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Memories - misty wiener colored memoriesI’m workin’ on an update - but while working through videos I finally found this little gem which I’ve been riffling around for trying to find for ages… I figure it’ll put a smile on your face. Click here to see Po Gone Wild. xo Hot Flashes.So now that you have seen all the scurrying going on to ready the kitchen, I guess I can tell you about what’s been going on over on the performance end of things. Well - I think I forgot to tell you about our BILLBOARDS!! I love them. Ok - not quite - I’ve never designed a billboard before and we got three of them at once. I crammed them with a LITTLE (not a lot) but a little too much info, and I’ve learned that you can’t try and sell more than one thing at a time when people are driving past. It’s better to sell the ‘brand’ rather than the season. But that’s why THIS one came our really well - featuring Stephanie from our first Christmas who was back in Indiana this summer over doing High School Musical in Indy. COVER GIRL. click here: ELIZABETH ROCKS THE CASBAH WITH ‘I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU’. To say it was a bumpy ride getting to opening night might well be the understatement of the century. We started the summer with 103 songs for everybody to learn, which got whittled down eventually to (I think?) 89. Along the way we lost a John Mellencamp medley in the Hoosier show, Bohemian Rhapsody in the 70’s, a huge love song medley of Cole Porter stuff and more and more… But the good thing about having to learn 103 songs is, when stuff gets cut, people are relieved rather than upset! From the very outset this summer was going to involve some expermentation. Learning all three shows at once had it’s pros and cons. The pros (and one of the primary reasons we did in the first place) was that the actors, once the shows were open, would be able to actually save their voices for performance, rather than having to rehearse all day for 7 hours and then do a show every night. It was exhausting, and every summer, by about half way through rehearsals for the last show everybody hit a wall and the process just suffered from a lot of frayed nerves. The other main ‘pro’ was that with the shows running all summer folks who were in town for only a portion of the season (including actors parents etc) could catch multiple shows. We also always had people who would come to the final show of the season (which inevitably was the best seller) and say ‘I wish I’d known how much fun this was cuz I would have come to the others too). So that’s the pros. The cons were…well… learning 103 songs. Which frequently created moments like this: CHORAL COLLAPSE. Nathan (our returning stage manager) and I, AND Carl all anticipated it being less stressful than doing things the old way. But we were WRONG. From my point of view I had to have all three scripts ready to go at once, I had to (with the awesome help of the cast) figure out all the choreography and big staging numbers in one clump at the beginning (before I had them all spread out to figure out over the summer). But the real kicker - that I hadn’t really taken into consideration - was that the brain can learn 80-some songs spread out 20 at a time over 10 weeks a lot differently than it can learn 80 songs at once… in a crash course period of two weeks of music rehearsal. That’s a LOT of harmony…and the seventies show and the dolly show were ALLLLLL harmony and backup. It’s a huge amount. And we realized pretty soon in the process that this was going to be really hard for the cast to cope with - no matter how hard they were working, or how quickly they could learn. It’s like a sponge - sure it’ll hold a lot water - but once it’s FULL, it’s full. To put things in perspective for you here is the giant rehearsal wipe-off board (which I LOVE) that Rich built me, that contains the “List of Death”. Every day this is what Nathan and I would stare at and go “blergggg”. But - “Better the Devil You Know”, and at least with it staring us in the face we could develop a crazy color-coded system of ticks and crosses to track what we actually gotten done. THE LIST IS STRIFE. We knew all along the first five weeks were going to be really tough going - and it was - but I have to say, now that we are actually open and running, it’s certainly has its advantages. But even figuring that out isn’t entirely simple - because the entire beginning of the process was very, very bumpy. Carl wasn’t with us for the whole first week (he was finishing up his children’s tour obligations) - which meant that we didn’t tackle hardly any of the harmony material for that period (which meant it all came tumbling at them like an avalanche in week two). But the real monkey wrench was that, two weeks into rehearsals, we realized that we had no choice but to replace our musical director. We didn’t even know if this was possible. Everyone (Nathan, the cast, Rich and I) felt the situation just going to get worse… and the working relationship, no matter how amiable, wasn’t going to allow us to get through material at the speed we needed to work. Things were already starting to avalanche in being behind schedule… But the concept of trying to find a musical director who could start IMMEDIATELY and who could handle learning 80 some songs overnight AND write all the harmony and backup AND chart things that we didn’t have sheet music for, AND create all the arrangements. 