Quick Mid Rehearsal Post: Fred

Ok, so our cast is 13 people. But we have Fred. Fred is our moving platform. Our moving platform had to be given a name because apparently it caused conniption fits among the staff and made babies cry.

So Fred arrived in rehearsal today. And Fred has let himself go over the holidays. Fred is fat. Fred is 8 feet long by 8 feet wide fat. He's not supposed to be that fat.

So we called in the surgeons for an emergency liposuction on Fred. Fred did very well (though he did squeal a little bit during the procedure) and is now a svelte 4 feet by 8 feet.

Now that he's closer to his performance weight, Karen and I are thinking of ways to incorporate Fred into our signage. We got to thinking about cartoons and the conversation went something like this.

Karen: We could do Fred from Scooby Doo. That's pretty universal.
Nick: True.
Karen: In fact I think we must.
Nick: Or Fred Flintstone.
Karen: Oh yeah, we could alternate. I like the cartoon aspect because it works well for signage. You can do speech bubbles and stuff.
Nick: hmmmm very true.
Karen: I mean you can do that with real people but it's less literal.
Nick: ...Right Said Fred....
(silence)
Nick: Imagine the fun we could have with those signs! Especially the dressing rooms!
Karen: I'm too sexy for my .....WOMEN'S DRESSING ROOM....."
Nick: LOL

At that point, I was eating a cookie given by Trevor when he came to give Fred his liposuction. And I nearly choked on it loudly in the middle of rehearsal.

*shakes fist* CURSE YOU PARLATO AND YOU'RE PERFECTLY TIMED HUMOR!

Day Off

Today was the first official day off of the season. I finally got some decent sleep last night. I am very pleased with my body pillow purchase. It was exactly what I needed.

So I rolled over before my alarm went off again, but that was ok because I felt excellent! So excellent that when I checked the weather and saw there was a major winter storm headed towards the middle of the country I chuckled! "Those poor fools! Sucks to be........oh crap!" I....I kinda forgot where I was for a second.....silly me.

Today was the grocery run, and Karen, Ray(mond.....I'm not sure what he prefers to be called yet...so I'll cover all my bases), and myself went to Lunds. I knew there was a Gamestop near by because I had seen it last year when we went to Lunds, so I was excited! I was going to be able to go get my game, and still go grocery shopping! I got there, and was denied. I could have sworn I read somewhere that today was the release date of the game. But today was apparently the shipping day, the game is released tomorrow. So I was a little crabby when shopping. But I made myself happier by picking up bagel's at Bruggers. I don't know why that makes me so happy, it just does.

So I got back and eventually got around to putting my groceries away. But I couldn't really inspire myself to clean up like I had wanted to do today. I took a nap, and by that point I was hungry so I started to make my dinner of pork chops, snow peas and stuffing. Delicious! 

Anna and I chatted via video chat tonight. I got to see her, and my kitties! I also got to see her, wanting to kill the kitties because they were climbing all over our desk where she has tons of breakable stuff, on top of the TV where they try to leap up to my dragon statues, and gnawing on the Christmas tree. She promised me they would be alive when I get back for Christmas...I wish I could believe her.

I do believe her! Because the cats are very much like me, they will push your buttons until the point you can hardly stand it anymore and then they turn on the cute and you forget why you hate them. I've survived 27 years with this method and plan to continue playing my game for many years to come.  Both the cats were laying on the back of the arm chair, snuggling her shoulders and purring. She melted and forgot she wanted to throw both of them through the wall.

I feel I have much left to learn from the masters.

Tomorrow is the official welcome/meet and greet for the show at the Guthrie. Margot will be in town for a couple of days. We also are trying to schedule a production meeting for some point this week, but I'm still not sure when.

Well, I'm tired and I still have some cleaning to do so I should probably get to it.

I was having an OK day until....

...I went to the Nicollet Mall.

