Get Down(sized!) in CHICAGO! chapter 1
Chicago! A bustling city of people and.... more people. So far our adventures have been limited to the few blocks around the Chopin Theatre. But oh my what adventures we have had!
Upon arriving i was introduced to Ziggy the owner of the Chopin Theatre. He is v. nice and v. polish. Which is fun, ive never known a really polish person before.
Then mike showed me where we would be staying, just off the front lobby there is a smallish room with a couch, chairs, fold out bed, large green donkey, hula-hoops, a chariot man with no head, many fake flowers, and a few lovely paintings.
A short time later the rest of our Chicago cast began arriving.
First Crista, our stage manager. She is quiet but quite friendly. She and i share the same atmosphere so i am comfortable around her. Bonding with height similarities is always a good idea.
She is focused and knows what the heck she is doing, which is awesome.
Second, Anders (which is pronounced more like Ahnders) age 27, to play the role of “middle management'. he attended college in the 920 district, and seeing the contact info on our poster is what intrigued him to audition in the first place.
Small world eh?
Next Miguel Micheal or Micheal Miguel... little tricky here. He is from venuzuela... he has an accent that i find so pleasant, that when speaking to him i find myself slipping into the accent as vhell. He is our “Boss” and he is v. excited to grow a creepy mustache for the part.
Then Jimmy showed up. Not a part of the cast, but our choreographer. He is a fun guy, a great dancer, and has really taken our original dance moves (lame) and turned them up, big time!
Tara is the only one left, but she could not make it that night. She will be here on monday.
After sitting aorund discussing the show, listening to its music etc. everyone went home and Miguel showed us to Pizza Metro, a nice little resturaunt that serves pizza, and a bit of italian cuisine.
The resturauant is BYOB so mike went to get a bottle of wine. This would be the beginning of the end for me. For not more than 3 hours later i was v. sick and quite smelly. I will save the horrible details, because i dont personally recall any.
The next afternoon, feeling god awful and swearing off wine for the rest of my life, mike joyfully announced we would be hanging up posters all afternoon.
“Mehhhhh....”
but i am what they call a “trooper” so i got ready, and mike and i first went to the grocery store, then after lunch took a long walk to put up posters. one of the first places we went into was called “the boring store- we dont sell spy supplies” (or something along those lines) but when we got in there the place was very brightly painted and had lots of neato gadgets like “x-ray envelope spray” and chinese finger traps. The guy at the counter greeted us “hello fellow spies” and we looked confused, so he continued on, telling us about the store. Apparently they have a creative writing class for kids and teens. Proceeds from the neato gadgets go twoards funding the classes. the guy had noticed our van in the neighboorhood and is v. eager to spread the word of our show, “fuckin break your legs!” was his empowering send off as we left the store.
A few blocks later we were putting up a poster in a book store and i noticed a sign that said “we now have an old-timey photo booth!” so mike and i decided to get ours done. (picture to follow)
our first rehearsal was that night and we met Tara, a former student from UWGB. She has brown hair and glasses and is recently engaged. She is a fun time, and i expect us to get along swimmingly.
Jimmy started us off with the office battle and we came up with some cool new ideas. its nothing like the venture version, i.e. The boss comes in where matt used to and then calls in the other guys and we all kill the boss off together,
Then we practiced dueling phones and got it down pretty quickly, theres now almost a full jug band and the Boss drinks his coffee while playing a phone tune with his other hand.
After all that we took a few publicity photos... and everyone went their seperate ways. Mike and i thought we needed some muchables so we set out looking for a new place to eat. The first few blocks showed nothing but mexican restaurants. But we didnt want mexican, so we turned around and walked another street. This one now, had the same Pizza Metro, but we thought there would be many places open and serving food, so we shouldnt limit ourselves to just one place. We passed pizza metro and stopped in every bar/resturaunt for about a 1/2 mile. only everyone had stopped serving food. We started making jokes like “i thoght this was chicago! Is everyone snuggled in bed by 930? why cant we find any place that serves after 11pm?”
we ended our night back at pizza metro.
