Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

(Read about Friday and Saturday)

Before I start, I’d just like to point out that the restaurant of our Holiday Inn in Cleveland had a 16th-century Italian monastic secretary in the foyer. Seriously.

Some of my loyal readers will squeal with delight as I did.

We had a much shorter drive today, only going to Pittsburgh from Cleveland. We decided to have brunch at the Beachland Ballroom (where we performed the night before), having been told that it was the best brunch in Cleveland. The menu certainly looked interesting and the pickled veggies that garnished Scratch’s Bloody Ninja were so good we asked for more.

However, it took us almost an hour to get our food (and our waitress appeared to be avoiding us) and when it arrived it was clear that at least some of it had been sitting awhile. Scratch’s waffles were cold and my chicken was tough. The biscuits were, however, terrific as promised. Despite the massive delay, we were on the road only a few minutes behind schedule (probably because everyone was starving at that point). If we’re ever in Cleveland again, I’d give them another chance.

We were almost to the Rex in Pittsburgh dead on time when Dr. Nightmare (that’s the GPS) got confused and sent us well out of our way. We crossed bridges, went up steep hills, saw an amazing panorama of the city, and finally got back on track.

Chris Rickert of Rickert & Beagle Books was waiting by the stage door to help us load in. She’s a big fan and most of the reason we play Pittsburgh in the first place. We unloaded, set up, and did everything we could to get ready before the tech guys arrived.

This time we did take some pictures backstage. Here’s our dressing room:

And here’s a dark picture of everyone hanging out on stage, waiting for the next thing to do:

The next thing turned out to be dinner. We all wanted to eat at the place with the world’s most secure bathroom key from last year, but they weren’t open yet. Instead we went next door to a Thai(ish) place and I was still able to have stir-fried chicken & veggies. By the way, the photo to the right is the impressive garnish that adorned my plate. There’s 3 different vegetables in that confection.

The show was a lot of fun, despite everyone being tired and some level of unhealthy. We’re grateful to our special guests Lita D’Vargas (burlesque) and Sadi (bellydance), and Annie the Merch Girl. You might remember Lita as our Stage Kitten last year. I’m particularly grateful to Lita for doing a comedy bit with Scratch while I frantically changed for my fan dance. I don’t know how I managed Friday night with only about half that amount of time.

The venue wanted a certain number of tickets sold and I’m pleased to say we beat that number — on a Sunday! The reception from the audience was great — there was even a group trying to convince us to move to Pittsburgh. The Rex would like us to come back soon for a Friday or Saturday night.

I know you’re dying to hear about the condition of my screen after two days on the roof and a lot of rain. Well, not great, despite all the plastic wrapping. It was going to be okay for the show, but the frame was warped and the paper was still damp in places and flecked with an unfortunate murky color. And this is where it ended up after the show.

Poor thing! It’s served me well for many shows.

We had an hour to go to get to our hotel, so we bid Chris a fond farewell, eagerly accepting a bottle of mead that her finacé had made, and headed off into the night.

At the Ohio Burlesque Festival, one of the vendors, Bombshell Cupcakes, was giving the performers a cupcake. Big beautiful cupcakes, you just had to have a performer’s badge. We all took advantage of this, of course, but saved them for a little Sunday Social at our hotel. I got the “Junk in her Trunk” cupcake — chocolate cake with cookie dough filling, vanilla icing, sprinkled with something delicious, and garnished with a Reese’s cup, the full-size kind. That should give you some idea of scale. It was slightly the worse for wear, having rattling around in the cooler since Saturday night, but so delicious. Stella got the “Sugar Baby” and Scratch & Brigitte “Miss American Pie”, graced with a mini apple pie. We probably would have had the mead too, but realized we had no corkscrew. Must remedy that for the next trip.

Tomorrow, the long drive home!

Dear Constant Reader,

On Friday Brigitte, Stella, Scratch, and I hit the road for our latest touring venture. It was with a little trepidation, since our final stop was Pittsburgh and we had an interesting (in the Chinese curse sense) trip home from that city last year.

First things first, the annual picture of me looking like I’ve been run over while attaching the cargo carrier. We all met at the studio to load up and head off for our first destination: The Courtyard Theatre in Sellinsgrove, PA.

It was a little fussy loading up the car with all our crap. Although the plan was to have all 3 pink boxes (that’s one of them to the right) that we use in “Factory Girls” (and contain all our costumes) in the car, our Tetris failed and one had to ride on the cargo carrier. And my rice-paper silhouette screen got wrapped in a tarp and rode on the roof. (The reason I mention all these dull details will become clear later). The packing logistics plus some ugly traffic on 93 made for us being a bit behind schedule to start off.

The drive was fairly uneventful for a while and we even made up a little lost time. Then we hit the inevitable Pennsylvania roadwork… and traffic came to a dead stop. Now sooner did we finally start moving than the clouds began gathering and the skies opened up. Torrential rain! Like, Scratch stepped outside for about 75 seconds and was soaked to the skin. That kind of rain.

Remember the pink box and the screen on the outside of the car? I don’t know about anyone else in the car but I was now stressing about being way behind schedule and potentially having ruined a box of costumes (and the box itself) and my major set piece. I could see, when we stopped, that the wind had peeled the end of the tarp on the screen back.

We finally arrived at the theatre. Which is in a mall. Like, turn left at the JC Penney’s to get to the stage door, in a mall.

Two hours late, we began frantically racing to get set up. Fearing for the worst, we unpacked. The bottom of Stella’s trunk had gotten wet and a few items were damp, but nothing too bad. Whew! My screen on the other hand, looked pretty sad. Fortunately, a little packing tape (plus a little pastie tape) got everything back into usable condition.

It’s a pretty nice theatre: large stage, decent lighting, helpful staff, good dressing room with clothing racks, big well-lit mirrors, and a bathroom. And no microphones. We travel with a vintage-style microphone and had requested a stand and cables in our tech rider, but they had none of that. That is, not at the theatre. Someone had the audio equipment at home and forgot to bring it.

It’s not a big theatre and someone with a big voice could easily be heard in the back without amplification, but Stella really needed that microphone for her song. And Scratch had been sick for most of the week and was on the verge of losing his voice. Nothing to do but power through it and hope for the best.

Our special guest performer, Private Tails, arrived, as did Isaac and two kittens from Billtown Burlesque who were helping us out. And we all got ready to go on.

I wish I had thought to take some backstage pictures, but we were in such a rush from the minute we got in the door. The house was packed and the merch was selling fast before the show even started! The acts were all very well received. Stella solved her volume problem by wandering into the audience during the song and then dancing with one particular gentleman. They ate it up.

We got so many nice compliments afterwards. Much of the audience had never seen burlesque before and were just delighted by the show. Yay! That’s what we like to hear. Some of the more amusing comments we got included someone asking if Stella & Brigitte were twins and the fellow who chatted me up for a while about my perfect Irish looks.

Here’s a post-show shot of the cast and some of the folks from the Courtyard theatre on stage:

While packing up, the venue kindly gave us several large trash bags and some packing tape. We bagged & taped up the pink boxes and securely lashed all 3 to the cargo carrier (where they fit very nicely), then swaddled my screen and rewrapped the tarp in a more secure configuration.

Too tired to join the rest of the cast at Applebee’s, we drove down the street to our lovely hotel and passed the heck out.