Jon Satrom

Me on a John Deere tractor in Kentucky!

A glamour shot from the dressing room of one of the theaters!

Me, Marc, and Bill at Sidetrack “Musical Mondays” in Chicago

Me, Laura, and Nellie clowning around in Chicago

Me outside of the Judy Garland Birthplace Museum in Grand Rapids. MN.  A year ago somebody broke in and stole the original pair of ruby slippers that they had in the museum!!!!  WHO DONE IT????

Our largest theatre to date in Grand Forks, North Dakota!!  Gorgeous facility.

On the campus of the University of North Dakota.  Who knew such a school even existed?  It was actually a very nice campus, but COLD...even in September.  I wouldn’t want to be there in January!

Me, Marc, and Nellie posing outside of the Judy Garland Birthplace Museum!

Me and cousin Anna, who drove all the way to Muncie, IN from her college (Indiana University) to see me in the show!

The marquee for “Spamalot” in Pittsburgh, which many of us went to see while we were there!

The “Indoor Waterpark” at our hotel in North Dakota.

Our show billed right under Oliva Newton-John at the Luhrs Center for the Performing Arts in Shippensburg, PA!

Well friends, now I can officially say I’ve been to North Dakota!  We took the long trip out to Grand Forks, North Dakota and played two shows in what was I believe our largest house to date.  The theatre was absolutely enormous (and beautiful)!!  Unfortunately, the crowds were not so enormous, but thats OK because the entire cast was pretty psyched to be in North Dakota.  One funny thing that happened in ND is that I fell flat on my face backstage while trying to get out of the snake costume.  My foot caught on the edge of it and I tripped, and then stood up and thought I was free from it and snagged my foot on the suspenders and fell right onto my face.  Abby was backstage laughing hysterically and Marta, our company manager, said that she could hear the fall all the way from the back of the house.  It was embarrasing, but definitely pretty funny!!  I’m sure I will not live it down for a little while. 

We were on the campus of the University of North Dakota, and first of all it was COLD!!!  I wouldn’t want to experience the weather there in January or February if this is September!  The campus was really nice though and very large.  We explored the Student Union Center as well as the Bookstore, and I purchased a University of North Dakota baseball hat.  The other very interesting thing about visiting all of these states is listening to the accents.  The people really do speak with the accent that you think of as stereotypical of places like Minnesota and North Dakota and honestly it is fascinating to just listen to them talk.  We got some strange looks from the students at the University as we stood around taking pictures of things on the campus that to them seem like normal and everyday things.  It seems to be a common theme in most of the states we visit that people can tell that we are not from the area as soon as they set eyes on us!

Our hotel in North Dakota had an indoor waterpark was very exciting!  Unfortunately though, the big waterslide was not turned on and was locked so we could not use that one.  We still had a good time though running around and using the mini water slides.  We are always excited when our hotels have a pool and hot tub (which actually is a fairly common occurance!)

After North Dakota, we headed for Grand Rapids, Minnesota, which we were all excited to learn was Judy Garland’s birthplace, and there is a Judy Garland Museum in town (which turned out to be right next to our hotel).  Well, today was our first 3 show day, but we still found time to fit in the Garland Museum!!  We did two shows in the morning and then headed back to the hotel, and then went straight for the museum.  It was actually a very fascinating museum, and you can walk through Judy Garland’s actual house as part of the museum.  It was a great day.

However, many cast members of the show are currently sick.  There is a bug that is going through the cast and I have finally caught it.  I was resisting it for quite awhile, but it is finally starting to catch hold of me.  Laura had it the worst today though and almost literally did not have a voice at all.  In a quick fix, I was asked to sing one of her songs which I did (roughly) during the first show and then after looking it over, did more efficiently the second show.  It was an interesting think-on-your-feet kind of experience.  Laura was a trooper though and got through the show with literally hardly any voice at all.  We have the next four days off though as we head back East and we have a few nights to spend in Chicago which will be great.  A little fun and some time for everyone to get well before we have to perform again! 

Oh, and the theatre in Grand Rapids gave us each a coffee mug and a bag of wild rice (i don’t know why they gave us wild rice).  But, we were excited because it was our first gift from one of our venues! 

It feels like it has been a lifetime since I have written a blog entry, so I thought I would take this opportunity to try and catch everyone up on everything that has happened. 

