Wednesday, October 14, 1998
Day Nine
Today we got to sleep in, til 7:30 am. Oooo. We’re staying with some friends of Joe’s (Shawna and Steven) that live in Seattle. In tour talk, this is a “home stay”. Tears of Joy gives us $40 in per diem for food and hotel, but we get to keep the leftover soooo…. I normally don’t like homestays but this one is great. No, I’m not just saying that ’cause they might read this.
It was an eventful day. We did our trick of slightly wrong street names with the first school. NE 8th vs. 8th St. We got to the show late, and had half an hour to load-in to a school with steps. This is called a “jogging load-in.”
We hate steps. Most of our set-up time is actually the walk into the school.
[Missing Photo] This is a shot of our second school. Notice the Extremely Long walk to the other side of the gymnacafetorium. The stage at the far end is both a plus and a minus. It means that we are definitely high enough for everyone to see. The problem is that most of TOJ’s shows are designed to be on a gym floor and visible for an audience that is seated on the same floor, with no chairs. So everything begins at the three foot level and is elevated. The problem with being on the stage is that it makes our performance six feet above the audience’s heads. Very bad sightlines for the kids in front. If we move away from the playboard at all the puppets vanish.
Also at this school we had the joy of trying to find electrical outlets. Our lights and our sound draw a lot of power. Each light uses a 500 watt lamp, we have six lights. You do the math, and you see our problem. Sometimes, especially in older schools like this, we’ll blow a fuse. So we try to spread the current out to different currents in the room. At this particular school a good half of them were already dead. And all of the ones close to the stage weren’t working. Which means that Joe had to first, find outlets, and then establish that they weren’t working, and finally snake cord from the stage to the far end of the room.
To add to our joy, the person introducing us didn’t check to see if we were ready. We were not. We’d even gotten to this school fifteen minutes early. Joe was still focusing lights, and wasn’t in costume yet. So, I talked to the kids about microphones, because I was still putting mine on. I explained about electricity, and older schools, and what we were doing. Then when Joe went backstage, I segued into talking about Africa where the story is set. Then we started and they were a really great audience. Very live.
I find that if you know the background of the play you can generally expand a normal introduction for however much time you need. Although I try not to make a practice of needing expansion.
So it was off for Shawna and Steven’s house after that. We spend a lot of time in the van, and will be touring almost till Halloween. Notice the pumpkin. Anyway, here’s the view from the van in Seattle.
My last bit of adventure was a small car accident. Yes, I’m fine. I was turning the corner in my very large van and did not see the very small, illegally parked car. It was at a diagonal, partially in an intersection. My wheel became wedded with the front bumper of this car. I couldn’t go forward or backward. We were dropping off Joe and his friend, Matt at Matt’s house. Matt says that this car has been there for two months. It even had a parking ticket.
So we called AAA and the police. AAA pulled the van sideways off the car. The police said that technically I was at fault, but he didn’t want to charge me, so he waived the fine. TOJ’s insurance will deal with the accident, so I’m basically okay. I’m just making really wide turns right now.