Came back to the theatre only to find we had been locked out. Great.
Rang the doorbell twice and after finally being let in by Lela (Ziggys wife- small talking, beautiful, tall, black woman in her 30's) she was quick to tell us the next time we leave, if we could remember to lock this one door here, and then this other one over there, because when we had left earlier we had forgotton to do so.
Funny story about that- no one told us to do it in the first place.
We listened to ...................SUSPENSE radio. Iit was a little scary for a bedtime story, but i was brave and listened to the whole thing.
Now its Tuesday and it got up to97 degrees! Crazyness! I went up the street and put up posters while mike and Crista set the lights for the show. Now its about 5:30 and im thinking a nap before rehearsal will be v. nice.
Ooh, almost too nice. I wasnt excited to start practice, but we finally got all the big scences choreographed. theres lotsa cool daning, well, it looks cool when jimmy does it. He also brought a freiend along to help. Her name was rebecca and she was a super dancer as well. Together they came up with a lot of good ideas. For the Romance and Ballet.
We then previewed what Anders and Miguel had come up with for “the bunny” pretty good stuff here... im not sure if mike told them a few things, or if he let them have full reign, either way, its really funny. And you can see it from far back in the theatre so HORAY! The bunny can stay!
After practice mike asked if anyone had anything going on (because we v. much didnt want to eat at pizza metro AGAIN) Miguel said that he had a friend playing in a band or something and that we could come along with him. Awesome! So we took a cab, not too far away, and tried to get some food first, no luck at the first place, so Miguel said we could try this place called Estelle's (which he said was a “dive bar” ) we get in there and the first thing i thought was that if this place was in GB it would be Pi's equivilant (style wise) we got some food, wings, burgers, and fries kinda stuff. We had some drinkies and chatted till 130 or so. We decided to walk home instead of catching a cab. There was a homeless man asking for change, and when we said no, he said “god bless” and then starting singing “IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY..... IT CANT BE THAT SAAAAADDDD....”
which was nice.
Came back, talked about my fear of birds and then went to sleep.
Walked outside this morning (wednesday) and just about melted away walking to the van to put in quarters.
Upon arriving i was introduced to Ziggy the owner of the Chopin Theatre. He is v. nice and v. polish. Which is fun, ive never known a really polish person before.
Then mike showed me where we would be staying, just off the front lobby there is a smallish room with a couch, chairs, fold out bed, large green donkey, hula-hoops, a chariot man with no head, many fake flowers, and a few lovely paintings.
A short time later the rest of our Chicago cast began arriving.
First Crista, our stage manager. She is quiet but quite friendly. She and i share the same atmosphere so i am comfortable around her. Bonding with height similarities is always a good idea.
She is focused and knows what the heck she is doing, which is awesome.
Second, Anders (which is pronounced more like Ahnders) age 27, to play the role of “middle management'. he attended college in the 920 district, and seeing the contact info on our poster is what intrigued him to audition in the first place.
Small world eh?
Next Miguel Micheal or Micheal Miguel... little tricky here. He is from venuzuela... he has an accent that i find so pleasant, that when speaking to him i find myself slipping into the accent as vhell. He is our “Boss” and he is v. excited to grow a creepy mustache for the part.
Then Jimmy showed up. Not a part of the cast, but our choreographer. He is a fun guy, a great dancer, and has really taken our original dance moves (lame) and turned them up, big time!
Tara is the only one left, but she could not make it that night. She will be here on monday.
After sitting aorund discussing the show, listening to its music etc. everyone went home and Miguel showed us to Pizza Metro, a nice little resturaunt that serves pizza, and a bit of italian cuisine.
The resturauant is BYOB so mike went to get a bottle of wine. This would be the beginning of the end for me. For not more than 3 hours later i was v. sick and quite smelly. I will save the horrible details, because i dont personally recall any.
The next afternoon, feeling god awful and swearing off wine for the rest of my life, mike joyfully announced we would be hanging up posters all afternoon.
