Nickers off Ready When I Come Home/Privacy and Comfort on Tour

Does my bum show in this?

There is something distinctly functional about Norwich, where we find ourselves this week, and it has prompted me to write again, after too long an absence...it may also be that we are into the final six weeks of the tour and so your old life begins to resurface gradually, tentatively, and you begin to feel more yourself again, more of your old energy re-emerging; whatever the case, here I am again, happy as can be....

My landlady describes Norwich as one of Britain’s best-kept secrets, and after a day and a half here I can see why: I had no idea there was so much here to see and do; no idea of the History of the place, the shopping-everything from a six-days-a-week open-air market to what must be one of the oldest, still family-run department stores around, and certainly the best I’ve ever been in for stock and customer service and layout: Jarrold, founded in the 19th century (and where some of our cast were to be found in the foot spa today, on official business/p.r.!) But anyway, Privacy and Comfort: my first photo is actually from the dressing room in Aberdeen, a moment caught on camera by my dressing-room mate,  Carys Gray, who found my attempts at achieving modesty outside the shower cubicle worthy of recording.

Karen Ascoe in Dressing Room, Rhyl

The second pic (right) Carys found equally snap-worthy: in the ‘haunted chair’ (so called because it was so ancient it always looked like someone was already sitting in it) in the dressing-room in Rhyl, where I attempted some newspaper study while my bottom was almost at floor level, so lacking in oomph and upholstery was the haunted chair.

Rhyl theatre stage door entrance

The final pic (leaving my bottom to one side for once) is of the ‘Stage Door’ at Rhyl. It didn’t actually read ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’ but it might as well have done! Having said that, I must note that Rhyl was one of our best weeks: great houses, enthusiastic audiences and SUNSHINE ALL WEEK - much to the amazement of the locals!

In fact, on that note, let’s end with a photo of the view from our dressing-room window in Rhyl... sod all the discomfort along the way, it doesn’t get much better than this for a footloose, strolling player!

Sunset in Rhyl, North Wales, April 2011

I

Pink Pants - spotlight on Wardrobe

Wardrobe department cost-cutting exercise??!  

This touring lark is pretty full on! - no blogs since Liverpool - amazingly slack of me... I had a good chat with our Wardrobe department whilst in Aberdeen however, and they filled me in on some show details and Wardrobe secrets: pretty difficult kitting out the dancers in High Street gear when their moves are athletic to say the least. One pair of jeans not so much split as just disappeared from the posterior of one of our young men, and when other lesser splits and holes appear they never dare use pins to hold things together temporarily as the show is too physical and there are too many lifts; one girl got badly scratched by a belt buckle during one sequence... and as for dancing feet in high street cowboy boots, well - not ideal. Nicky and Jason from Wardrobe explained the complex organisation involved in moving to a new theatre each week and instructing a new set of dressers (two per venue) how to manage the numerous changes (at least 7 per character per show) and moving around of costumes to help things go smoothly, but the funniest thing would apparently be to film them doing the laundry: jock straps ripped off and left in a sweaty ball, tights meshed up with knickers; just a couple of their bugbears, all needing to be unravelled before washing, but first hurled at the wall in a joyous venting of post-show frustration. I loved the image of it! I also learned that black socks from the show get worn home and personal socks arrive in the show wash. Nicky got the measure of that one long ago: the rogue socks are kept, unwashed, and mounting in their number until the guilty party comes calling as they begin to run out of socks.
The most indiscrete personal item to find its way into the show wash was a pair of fluorescent pink boxers! When the other pairs of show pants were accounted for, by process of deduction the garish undergarment was found to belong to none other than the Rev himself! (Steven Pinder http://footloosethemusical.co.uk/cast/steven-pinder/)
Thank you, Wardrobe Department, for your tireless efforts on our behalves!!

Another Time, Another Place

Another Place
http://www.sefton.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=6216

Moving on each week can be, to say the least, discombobulating. Week five was Plymouth - great big, lively audiences and a bit of sunshine despite the cold. Then it was Liverpool...which I was very excited about as it's a city that's new to me and there is so much to see, including Antony Gormley's Another Place: the 100 self-study cast-iron sculptures, all looking out to sea, set along 3 kilometres of the foreshore and almost 1 km into the sea, which just happened to be directly in front of the house I was staying in that week, hence my pic. The Gormley figures just seemed very appropriate somehow - looking out and away to some other destination, as we constantly do on this tour.
When the curtain comes down on a Saturday night it's all about packing up and working out where you're going next, and when and how. Many of the cast will drive off home (to arrive at 2, 3 in the morning?) directly after we finish. The rest of us get up early on the Sunday and complete the next stage by car, by train, plane or whatever. If you're lucky you get to spend the night in your own bed before landing in another unfamiliar one, somewhere far away.

We don't get out much!

Jodie Jacobs
http://footloosethemusical.co.uk/cast/jodie-jacobs/

The night out bowling was a huge success: our Company Manager had organised us into six teams of six, together with an appointed Captain for each team and it was great to let off some steam (this week's pic shows Jodie in celebratory mood after achieving her first strike) and to observe the differing styles of said Captains: to the left of my team, Mike P was showing model Captain-like behaviour - ever encouraging and applauding his people, commiserating when appropriate (another 'gutter ball' and zero score) and spurring the team on to greatness, partly through his own example of getting numerous strikes and high scores of his own. To our right, Simon H's approach was somewhat different: at each less-than-perfect performance by his team (and particularly as the evening wore on and concentration was patchier) he remonstrated with: "focus! bloody focus!" and proceeded to show everyone how it should be done with focus and skill, going on to win the coveted 'highest scoring individual' award by repeatedly clearing all the pins - stylish geezer...
Our own Captain, Lindsey, had a style all of her own, standing at the back of the action, pint in hand, calmly observing and nonchalantly walking forward to take her turn when necessary. Only on the bus going home, when it was announced that our team had been the highest scoring one, did she let her true excitement show, leaping up to perform a victory dance, while I seem to remember yours truly swinging up on to the bus bars and executing some extraordinary moves, so overwhelmed were we both at our unexpected success.
When our rowdy bunch eventually filed off the (school) bus, I thanked the bus driver and apologised for the noise, explaining: "We don't get out much!"

Footloose and Fancy Free??

So here I am on board with "Footloose, the Musical" - the fifth tour here in the UK of the show developed (initially in the States) from the 1984 film,  "Footloose". The film of course has many fans, but the theatre show has a life and a vibrancy all of its own: an amazing, feel-good, energising evening with a big heart, complete with numbers written specially for the show, to complement the fabulous old favourites: "Let's Hear It For The Boy", "I Need a Hero" and the title track.

And here we are on week four of the "Footloose" Tour. Venue: Edinburgh. All of us have been looking forward to getting here, and with the show in great shape and the audiences pouring in and having a blast, we can relax and enjoy this beautiful city while we are here for the week. So where do we stay when on tour? Maybe I need to set the record straight about this... Everyone in the company is responsible for finding their own accommodation and for organising their travel too, and with a six-month tour like this that involves a fair bit of work! In fact some might say that organising the digs and travel for each week is the most stressful part of the job! - stick us in the theatre in front of two thousand people and we'll just do our thing, but finding suitable accommodation, within easy reach of the theatre, which is affordable and clean and relaxing, well....not always so easy! Here in Edinburgh though, I have fallen on my feet, back with a landlady I stayed with on a previous tour, in a gorgeous part of town near the aptly named Comely Bank Road: most 'comely' and clean and comfortable too. There have been less comfortable digs... but more of that anon!
 Out tonight after the show for our first big company get-together - ten-pin bowling!