After rehearsal, I decided to dash to Target at Nicollet Mall to pick up some of the essentials I didn't have room for in my cart last Monday. If you've seen my tweet regarding the Nicollet Mall, I must now explain. Last season, I mentioned my attempted shopping trip to Nicollet Mall. It was cold, and I didn't realize exactly what the "mall" was. I knew this year, so I was prepared to deal with the outdoors and and the chilly MInneapolis weather.

While I was waiting for the light rail to take me to the mall, I was not prepared for my phone to ring, and have a collection agency for my student loans telling me I haven't paid... Well I know I haven't paid. I haven't had money! So they deferred my loan until January for me. So nice of them....*sigh*

So I get to the mall and use google maps on my blackberry to find target. I was again not prepared for my phone to give me the wrong location for Target!! I walked in circles until I finally saw a map of the entire area and found where Target was. I was 3 blocks away and I only had 30 minutes before it closed. I NYC power walked the three blocks and bolted around the outside of the 1st floor and realized none of the things I wanted to buy were there. So I flew up the escalator (and boy are my arms tired!.....sorry) and b-lined to the stuff I really needed, and eventually made my way to the other things on my list.


So ok, thus far I got a little crabby because of my loans, a little cold and a little bit lost. So be it. I found everything I needed (and then some...its target, who really goes into that store and just gets the things they intended), and went to check out. No worries! I have no money at present time, so I was gonna put everything on my credit card. Denied. Really? Try again. Denied again. Ok....uh....try it again. As I said, I have no money. I have no other way to pay for my stuff.


I needed to buy a razor and some extra blades because I am a scruffy scruffy boy right now. I also got some laundry detergent, qtips, floss, and a few other items. The most important? BODY PILLOW! I have been sleeping with a body pillow for the better part of 5 years now. It's one of the best things ever! It keeps your spine in alignment as you sleep and really helps alleviate back pain. My back has been killing me for the past week. Last year, I made it work for me, but the same system just isn't cutting it this year. I. NEED. These. Items!

Not to mention, I have to grocery shop tomorrow. That's the only time during the week to do this at the Guthrie. If my card isn't working, I can't eat. I dumped my entire paycheck onto my credit card to get the credit line down again. I. Have. No. Money. 


Then I remember at one point in time, I had a target credit card. It was turned off, but I payed the balance. I was never sure if they turned it back on or not. So on a wing and a prayer I tried to swipe that card and it immediately went through.


About 3 nanoseconds after my target card gets charged, my phone starts to ring. Why, if it isn't my credit card company calling me to verify I tried to make a purchase at Target tonight.....


.....I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR A FRIGGIN' WEEK! I HAVE BOUGHT THINGS WITH THE SAME CARD IN THIS CITY! I HAVE MADE PURCHASES LAST NIGHT THROUGH AN INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER FROM MINNEAPOLIS!!!!! AND YOU DENY MY CARD.....NOW??!!

Ahem...excuse me.

The credit card company lifts the notice on my account when I verify that I was indeed in Minnesota making purchases in a Target. So after that crapfest, I tried to pay my target card off so I don't have to deal with another bill in the mail. I was told I could not pay my target card with a credit card....this was certainly not the case 10 years ago when I worked for Target. Great....so now I have to deal with this when I get home.

Oh well. I got the things I needed, I'm going to pay off the target card right now (I hope) with my credit card and put those purchases on the card I wanted to put it on in the first place.

I am glad I'm a pack rat and don't throw anything away, including potentially worthless credit cards that bail my sorry butt out of a jam.

End of Week 1

We have put a fork in our 1st week in Minneapolis. We finished off our table work/script hack and slash today. After that, we pushed all the tables to the side and left the stage open for the cast to walk around and play within the space if they wanted to. So we got to see some of the things on their feet which adds extra clarity to the text.