After leaving Kentucky, we headed for Muncie, Indiana, home of Ball State University.  My cousin, Anna, made it out to see the show from Indiana University (where she goes to college) which was a lot of fun!  It was also particularly sweet of her to come because she had to drive a few hours one way to get there.  It was great to see her and we got a chance to catch up a little bit after the show because she came out to dinner with me and a few members of the cast.  Our audiences were small at that theatre and not very responsive, but I am glad that Anna got a chance to see it.  However, we did run into a few dads with their children in the restaurant we ate at after the show who had seen the show, and they were very complimentary and bought us some drinks in appreciation. 

After Muncie, it was on to Elyria, Ohio.  This is where Melissa rejoined us and resumed her role of Mrs. Wigglesworth.  I am trying to remember if anything interesting happened there, and I can’t come up with anything...ohhh, i think this was our first hotel that we stayed in that had a pool which was exciting for us all!!  Oh, this is also where Laura’s parents saw the show and took the whole cast to Ruby Tuesday’s afterwards.  They really enjoyed the show and it was really nice of them to buy us dinner. 

We headed to Pittsburgh next and the second we arrived in the city Nellie looked up what theatre was playing there and we discovered that the national tour of “Spamalot” was also in town at the same time.  We arrived at the hotel at about 6:45 and the show was at 7:30, so we immediately sprang into action and knocked on each other’s doors and rounded up a group to go see the show.  It was very entertaining and I was glad for the chance to see it since I haven’t seen the Broadway production yet.  Our theatre in Pittsburgh, the Byham Theatre, was a really great space, although both Marc and Melissa were not feeling very well and Nellie was just getting over something so the cast was not in particularly high spirits.  The audiences were large though and extremely responsive and excited which always makes it much more enjoyable to do the show!  Melissa, Jay, and I ate at a great restaurant that night called Six Penn, where I had the pumpkin bisque (mmm) and a very tasty burger.  We headed for a quick drink afterwards at a bar called “Oliver or Twist” (very clever) at the suggestion of our waitress at the restaurant.  We ran into Abby and Bill there who had just finished loading out our show. 

After Pittsburgh, it was on to Shippensburg, PA!!  This theatre and staff were truly amazing!  We were treated like kings.  The cast ended up having a lot of time to kill in the theatre, but that was OK because the green room had a huge big screen TV, and a stocked refridgerator and whole lunch spread out on the table for us.  Laura’s parents had brought us the board game Mall Madness from their home (at our request) and we set it up in the green room and played.  Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better...(Golden Girls on the TV, huge feast on the table AND Mall Madness) one of the girls on the local crew pops her head in and asks us if we have any laundry that we’d like done!!  What???  We love Shippensburg!  They also provided us with an amazing dinner and an array of cheesecakes for dessert.  It was truly incredible. 

Williamsport was next, and although the town was small and pretty dumpy, the theatre was really beautiful!  My parents drove out to see the show here and had a good time.  It was great to see them, and they also took the cast out for dinner afterwards.  The only place in town that we could find to eat was a small family operated pizza place, but it was very tasty.  After that, we headed to Colombus, Ohio where we played the Southern Theatre for two days.  I found out that Ann Hampton Callaway, one of my favorite singers, had been at the theatre for the two days before us and that was really cool.  I just saw her perform in New York City right before I left for the tour, and she was fantastic.  Melissa is also a huge fan of hers so she and I were both particularly excited that she had just performed on the same stage that we were about to perform on.  The theatre also has a book that they have all of the performers that come through sign, and we got to sign on the page directly after Ann’s!!  The other thing of note in Colombus was the hotel (the Doubletree) that had amazingly comfortable beds and free cookies at the front desk that are kept in a warmer so they are always warm and gooey (mmm).  Also, we headed for a bookstore (I forget the name) that had 32 rooms full of books!!!  It was crazy, and Marc and I went a little nuts buying books, but we decided we are going to start a bus book club and pass around the books as we finish them!  We also got recognized in the bookstore by a few people that had seen the show and they were really excited to see us which was funny.  We felt like celebrities!

After the performances in Colombus, we got a few days off because we have to make the long trek out to North Dakota which is where we perform next.  We were very excited though because we are stopping along the way and staying over night in Chicago one night and Minneapolis the next.  Our night in Chicago was lots of fun.  Most of the cast headed out for dinner in Chicago and found a place that was very tasty and then headed for a bar called Sidetrack.  It is the equivalent of Splash Musical Mondays in New York City where they play clips from musicals all night long on a big screen and everyone sings along and has a great time.  It was a lot of fun!  Marc’s friend who does wardrobe for the Chicago production of “Spelling Bee” met us there as did some members of the cast and crew of “Spelling Bee.” It was a fun night out.

