Tractor Disaster and Pantsless Chicken

Come 6:30am, I was ready and rearing to go. Our first day out was a driving day, followed by dinner at Shaun's parent's house to celebrate his birthday (a day early). Pleasant, fun, but, ultimately, not good blog fodder. However, as I sprang from my Priceline-provided bed at the Baltimore Hilton Garden Inn, I knew this was going to be a first show for the record books. And, oh, was it ever!

We arrived at the Chesapeake Arts Center bright-eyed and ready to load in. Our cast, one for enthusiastic togetherness, cheered for our stage manager as she backed the Sprinter into the loading dock, and then cheered again when the loading doors opened. There were cheers as the three set units went up, cheers for the newly-added roof pieces, cheers for the sound system provided for the theater and even a little cheer when we remembered that today was, indeed, opening day. What did NOT receive a cheer was this:



To those of you not savvy to the ways of Click Clack Moo (and I assume that that is a lot of you right now), this one-dimensional tractor is a major prop for the Farmer Brown track. I "ride" it across the stage in the opening, and use it repeatedly to get between my house and the barn (which, song lyrics tell us, are a quarter mile apart). There are a number of extremely specific sound cues of tractor starts, stops and squeals that bring the plastic piece to life even more than my meager shaking. And there's a mini tractor doppelganger puppet that helps the kids get all these spacial relationships. However, today, it seemed, would be my first attempt at performance sans my beloved piece of barnyard equipment. Alaina (SM) and I talked through what needed to be changed, what sound cues would be skipped and how I could modify blocking to still get the point across, despite being confined to two feet. Then we changed, received our places call, listened to the curtain speech, and got into place.

And, to my utter amazement, the show went off without any major hitches. Oh, sure, we kicked up our number line, I ad-libbed for a while to cover a quick change gone awry, a costume piece went from lost to found to lost again and a few lines got mangled, but the kids stayed with us, the grown-up jokes landed nicely and we all managed through with some very nice new acting choices, beautiful harmonies and a lot of fun all around.

All until we hit the chicken costume change.

You see, Farmer Brown's alter-ego is a busty, husky, bad-ass chicken (photos coming soon). Which, of course, requires a rapid-fire costume change. Well, I stripped off my overalls and yellow-plaid shirt, only to find that I had forgotten to underdress my fuzzy chicken pants. So, with only about 20 seconds left in the change, and faced with the prospect of appearing onstage in a busty chicken top and Fruit of the Looms, I did what any actor would do: I went running for my pants. Back behind the curtain I dashed, down the stairs, praying that the cows would "milk" the scene a little to buy me a few seconds. On went the pants, up went the fat suit, and I clucked my way onstage whilst tying on my crested bonnet. All while Shaun (Duck) laughed heartily in the wings.

The show finished, we packed, ate, filled the vans and started the long (and somewhat treacherous) drive to Pittsburgh, where we found ourselves staying at an opulent Wyndham (thanks Priceline!) And, as a combined celebration of our first show and Shaun's birthday, we headed for a cast dinner at Benihana:


(Aaron, Alaina, Grace, Shaun, Claire, me, Colleen)

A lovely end to a great first day!

Call tomorrow: None. Day off in Pittsburgh. There is talk of the Andy Warhol Museum...

Kid Quote of the Day: This one was provided by Alaina. Apparently, on the way out, a teacher asked a young boy which character was his favorite. His answer? "I want to be the granddaughter when I grow up."