90% of everything I just listed was supposed to have been completed before the actors even arrived for their first day - and now we were two weeks in. It was really the first time Rich and I had been faced with a situation that we had no idea if we were actually going to be able to get the shows OPEN at all. JUST KEEP SWIMMING, JUST KEEP SWIMMING We placed an ad in the trades and kept our fingers crossed. We got a variety of responses - largely from people that could only do arrangements on ‘per song’ fee and would only be able to send the too us - not be here in person to musical direct, or teach the material. But we got really REALLY REALLY lucky. A wonderful guy named Mike Borth, who I had been talking to in NY for a while about writing a show together before we moved to Indiana, saw the ad. I had also worked with his adorable super-talented wife who is Broadway regular now. Mike saw our ad…remembered me…and got in touch. Mike also has done arrangments and keyboard orchestrations for a HEAP of national tours and when we heard some of his stuff it was amazing. We had this talk on the phone and, bless him, the first thing he said is “I’m so sorry you guys are going through this”… In terms of his schedule, his wife Lindsay was finishing up Everyday Rapture on Broadway - and doing a bunch of workshops and things so she was super busy anyway… he was free up until they were both scheduled to go to California in about a month to do a show called “Wondrettes” which he musical directed off broadway. And, it just so happens, he really likes orchestrating and hasn’t had a chance to do much of it lately. Well - he doesn’t feel that way any more! But we had this talk on the phone trying to figure out logistics and if there was a chance he could actually come to Huntington and work in situ. Because we figured we were in between such a rock and hard place that Rich might have to end up teaching the cast the music and the orchestrations would be sent to us from who knows where. Mike really wanted to come, and he was incredibly understanding. Considering he and I only really had a passing acquaintance I’m beginning to feel like I don’t actually make as bad a first impression as I sometimes think! He knew the situation we were in with the salary, and how much money we were already losing with this complication (travel expenses etc.). And he was very fair. So - the deal was done, and, even AFTER we sent him the list of everything that hadn’t been arranged, hadn’t been taught, and still had to be tracked… he said “Well it’s gonna be the worst two weeks of our life, but then it might be fun.” Luckily, because Carl wasn’t with us for the first week, I had been skipping a great deal of that material anyway - so we had been putting a lot of the solo numbers on their feet. That was really our one saving grace because I was quite a bit ahead in staging than I normally was. But the cast not only had to erase everything they HAD started to memorize, but then pages starting shooting through email of stuff that Mike was desperately trying to get to us before his arrival (in three days time). Soooo… For three days the Pack Leader became the musical director. I would block and choreograph during PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC, WHITE BOY. And no, not everyone can rock that color of flourescent yellow. Considering all of this insanity the cast coped really well. Every night while this debacle was going on Rich and I and Nathan were meeting for like 3 hours every night to try and figure out how to proceed… and that meant none of us could get our ACTUAL work done… and we were micromanaging things we shouldn’t normally have had on our radar. It was a catastraffluffle… But when we told the actors that we were making a change they were stressed - but relieved - and knew it was for the best. So we all, until Mike arrived, just tried to do our best to make progress. CARL’S HAIR IS AN ARTISTIC EXPRESSION OF EVERYONE’S CURRENT SANITY. But before we knew it Mike arrived - and we greeted him at the airport with palm fronds and a donkey. Through all of this we were struggling with record, record heat - which made everywhere pretty miserable… but particularly the actor’s house, which wasn’t air conditioned. It was hot over there. Really… we tried a zillion fans and a dehumidifier (which helped a little). Part of what we hadn’t considered is that the actors (with this new schedule) were spending much more time in the house