Now I have almost caught up to where we are!!  We are currently in Minneapolis which is our second stop on the way out to North Dakota.  Our producer, Steve, offered to buy us all dinner on his credit card while we were here which was very nice.  Sara, our technical director had been to Minneapolis before and suggested a Russian restaurant called Moscow on the Hill.  The food was delicious!!  I had the Duck Ekaterina which was extremely tasty as well as a fun martini called the Russian Lemonade martini.  After that, we headed out on the town with Melissa’s friend Andrew as our bar tour guide.  These few days off from the show have been really nice and I am glad that we have stopped in large cities and had some free time to explore them.  We are headed back through both Minneapolis and Chicago later this week on our way back from North Dakota which will be great as well.  I think we have two full days off in Chicago coming up!  YAY! 

We had our official opening in Ashland Kentucky at a really beautiful old theatre called the Paramount Arts Center, where we were very excited to see our show up on the center marquee billed alongside Frankie Valli!  There was also a festival going on in Ashland while we were in town so it was fun to walk around and see everything.  There was even a beauty pageant being held on a stage for all age groups from toddlers on up to teens.  It is amazing how obvious it is to the people in these parts of the country that our cast and crew are not from around there.  Most of the people were quite nice though and we struck up conversations with several of them. 

This is the last city that we have Tim and Steven (our director and choreographer) with us.  They bought us all dinner and drinks on their last night in town.  We will miss them!!!  But they will be seeing the show periodically and checking in on us, and they will also be putting in a replacement for Nellie in the middle of October in Cinncinnatti.  We will have a new cast member joining us at that time.

The ladies of the red hat society were staying in our same hotel and we took the opportunity to chat with them and take some photos.  Also, a Colonel Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken Fame) look a like was walking around the festival, so of course I had to get my photo taken with him as well. 

The shows went well, although the cast has agreed that we prefer school performances over these public performances.  There were many more crying children here in Ashland than there were in South Carolina, although we had several little girls come dressed in Disney princess outfits which we thought was very cute.  Also, a little girl recognized us later when we were walking around the festival and she wanted to give each of us a hug.  It was very cute. 

Several of us in the cast bought “I Got Lucky In Kentucky” shirts!

A shot of the cast on our tour bus.

One of the game tables at the back of the bus (there are two of them).

Some random tractors that were parked on the street for the festival in Kentucky!

Our show up on the marquee at the Paramount Arts Center!

Marc and I before the second show in Kentucky.

Chatting with a red hat society lady!

Sitting on a plastic pig in Kentucky…

Our favorite backstage crew member in Ashland, KY!

Last night was a lot of fun!  Mickey, our hostess in Clemson threw us a huge party at her home (which was huge and gorgeous)!  She had great food, and all the wine and beer we could drink.  It was so nice of her to do, and it gave the cast chance to gather everyone together and present the gifts that we had gotten for our directors and creative team.  Then, the producer and director/choreographer had a surprise for us as well.  They got gifts for us!  We got baseball hats and blankets that say intramusic theatricals on them, and we got a huge treasure chest of bus goodies like snacks, vitamin C, cough drops, card games, etc.  It was a really nice thing for them to do!  A great chance to unwind… When we left Mickey’s, we headed out to the local theatre bar, Nick’s, where once again I did not pay for a single drink because Rhys, our production manager kept picking up the tab.  Great night!  The party continued even after that in Marc and Jay (my cast mate’s) hotel room.  We all drank a lot and definitely felt it in the morning, but it was alright because we had a full day of travel ahead with no rehearsal and no performance.

Today was our first day on the bus.  It is a great set up and about as comfortable as a bus could be.  We each get our own 2 seats and there are 2 game tables in the back where people can congregate to play cards and such.  It was a bit more cramped today than it will be normally because our director, choreographer, and production manager were on the bus with us to Ashland, and they will be leaving us shortly.  This is the last city that they are going to be around in.  There is also a DVD player and several small TV’s so we watched the movie “Adventures in Babysitting” on the way.  We also played lots of cards, and slept a lot and honestly it wasn’t all that terrible of a trip, despite the fact that it was about a 7 1/2 hour journey.  The time went quickly though and I don’t anticipate having much of a problem getting acclimated to the many hours on the bus. 

We arrived in Ashland, Kentucky at about 9:30ish and headed out to the Boston Beanery for some food and a few drinks.  We have an understudy rehearsal tomorrow at 2:00 PM, but that is my first obligation for the day so I’m thrilled about that.  A chance to sleep in!