When Sonny and Laura got to the balcony scene, they really went for it. I know we're all adults and truly, what is a kiss between two professional actors? But to be honest, its not something you would necessarily expect on the first couple days of rehearsal. Some actors (well most that I've worked with in the past) basically refuse to kiss the first time they work through a scene because they feel like there is time and they will get to it when its necessary. And since this work today was really informal, it certainly wouldn't be expected of Sonny and Laura to do anything. But they did, and it was adorable! They found all these wonderful comedic moments and those quick pecks while speaking lines, just wonderful stuff. Karen and I already can't wait to hear the reaction of the student audiences. It will most likely be priceless. 

It was a much more manageable day. We did a straight six so we started at noon and were done by six o'clock tonight. It never seemed like time slowed down today as opposed to yesterday. I hate long days because the time seems to crawl for no apparent reason. You're fine in the "morning" section, but after lunch the day just never seems to end. So today when we took our long break, it was at just the right time, and rehearsal ended just when your mind starts to get tired.

So now, we have a day off! Which is excellent, because The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks comes out tomorrow for the DS. And I will be buying it. And I may spend my whole day playing it.

Well it's been a long day! (12 hours to be exact)

I have not had a work day this long in a very very long time. Pretty much not since 7 Eleven Convenience Theater back in June. Even during tech of A Short Wake we had to leave the theater by 6pm so there it was really hard to get in a 12 hour day.

Today's span of day (for stage management) was actually much much longer than it seemed like on paper. I arrived at the studio at 10:30am, because we had costume measurements at 11am. Also, we had been given a request to move our tape job we did earlier in the week upstage. It was something Karen and I never thought of. We are really used to NYC spaces where you're lucky if you can fit your whole set and a table you can squeeze behind. We thought it was an awesome luxury to have tables you could get around with a little bit of shuffling, and we had about 3-4 feet between the edge of the stage and the tables. Cool! Perfect! No worries at all!

Until Penny asked if we could move the whole kit and kaboodle upstage about 5 feet. Well...we thought there was eons of room but that was our NY cramped mind saying "Oh yes plenty of room!" Penny was right. There was a lot of room for us to move the tape, and it created even larger spaces in front of our rehearsal tables. Now the cast won't be right on top of us once we start blocking, and we can sneak in and out of the room as necessary without being in anyone's way. So Karen, Ashley and myself got about 3/4 the set retaped this morning, and finished it off after rehearsal so we can just leave rehearsal tomorrow and have as much time off as possible. 

We had a good solid day of table work today. We worked through all of act I a good chunk of Act II. No idea what we have planned tomorrow. I mean, I assume we will continue with table work, but it probably won't take all the time to get through the script so who knows what will come after that.

The cast is very passionate and has a lot of ideas and favorite lines that were cut during the script compiling. So we all have our machete's and gaff tape: Machete to continue hacking the script to our liking, and gaff tape to reattach all those lines we really really really like and want to have in again.

The stage management team is a very technological bunch. We all have our laptops (Karen and me with our Mac's, Ashley with the Guthrie PC), and we're all connected to the interwebs. But we have two tables this year instead of all three of us cuddling up onto one table. The Guthrie has AIM blocked, and Adium (a proxy program that can run all sorts of instant messaging programs) but they allow google chat. So we have google chat up and running so we don't have to whisper to each other during rehearsal.

This lead to one of the funnier moments not involving the cast today: Karen sits directly to my left in the studio and we were talking about something. And I made one of my classic horrible jokes and it prompted her to type "lol" as is the accepted internet protocol. You LOL at things even if they don't make you LOL in real life. So I immediately typed to her "Liar! You so didn't lol" That, made her lol and we both typed at the same time "Now you/I did" and that made her/me lol together. Awesome!


So it was literally a 12 hour day, and I am tired, hungry and pretty sore from sitting so much today in the same position. I am trying to relax, but it's hard to find a comfy way to sit, stand or lie down...and the lappy is making this process harder so.....POST OVER!