than before. in the past during the summer, they were working in the airconditioned lobby from about 10-10 every day with breaks in between for meals. Now, especially after the third show opened, they were over there all day in the worst of the daytime. So this week, scooting into the house like Santa Claus during a rehearsal, Rich installed airconditioners in all of their rooms. It wasn’t an expense that was easy - but the actors were sooooo appreciative and i think it makes a big difference in their ability to rest. The heat was bad enough that Rich and Jordan at various times got dehydrated - we have a new rule that little Jordan has to drink a gatorade half an hour before every show - because there were a couple times during the 70’s second act when I saw his eyes crossed and was waiting for Elizabeth to cry “Timberrrrrr”. As if the schedule hadn’t been nutzo before… now with Mike here playing over a month of catch-up with NO lead-in time (when he stepped off the plane he hadn’t even had enough time to listen to all of the songs even once through)… Eighty songs take a little time to digest, let alone sit down, play and teach. So we started breaking up the days into really specific chunks, and at his request (which we should have done all along) we started working on one show at a time. And basically Mike would sequester himself off in a side room and sit with his laptop creating orchestrations with a little keyboard that was like a foot long…and Nathan and I would try and stage anything that he had just taught. It was like playing tag. Tag in hell We had also originally planned to tech all three shows back to back. But we quickly realized that this would be way to taxing on the cast vocally. Last summer the sixties show was really the one with all the backup singing on every number - so it was the toughest for the group - but this year (which I hadn’t actually factored into my master plan) the Dolly Show AND the Seventies Show were chock full of group singing. Soooo… there was no way we could crash through six 12 hour days of tech lighting and sound and THEN open the next night. ALSO because Mike was having to work so quickly, it made sense to spread out those days so that we could get one show ready to light and then he could have most of the day to work on his own while we were lighting. So that’s how we rolled… And frankly, I think we all would have lost our minds if we’d try to do them all at once. Rich has done an incredible job with the lighting - but trying to stay creative with 20 lights over 80 numbers can tax anyone’s creativity…so it was good that we had some time to recharge. Plus - that’s a lot of time for the actors sitting with their butt on a stool. ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? We also had all kinds of costume figurin’ out to contend with. We went through two different options of 70’s costumes for the boys, and Elizabeth started the 70’s show with one outfit (that we loved) but after a week the shirt (which looked amazing but was very snug) couldn’t handle the dexterity of Proud Mary choreography and started to fray. Which we only realized the night before we were set to perform the show again, so first thing in the morning Elizabeth and I headed to Fort Wayne to find an emergency replacement garment for that night’s show. Yup - we were going into the middle of Indiana to find something that was a suitable piece of 70’s female dress wear. Greeaaatttt. Keeping in mind that when I said I wanted Erika to wear a “Mrs. Brady” type jumpsuit Rich and Janice were like “good freakin’ luck finding that”… and it took me a month online. Actually we got REALLY lucky. Because Kohl’s has been doing a whole heap of retro stuff we found a bunch of options to choose from. This - although period appropriate - was not one of them… THANK YOU, BUT NEHRU THANK YOU. But amazingly - we succeeded - and she looked so fabulous that I gave up on trying to get an emergency replacement of the first garment sent to us… (I was going to take the old blouse and the new blouse and see if they could use the fabric from the one to give her a little dance room in the other - but this was a LOT easier). THE SHIRT HAD HOLES…WE WENT TO KHOLS…WE MET OUR GOALS. oh yeah - and during all this - did you think Janice stopped tiling? And there’s much more to come… Mea Culpa.It’s been way too long. So long in fact a number of you thought the blog was just plain dead. Today is the first day off that I actually feel is a real day off since well before Treasure Island opened… and we have been crazy. The good part of that is that so much stuff has been going on that I can’t wait to show you pictures! While i was in Bermuda researching and writing the shows Rich and Bob and Janice were getting the rehearsal room ready on the new second floor. Which involved days of cleaning (since that entire floor hadn’t been really in use for over 10 years), tons of painting and getting electrical and plumbing hooked up too.
