop! We didn't buy anything or take the factory tour we just looked around. There was a whole bin up front of defective teddy bears that were on sale for 20 dollars (VT Teddy's usually cost around 60 to 70) some just had holes in their backs that could easily be stitched but some were missing arms, legs, even heads! HA! sad. But they did have these lovely Biden/Obama bears on display!



Later that afternoon, Margo, Jonny, Jeffery, Kevin and I ventured to downtown burlington for some shopping and eating. I found possibly the most perfect engagement ring ever in a lovely jeweler called grannis, bought some maple sugar candy and other lovely vermont treats as well as turtle fur ear muffs at The Apple Mountain store, and bought myself a new claddagh ring to replace my broken one at a not-so-expensive jeweler. We then ate at Sweetwaters, not my favorite stop on tour thus far, but the company was great!

That night came the announcement of our new President Elect BARACK OBAMA and vice president elect JOE BIDEN! How do you think a bunch of young starving artist feel about that?

AMAZING that's how! ha!

Should have been a great day right? WRONG. Sadly, that day during the show my purple "harlequin verb slut" top untied on stage and I spent the rest of the number doing everything in my power to keep myself from flashing a bunch of elementary schoolers on stage. I DID IT THOUGH! ha
Then the second show I blindly ran with by big red fabric as I always do, however Dave's car wasn't being very friendly that day and had a hard time getting rolling so he was RIGHT behind me when I ran. My foot became the victim of this incident. He is still slightly swollen and blue to this day.

Anyway, Sadly we had to leave Burlington the next day. Onward to Concord, NH where nothing really happened that I recall with any distinction.

Next it was on to New Bedford, NH where Margo, Jonny, Lindsay, and I took a day trip to Boston (about an hour and some change away)
It was a BEAUTIFUL day! Here are Lindsay Margo and Jonny on our walk down Commonwealth Ave



We walked quite a bit that day... through Boston Commons and the public gardens which were both fantastic. Here is a lovely fall picture Jonny took of me!



We walked down and met up with his sister Andrea at work and she showed us the place she started. It is an amazing company called Nexus (http://www.nexusboston.com/) that educated other companies, architects, children, ect about how to build and maintain green buildings and homes. It's an amazing project and it was so cool to tour her place.
After that the group of us walked down Faneuil Hall and just walked around and shopped and observed a bit. Walked to Jonny's favorite waterfront stop and then over to Little Italy for dinner before back to the train. It was a great day, very peaceful and luckily the rain held off for our whole day of walking!

So now here I am in Lebanon, NH with a day off tomorrow when we are going to tour a Maple and Cheese Farm! Should be fun.

Only 11 days till I am home and 18 days till my birthday and trip to Key West. I am very excited!