Well, O-M-G (pardon my language), but I can't believe this is the FINAL week of the tour before our December hiatus! It's the end of week 6 on the first ever Godspell National Tour, and we fly out this coming Monday to our respective homes. Well some people are flying straight to their vacation spots, but the point is, we're leaving the tour until it starts up again in mid-January.
The truth? I'm very excited about going home. Because like most, I miss my family, I miss eating food that didn't come from a restaurant (or truck stop), I want to rest my body and I really can't wait to see my regular hairstylist. BUT... I know for a fact that I am going to miss the heck out of the show AND I'm going to miss seeing all the pretty Godspell faces I get to see everyday when I'm here. Have I made it clear in my other posts how much we love eachother? Yes? Okay, good.
For this last week before the break, we get to live and perform in the beautiful city of Charlotte, North Carolina. It's significant because we've been doing so many one or two-nighters, moving from city-to-city, so being in one place for a little while is quite refreshing. We've been able to unpack and settle in a bit - a simple thing you might take for granted until you've lived without a home base for a time.
It took us two days and two overnight stops to drive here from Crockett, Texas. OH YEAH!!! Crockett, Texas! That was the super-small theatre we played in last Friday night, where we'd been warned that our set & lighting would be significantly scaled back. Well, I'm a little sad to report that there isn't much to report, lol. We were actually able to fit our colourful, round stage inside the theatre, we just had less space than we normally do around our disc. There were also no stage wings and the lighting was... different. But overall, we didn't have to change much, just a few tweaks in the blocking here and there, but that was it. Another good show. It's not that I WANTED anything to go wrong, I just think we were prepared for a bigger challenge than the one that was presented to us. Ah well... I think this just means that we're awesome. Let's go with that.
After Crockett, we stopped one night in Jackson, Mississippi and another in Atlanta, Georgia. My cast mate Stacey Kay had the brilliant idea to look up concerts in the area when we got to Atlanta and stumbled on info for Kanye West tickets! As it turned out, only myself, Stacey and our conductor John Yun went to the concert and had an amazing time. But not before becoming entangled in a CRAZY fiasco to get the tickets in the first place. I have no idea what the rest of the cast and crew did that night, but I know my outing with Stacey and John ended with a fireman-carry, cold pizza and my foot in an ice bucket.
Fast-forward to this week. We arrived in Charlotte on Monday and the first thing we see before stepping foot off the tour bus is our faces on lampposts all over the downtown core. You know, those little lamp post banner-thingies? We screamed. You would too.
Graham on a lamp post in Charlotte, NC
We had our first show here at the Knight Theatre on Tuesday evening and the crowd was amazing. Since we have a full week's stay here, it seems there was time to generate a good buzz about Godspell before we got here and it showed. We were graciously treated to a post-show reception that night, and were made to feel like stars. I really can't believe this is a job sometimes. I mean, performing is hard work no doubt (just ask my joints), but the rewards can be so grand.
Today during some down time, a bunch of us decided to go on a segway tour of the city! I'd never ridden one before, but it always looked like fun, so why not! I was a little nervous in the beginning, as the segways are quite sensitive and move very fast if you let them. But we all got the hang of it in no time and had SO much fun learning some haunted history and zipping around town on this strange-looking vehicle.
Our tour guide was amazing and is apparently coming to our show tonight!
We have five more shows here in Charlotte this weekend: tonight, two tomorrow (Saturday) and two on Sunday. We're closing out this leg of the tour with a Kris Kringle party and a Christmas Carol Cabaret in our hotel's restaurant. Again... how am I NOT going to miss this?!?! Even though we have another tour leg in January, I feel there's going to be a lot of weeping during our last show this Sunday. Well, a lot MORE weeping than usual. Uh oh, I hope I'm not giving too much away. You see in Godspell, one of our friends dies and... I've already said too much.
To my faithful readers, this will be the last 'official' Godspell National Tour blog post until the new year, but I will indeed still be blogging throughout December. I'm sure I'll be involved in other exciting or interesting shenanigans before the next tour leg, likely even with some members of my Godspell family. So feel free to still check back here, or on my facebook (www.facebook.com/lisamichellemusic) for new posts and thangs.
Wish us broken legs for our shows this weekend and I'll talk to you soon!!!
Love to you from me... and from Godspell!
Xo
~ Lisa Michelle
Twitter: @itslisamichelle
#GodspellNationalTour