The first couple days the cast was here we were still in the lobby while the finishing touches were put on everything - but with the dance mirrors and everything it’s just a fantastic place to work. It makes such a difference. We have a mock-up of the stage and everything…
There was a while there when we thought we weren’t going to be able to have a bathroom working on that floor - which would have meant going two flights down and over to the theatre when ever nature called - but Rich was emotionally blackmailed and spent a half a day getting the adjacent bathroom all hunky dory. Which then betrayed the presence of a leak that was started dripping down into the kitchen! Rich and Bob then lost another day trying to fix that fun problem which involved spending a lot of time in the basement replacing out sewage pipes. Apparently I will never, ever, ever, ever be able to do anything to even the score on the nastiness of this particular task. While all the stuff was going on in the new building, there were also volunteer clean up days at the Opera House…. The Gallery area is now gutted and the potential is so exciting…
The things i want to show you the MOST are the pics of all the progress that’s going on over at Jolene’s building. In the weeks leading up the first week of summer shows, Team Najuch was working 24/7 in order to have the new kitchen ready for use. Due to Murphy’s Law, some electrical parts that were needed to hook everything up were delayed so the ovens were fired up by opening night - but the kitchen looks AMAZING and they think that everything gonna shift over there next week - which only puts them about 7 days off of their original (insane insane insane) goal date of July 7th. So keep in mind while I’m showing you all these pictures, that allllll of this has taken place in like the last month. When the actors arrived the back area of Jolene’s building was basically just a big ol’ ugly shell.
Just as they were starting to make real progress in there, Bob and Rich realized that the ceiling supports were actually sinking about a foot in the middle of the room (which also explained why the stairs going up to the third floor were a little like an Escher painting in their slantiness). So suddenly everything had to come to a grinding halt and they had to replace like 20 feet worth of the support beams in the ceiling. Because if they waited until after the kitchen was done stuff would just have to get ripped out again… so they lost about a full week in the time line. These beams were HUGE. Just jacking up the ceiling to it’s original height was a logistical feat - and then getting these beams up in the air and THEN getting them slid into position. Getting the first two in (where the floor was dipping the farthest) took them an entire day… but then things started to go a lot faster.
I have no idea how they pulled this off - but they did. And got the ceiling raised back and supported to it’s proper height as well. Then Janice went to work priming and painting… the tin ceiling came out beautifully… it’s such a shame that it’s in a place where our patrons never SEE it!!
And then, ladies and gentleman, began the biggest, craziest Najuch project in the history of time. Which, we all know, is saying somethin’. This kitchen - approximately 53′ by 12′ was going to get tiled. In a week. Walls tiled, floor tiled. Tiled. The walls were painted first (actually painted twice, since the first color of baby poop brown was dubbed…baby poopy). So the walls were painted. And then painted again blue. And then the tiling began. Or rather, the process of figuring out the tile PATTERN began. At an auction Rich had gotten an amazing deal on five different kinds of beige and white tile. All the same size - but different textures and finishes. Some were shiny, some matt, some bumpy, some smooth. Janice was determined that this kitchen (which no one but the staff would ever ever see) was going to have a proper pattern. So using more math than I can even comprehend, they calculated the amount of each tile they had, the square footage they had to cover, and invented an alternating pattern which could remain consistent. And then the tiling began… Six foot high all the way around the room. Rich and Janice and Cindy developed an assembly line that for about five minutes I attempted to join and my brain nearly exploded. It went something like this:
They laid the tile on all the walls in two days. Possible for mere mortals? Nope. Najuchs? What do think. Janice did start to get a slightly crazy glazed look in her eyes and Po was pretty carefully not to pee anywhere she wasn’t for a couple days for fear that she might end up entombed between shiny white and matt beige. THEN they had to grout. This is all the first week the actors are here, and every time they’d come down on a break they’d be looking at these tiling cyborgs in complete disbelief. Meanwhile we were upstairs doing perfectly sensible normal things:
The grouting took two days too - apparently it was way worse than the actual tiling, because (as I remember from our long-ago bathroom projects) it takes a lot of muscle to spread that stuff. And THEN they had to clean it off - like a zillion square feet. And that took like three rounds of scrubbing. In the midst of this, George arrived and CONNECTED the two buildings. This was like the most insane thing ever. It was so weird in the process of like two hours to go from having two different buildings to just being able to walk right through… it was soooo exciting. Here’s the first ‘hole’ that leads from the auditorium into the kitchen (eventually there will be three different connecting areas).