“Mehhhhh....”
but i am what they call a “trooper” so i got ready, and mike and i first went to the grocery store, then after lunch took a long walk to put up posters. one of the first places we went into was called “the boring store- we dont sell spy supplies” (or something along those lines) but when we got in there the place was very brightly painted and had lots of neato gadgets like “x-ray envelope spray” and chinese finger traps. The guy at the counter greeted us “hello fellow spies” and we looked confused, so he continued on, telling us about the store. Apparently they have a creative writing class for kids and teens. Proceeds from the neato gadgets go twoards funding the classes. the guy had noticed our van in the neighboorhood and is v. eager to spread the word of our show, “fuckin break your legs!” was his empowering send off as we left the store.
A few blocks later we were putting up a poster in a book store and i noticed a sign that said “we now have an old-timey photo booth!” so mike and i decided to get ours done. (picture to follow)
our first rehearsal was that night and we met Tara, a former student from UWGB. She has brown hair and glasses and is recently engaged. She is a fun time, and i expect us to get along swimmingly.
Jimmy started us off with the office battle and we came up with some cool new ideas. its nothing like the venture version, i.e. The boss comes in where matt used to and then calls in the other guys and we all kill the boss off together,
Then we practiced dueling phones and got it down pretty quickly, theres now almost a full jug band and the Boss drinks his coffee while playing a phone tune with his other hand.
After all that we took a few publicity photos... and everyone went their seperate ways. Mike and i thought we needed some muchables so we set out looking for a new place to eat. The first few blocks showed nothing but mexican restaurants. But we didnt want mexican, so we turned around and walked another street. This one now, had the same Pizza Metro, but we thought there would be many places open and serving food, so we shouldnt limit ourselves to just one place. We passed pizza metro and stopped in every bar/resturaunt for about a 1/2 mile. only everyone had stopped serving food. We started making jokes like “i thoght this was chicago! Is everyone snuggled in bed by 930? why cant we find any place that serves after 11pm?”
we ended our night back at pizza metro.
Came back to the theatre only to find we had been locked out. Great.
Rang the doorbell twice and after finally being let in by Lela (Ziggys wife- small talking, beautiful, tall, black woman in her 30's) she was quick to tell us the next time we leave, if we could remember to lock this one door here, and then this other one over there, because when we had left earlier we had forgotton to do so.
Funny story about that- no one told us to do it in the first place.
We listened to ...................SUSPENSE radio. Iit was a little scary for a bedtime story, but i was brave and listened to the whole thing.
Now its Tuesday and it got up to97 degrees! Crazyness! I went up the street and put up posters while mike and Crista set the lights for the show. Now its about 5:30 and im thinking a nap before rehearsal will be v. nice.
Ooh, almost too nice. I wasnt excited to start practice, but we finally got all the big scences choreographed. theres lotsa cool daning, well, it looks cool when jimmy does it. He also brought a freiend along to help. Her name was rebecca and she was a super dancer as well. Together they came up with a lot of good ideas. For the Romance and Ballet.
We then previewed what Anders and Miguel had come up with for “the bunny” pretty good stuff here... im not sure if mike told them a few things, or if he let them have full reign, either way, its really funny. And you can see it from far back in the theatre so HORAY! The bunny can stay!
After practice mike asked if anyone had anything going on (because we v. much didnt want to eat at pizza metro AGAIN) Miguel said that he had a friend playing in a band or something and that we could come along with him. Awesome! So we took a cab, not too far away, and tried to get some food first, no luck at the first place, so Miguel said we could try this place called Estelle's (which he said was a “dive bar” ) we get in there and the first thing i thought was that if this place was in GB it would be Pi's equivilant (style wise) we got some food, wings, burgers, and fries kinda stuff. We had some drinkies and chatted till 130 or so. We decided to walk home instead of catching a cab. There was a homeless man asking for change, and when we said no, he said “god bless” and then starting singing “IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY..... IT CANT BE THAT SAAAAADDDD....”
which was nice.
Came back, talked about my fear of birds and then went to sleep.
Walked outside this morning (wednesday) and just about melted away walking to the van to put in quarters.