The Stories Begin: Week One on Tour

Yes, there had been some stressful days that first week on tour. After performances for children of varying ages (anywhere from three to sixteen) of varying audience counts (from sixty to nine hundred), the eight artists were tired and testy. Wednesday, all hell had broken loose. The trailer broke down and the group spent a much needed hour and a half at a trailer fix-it shop having the sway bars taken care of. Then, while stopping for gas, one of the passengers noticed a blue substance dripping slowly from behind the back wheel of the trailer.

"What now?" he exclaimed, only to find it was the bottle of laundry detergent that had spilled over everything on the ground level of the trailer. The other seven scurried out from the fifteen passenger van and began unabashedly cleaning and mopping and washing down everything in sight.

When the group finally arrived at the theatre that night, even more tired, testy and now four hours late, they completed load-in for the next morning's show and arrived at the hotel only to discover that fog solution had spilled out of the fog machine over some more luggage and props for a different show. It was a terrible day.

[Seen here, cleaning up the Tide. Below, a notice posted in a parking lot of a Kroger supermarket in Georgia.]