Tootsie on Tour: Buffalo, NY

[taz_39]

**Disclaimer: The content of this post reflects my own personal views, opinions, and experiences.
This post does NOT express the views or opinions of my employer.**

Note:
Due to a family emergency, there are times where I may post less regularly or with less content because I will be helping my family during a difficult time.
Thank you for your understanding.

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I want to thank everyone who has reached out during this difficult time.

I've decided to more or less continue writing here for now.
It feels like everything in my life is upside down and out of control, and I'm just trying to grasp at any small piece of normalcy that could help me to weather each day. Writing is therapeutic for me, talking things out and sharing with people near and far makes me feel better, and continuing to recognize that life is beautiful even in the face of grief and sadness is, I think, important.

If you have any problem with the fact that I'm going to continue writing here during a family emergency, you are free to stop reading or to do whatever you need to do to make yourself more comfortable. Thank you.

Also if we are friends on social media you are welcome to PM me or call/email/text to ask about what's going on. We do not want it all over facebook, that's all.

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Sunday was Opening Night. Or Opening Day, I suppose!

We had a matinee at 1:30pm and an evening show at 6pm. I was surprised at how full the theatre was, it's been a while since I've seen an actual large gathering of people indoors. But everyone was masked, and everyone had to show proof of vaccination at the door. That made me feel a lot better about putting on a good show that everyone could safely enjoy.

Tootsie is a comedy musical. And the audience LAUGHED. For both the first and second show, I delighted in the reactions from the audience. It's really fun to hone your ears in on that one person who is just in hysterics over every joke, or the one person who claps extra-long for a scene they liked. And it's interesting to find that different groups of people will react differently to the same joke. For example the morning show was only mildly amused by a suggestive back-and-forth between two characters, but for the evening show the actors had to pause between lines to let the laughter die down in the same spot. It's just really cool to observe.

And honestly, right now, being part of a show that makes people laugh and enjoy themselves for two hours is WONDERFUL. I need it just as much as the audience does. It makes me feel like I'm part of something good, and fun, and needed.

Performance-wise, our first show went better than the second. In the circus we always used to joke that the second show was guaranteed to be a mess, although it's never really clear why! Maybe because the first show goes so well that we all get complacent or something. Anyway, there were more slip-ups among band, actors, lighting and sound alike. One of the actors forgot his lines, another tripped over their tongue a bit, our trumpet player dropped a mute, our guitarist stepped in a musical "hole". Stuff like that. Most of the audience would never even notice.

And while this was "opening night", these were also still "preview shows", meaning it is understood that the show is still in rehearsal and a lot of kinks are still being worked out, especially in lighting, sound, and quick costume changes. It can be really fun and interesting for audience members to see mistakes and how they are handled, too.

As mentioned in my previous post, Shea's Buffalo Theatre put together a beautiful little gift package for us! (see pic in last post)
I think this theatre in particular opens a lot of tours due to proximity to NYC (close enough for travel and cheaper than rehearsing and opening in actual NYC). The items included in the gift bag show a specific consideration for people who will be traveling for a living. I thought that was really cool, and was very grateful to receive something so nice on opening night.

In addition, our management team got us some massive chocolate chip cookies, a cute little "gag gift", and some official TOOTSIE National Tour jackets! Wow!

Here's the gag gift: "Happy Opening! Break a leg in your 'Tootsie Rol(e)' ". Get it? Lol.


My jacket, and me wearing my jacket.



Getting stuff is nice, but what I'm most grateful for is how approachable, professional, and just overall awesome this touring company has been so far. I don't feel like I deserve ANY of this. I feel like a trombone princess! And especially right now with what's going on in my family, I can't express enough how grateful I am to be working where I'm working right now. There really aren't words.

After the shows, we had an opening night party at a local bar...I think it was literally called "Local Bar".
The whole place was reserved for us, all the staff were masked. It was catered, with an open bar and some locally-made custom cupcakes. I don't like to eat late so I just had a glass of wine and a salted caramel cupcake. I was there for about an hour and a half, getting to know some of my bandmates better and just enjoying listening to everyone's backgrounds and tour stories.

At one point while talking about our backgrounds it came out that our guitarist and also one of our sax players had lived in or near Jersey City.
I lived in Bayonne NJ with my Aunt for two years, and they both knew exactly where that was.

I said, "If you know Bayonne, you know that there are only two bridges to get in or out of it, right?"

They both nodded yes, they remembered that well.

I asked, "Am I crazy, or was there a SPECIFIC point on the main bridge where you had to roll up the windows because the smog smell would hit at that EXACT spot on the bridge??"

They both knew EXACTLY what I was talking about! In the moment, it was hilarious.
The sax player is from Cincinnati, I'm from a tiny town in PA, and the guitarist is from Great Britain.
It's amazing that across all of our different unique backgrounds, we had this one shared experience of having to roll our windows up at a specific point on a specific bridge in Bayonne.

It's a Small World After All.

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Monday was a much-needed day off.
I didn't get much sleep...there is so much to think about, and sadness for my family to process.
I'm sorry to keep bringing it up, but the whole point of writing here is to share and document and express, and this is part of that.

So I was up until maybe 1:30 or 2am, but found myself wide awake at 7am.
Which is STILL more sleep than I ever got while working at CapTel.

Since I was awake anyway, I decided to place a grocery order for delivery.

I've never had groceries delivered before! I like to pick out my own produce, plus there's just never been a reason for me not to get them myself. But this is one of few cities where there aren't any big one-stop department stores within two miles (my self-imposed mileage limit for walking with refrigeration-needed food items), and plus I just wanted an actual day OFF, to stay in and work through some feelings.