If you take a look around the edges you’ll notice Rich’s very first masonry work! He and Bob had to brick in around the hole so that the new fire door will fit in properly. So you get a sense of the geography, behind Rich is the auditorium… if you walked behind him and turned left you’d end up in the lobby. And just to the right of him is the door to the kitchen. In front of him will be the new restrooms… which you can see from the view of the auditorium looking INTO Jolene’s…
And now… the floor. Oh yesss…. Janice is gonna tile the floor too. The fabulous Rick Fischer (the brilliant faux finish artisan in Roanoke) gave us some left over mismatched commercial non-skid floor tile. The non-skid was very, very attractive since in the current supper club kitchen almost all of us have skidded and slipped like Dorothy Hamill after six Long Island Ice Teas. Now, please note I said ‘mismatched’. Would this stop Janice? NOoppe. Sitting with Bob, and again, using more math that it takes to launch a space shuttle, they came up with a pattern for that too.
And in two days (yup - two) Janice went at that floor with a death wish. She no longer has knees. She’s turned into Dorf. But Cindy and George Eckert and Margaret and a bunch of folks descended like some kind of tiling inferno and helped get through the last hurdle. Janice had been using tile spacers for each and ever tile - going through about a thousand in literally the first ten square feet of floor. George came up with this system where he ripped a piece of wood the correct width of the gap and then marked in pencil the spacing for each tile - and immediately shaved days off the amount of time it would have taken.
And then… grout.
The sliding-through-Jestsons-like dishwasher and gigantinormous ice machine are waiting to be hooked up… Plus the walk in cooler area is built… Now, I mentioned Cindy a couple of times. After 14 years working at Nicks, Cindy found herself without a job (except when the Supper Club is running). So, she has turned herself into a Najuch so that we can get the kitchen done… and the restaurant open. Cindy without work to keep her busy is a scary scary thing. A few days she’s walked out of that construction area looking like a refugee from Bosnia - but I guess it’s a change of pace. People are really excited about the restaurant… and since the kitchen will be operational really soon, we hope we can get it running by the Fall. And that hopefully, in addition to my teaching at IPFW, will help us with financial stuff we need to get the auditorium progressing quickly. The restaurant now has a name and a logo which debuted in the summer program - people seem to think it’s cute:
Larry’s got most of the electrical hooked up now… So next week this kitchen is gonna get christened, darnit! So - next blog i’m gonna catch you up on MY end of things and the craziness we’ve had getting three shows ready at once! Nifty article about Treasure.Hey - we’re knee deep in tech for Treasure Island - Rich and I managed to get through the whole thing this evening after I got home from teaching. Luckily only about seven of the 200 and some sound cues needed major adjustment (not bad, right!). Mr. Najuch has taken great glee out of making parrot voices and going “Too many sound cues, too many sound cues!” Anyhoooo… there was a really nice blurb in the Huntington Free Press about the show that I thought ya might like to see. I’m really excited about it (but pretty terrified to perform for my students at the dress rehearsal!). So, click on the article if ya want Why are 15 men on a dead man’s chest anyway?So - We are seriously counting down to Treasure Island now. I’m excited and nervous about it. I still have to sort my pirates - all the main characters are ready to go…but when I try and tackle the 15 pirates arrrrguing with each other I get a little muddled. But - other than that - it’s dandy. I hope you’re comin! It’s one of most young-person friendly things I think we’ve done, so if you’ve ever wanted an excuse to subject your grandchild to culture, this is a good start… I’m nervous about my students from university coming to the dress rehearsal, just I think they’ll find me completely hilarious in my gettup and not be able to stop laughing for an hour! The other day one of them was asking me something I said, “you know what Treasure Island is, right?” and they replied “Yeah… the thing with Muppets”. No child left behind, folks. So - my gettup. Everything arrived and it’s pretty cool… Here’s the press pic we’re gonna send out that