snow..snow...snow...Snow!!!!

Okay, I apologize for the lack of updates of late - last week was our third week of rehearsal and tech week so we were rehearsing 8 hours a day and also had our 'tech' which was figuring out sound cues and who was running which cues etc. We also added our beautiful costumes and figured out how our set comes down and packs up. The way the sets at MSIP work blows my mind: the scenic designer comes up with a design that must be able to endure being taken down and put up 5 times a week and it all goes together WITHOUT TOOLS! We use bolts, wingnuts, and pinned hinges to hold everything together, including the balcony that people jump and walk on. If that doesn't impress you, this should: it all is designed to fit within a certain cubic space in the back of a massive flat bed pickup truck. Apparently the sets in the summer work the same way, except that they are three times as big and so they add a trailer to the whole thing called 'the whale.' So all of our set, sound equipment, costumes and other items (first aid, hair and makeup) fit into the truck or our 15 passenger van and that is what we cart around from town to town.

We are leaving Bozeman for the first time in about two hours to drive to Columbus, MT where we will be giving our second school performance tomorrow morning. It was incredibly weird to pack a suitcase for 5 days out of the limited amount of stuff I brought. I definitely won the packing game - I brought very little - but as a result have picked up some stuff while I have been here. It is super dry and for the first time in my life, conditioning my hair has become a must and it is just very strange to be somewhere that dry after living in Chicago where it seems like there is always moisture in the air.

Speaking of moisture, it has been spitting snow all day, which is very pretty. Doesn't look like it will stick . We did have a snow that stuck on Sept 30th - I woke up and looked out at everything covered with white and was absolutely shocked. Hopefully we will get some sort of autumn before winter really settles in, but we shall see. I am reeeaaally glad I brought my down vest and have been getting my money's worth out of it this last week. Naturally, since it started snowing, Laura (our lovely Juliet and my partner in crime) and I went to get yarn to start knitting Christmas presents and have been doing that all weekend.

But - back to Friday. Friday was our first school performance at 8:45 am which meant we were there at 7am which meant we left at 6:40am which meant I got up at 5:30am. Which was a shock to my system after 10am rehearsals and being up until midnight the night before. Nonetheless, we got into their beautiful gym and set up everything for the first time and things went fairly smoothly. The show was great and we only had one minor setback - one of the actors came off stage, high on life from her scene, and knocked the sound computer off of the table. All of our sound went out and didn't come back on until someone had the ingenious idea to reboot the computer so that we had the last two sound cues. But in the meantime, we got very resourceful and old school and used an actual bell to make the 'bell sound cue' and our voices to make 'voice sound cues.' Back to basics.

The kids were pretty amazing - I realized that I don't think I have ever performed in front of a more appreciative audience. Of course there are always going to be some kids that are just glad to be out of class and don't care where they are, but for the most part they were thrilled and excited to see this play. Their teachers had done a great job prepping them for us and they were familiar with the story and even called us out on some of the stuff we had to cut for the sake of time. The teaching afterwards was kind of scary for me, but I know it will get easier - I just need to be confident that I know what I am doing. We were invited to stay for lunch and I was bowled over by the food! These kids have a salad bar and fresh spinach and it was pizza day!!! And if you eat all of your 'growing food' (aka pizza and salad) then you may have a brownie. Truly, the food was fantastic (especially compared to the crap I ate in school) and it is all made on site, not frozen, and meets certain health recommendations like having multi-grain and a vegetable and fruit. The principal told me that it is a program predominantly in rural Montana schools where there is a small enough student body for one to cook. I gave the kids the "In my day..." speech about overcooked green beans and iceberg lettuce being the only green thing in the lunch room when I went to school and they looked at me and laughed.

I met a 4th grader named Eliza and we were both very excited that someone else had our names. In the talk back, one of the kids asked us all what our first play was. My answer, of course, was The Sound of Music in 4th grade and I heard a giggle erupt from the middle of the audience. I later found out, when I was approached by a gaggle of 4th graders, that the school musical this year is The Sound of Music - it went something like this, "We are excited because you said your first play was The Sound of Music when you were in 4th grade and we are in 4th grade! and we are doing The Sound of Music this year! And you were in 4th grade and we are in 4th grade! isn't that cool?" And it is.