I ordered through Wegman's, which is the closest actual grocery besides Tops. We have a week left in Buffalo so I wanted enough groceries to cover lunches, breakfasts, and half of my dinners for the week. It is a bit of a balancing act, trying to have enough food yet not too much so that there's no waste at the end of the week. I did my best and ended up with most everything I will need. The order arrived around 10am. This ended up being extremely easy and convenient, so I will do it again in cities where I can't easily get to a grocery (Baltimore, Des Moines, Houston, and Tulsa will be the main culprits.)

After that it was time to decompress and talk with family.
My sisters and I did a lot of work, and by the time we were done it was late afternoon.
I checked on Jameson, then my Aunt called, then it was time to meet my friend Molly for wings at Duff's!


These were reeeeeeealllly good wings! I know they look "wet", but under the sauce they were very crispy and kind of chewy, almost jerky-like. My very favorite kind of wing! We got "medium" and "BBQ", the BBQ had a bit too much sauce for my taste but the medium were just perfect. I enjoyed every bite and used loads of napkins. We chatted about lots of stuff, tour life and how Molly broke her collarbone earlier in the year in a snowboarding accident...why didn't she tell me sooner?! She even had photos from when it was broken and the x-ray and everything, that was cool! It's great that she's ok now and it healed really nicely.

When we had finished Molly kindly took me to a nearby Walmart so I could grab thicker black socks (my dress socks and sneakers don't mix), a sewing kit as one of the buttons on my shirt is falling off, and a few other small odds and ends that will come in handy on tour. On our way back to the hotel we encountered some sort of disturbance in the road, there was a lot of smoke and it was hard to tell what was going on, but whatever-it-was looked fairly peaceful so we stuck around to see what was happening instead of executing a 3-point turn like many others were doing. After a while we were rewarded by the sight of many paper lanterns lifting off into the sky, and a lot of cheering and honking. Then as we got closer we heard and saw lots of motorcycles, some of them doing burnouts at the intersection.

A tough-looking biker dude with a brown-bagged bottle in his hand tapped on the window. I rolled down the window (like I said, everybody was acting peaceful enough) and he explained that they were doing a tribute to one of their fellow bikers, who had been killed in an accident on the nearby highway overpass recently.

This was, then, a memorial service. And suddenly, rather than being a traffic inconvenience, it was a beautiful moment that we just happened to get caught up in. A celebration of a soul gone too soon. We drove on, quietly happy to have witnessed something so unexpectedly pure and human tonight.

Back at the hotel we hugged, and I promised to look for Molly tomorrow at our evening show. She gave me some apples from her local orchard, which I'll eat throughout the week. Such an amazing friend, that Molly :)

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Tuesday and Wednesday were "normal" days. I spent my mornings working on family things, then in the afternoon on Tuesday there was rehearsal, and on both days there were evening shows.

Molly and her mom came to the show on Tuesday. It was so awesome so see them there!
We chatted for a bit after the show, and I thanked them both for their support while I was in town.

Since there was no rehearsal on Wednesday, I did my work for family and ate breakfast and lunch using my groceries, then took myself for a walk just to get some exercise and some fresh air. The evening show was our first actual show, not a preview show. There were members of the press in the audience, so there should be some reviews coming out soon! After the show I did laundry while working on more family stuff, then straight to bed.

Here is a fidget spinner that one of the actors gave everyone (there's a line in the script about fidget spinners).
I consider myself an official Millennial now.


Thursday was almost a carbon copy of Wednesday: working for family, breakfast and lunch, going for a walk, this time to a thrift store. Also there was indeed a review in the local paper this morning, which you can read HERE.

Friday, the same. Family work and a walk to BreadHive for one last pretzel. We leave on Monday and so I am coming to the last of my groceries. The shows on both Thursday and Friday were just fine, though on Friday we had more mistakes for whatever reason. Some shows are like that.

Saturday, two shows and a rapid covid test. I've kept track, and so far we've been tested seven times since coming out on tour. As far as I'm concerned they can stick stuff up my nose every hour of every day if it means I get to stay on tour.

The matinee went well, afterward I walked back to the hotel for dinner and watching Great British Bake-Off.
The second show was a little later, 8pm. And it was our final show in Buffalo! Already! Time has really flown.
After the show we were all invited to sign a wall painting for our show! There are several such in the greenroom at Shea's Buffalo Theatre, for Hamilton and Frozen and My Fair Lady, and more. This is the first time I've ever gotten to make my mark on a "Broadway" show.


Here is the full sign (not everyone had signed it yet) and my little signature:



Leaving Buffalo marks the start of our actual tour.
From now on we will have shows pretty much every day except Mondays, which will be our travel days.
We do get a few actual days off, but they are few and far between. And we have layoffs, which is great because I will want them to go home and help my family.

Sunday was a day off only because we had preview shows earlier in the week (there's kind of a show quota).
I used my day off to start packing, take my trash out, and research what Durham will be like.

Packing went pretty well despite all the stuff I've added: coffee, saran wrap, ziplocs, trash bags, a full bottle of shampoo, my Tootsie tour jacket and shirt, bread knife and other assorted kitchen stuff. I'm still around 45 pounds for my big suitcase. Yay!


In the Durham hotel we will not have microwaves in our rooms, and breakfast will not be complementary, but we DO get a mini fridge.
Looks like I'll get to put my electric skillet, immersion coil, and mess kit to work!
My plan currently, if our flights arrive on time, is to get groceries immediately after checking in so I can be ready for the week.
We have a rehearsal plus a show Tuesday so there won't be much time for shopping that day.

Thanks for reading :)