poor Janice shot for me while I was looking like a goober against her newly polished brick wall… Steve Ness saw me while I was walking from one building to the other and I think he nearly had cardiac arrest. Here’s a pic with the flash so you can see appreciate my velvetine silliness… WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMOR EVENTS… Please note the shoes - they weren’t easy to find. An here’s a pic of the wig if you’re wonderin’ how that looks close up… EAT YER HEART OUT NICOLAS CAGE. Anyway - we start teching the stuff on Tuesday and I’m truly hoping the 25 billion sound cues work pretty well. I’m actually havin’ a devil of a time thinking of preshow music - so throw suggestions my way. Ohhh… The Arts Council logo that I designed has officially been unveiled - so i can share it with you… here’s the newspaper thingy… MEANWHILE… when I’m not walking around in very tight one inch heels… PO-SIDENTIAL This is actually a moment when she had finished devouring a stuffed squirrel - but the little tuft looked pretty much like a lincoln beard to me. Ok - so the great big happenin’ since we last spoke was the sock hop. It was soooo much work for those guys (I was teaching during most of the set up day), but by the end of the night I was exhausted too. And Janice and Rich don’t ever wanna see another balloon for at least a year…
But by the time they were done the room looked PROM-TASTIC! They had a good deal of help that afternoon from Ruth Marsh’s daughter who went to… and I am not making this up… Balloon school. Of course, I felt her credentials were INFLATED. Ba dum dum. She has to do a post graduate degree to cover balloon animals. And I’m so NOT making this up. The day before I had been fussing over our ‘Match the Mug’ baby-college pictures of local Huntington who’s-Hoosiers I would like you to know that there seems to be no way known to modern science to make spray glitter stick to a record. I tried hair spray…(which normally is a great fixative) and NOPE. I guess spray varnish woulda worked - but I wasn’t going to find that in Huntington! We had a BIG challenge because after we had announced the date of the “Sock Hop” (and printed posters and sent out postcards) there were three other big events announced the same day. Including a Tea Party Debate… to which, tragically, Rich positively forbid me to wear this outfit… So our usual audience was being pulled in different directions, which made selling tickets much more challenging than usual. We had about a hundred people there, though, and it was a really fun night. Paul manned the rootbeer floats… We certainly had some colorful attendees…. it seems there are folks who will dance the night away no matter what… In fact the lady on the right won the hula hoop competition by a landslide… she was able to keep that thing going for a solid minute!
ROCK AND ROLL PARTY QUEEN… And it was so much fun, Madge was fit to burst… But did… And, believe it or not, half an hour after the band stopped playin’ we were back where we started… Except for those few balloons which I’m sure came down eventually. In between all this, Janice has gotten that brick in the new building all cleaned up and lookin’ spick and span (ready for me to paint over with period ad murals… which she’s just thrilled about)… Rich has invented the most McGyver construction debris shoot ever devised: Plus team Najuch/Pegan managed to dismantle the giant hood (remember the giant oven hood) and get it from Larry’s barn INTO the new building…
THEY HOOD IF THEY COULD EXHAUST-ing As well as the giant sink… or swimming pool as I call it. HUNTINGTON’S NEW WATER SLIDE. PLUS the old carpet is all up and they’re starting to get a glimpse of the original tile that Rich says will clean up really well… As well as sanding down the walls ready for new tile in the kitchen area… So - you can imagine… everyone is pretty tired. Ok - git your tickets for Treasure Island… If all goes according to plan Rich will be bartending wearing this: xo |
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:) But - the great thing is that everyone knew we were in really great hands. Within in the first five seconds of rehearsal with Mike everyone just suddenly was able to breathe again. He’s really fantastic. And even over the next week or so as he ended up getting about 3 hours of sleep a night and became frazzled - he always kept cool and was really smart about stopping things when he was losing it and saying “excuse me… i need five minutes to go die”…and then we’d be right back on track 
