The Sum of All - 10/24/05

Canton, NY - I do not think that any short summary of the past few days can do them justice, but I will make the attempt. Herewith is a "brief and tedious" summary of the actions since I last had the opportunity to write:

• Performed Much Ado About Nothing four times in three locations: Lebanon (NH) Opera House, the Concord (NH) City Auditorium, and twice at the Newport (NH) Opera House. All three venues very much like the 1891 Fredonia Opera House. Resided at the New London (NH) Inn, a very nice hotel in a rather remote area of the state. Although they have wireless internet, their service went down sometime Friday, leaving us all unconnected (unless we went down to Jack's, a local cafe).
• During my time off I essentially took a walk down to Pleasant Lake with Kevin on Thursday and hiked to the top of Mt. Sunapee on Friday with Jessica. Maybe that was a bit too much physical activity, because I was pretty tired by the end of Saturday night. Also refreshed my memory on how to play euchre with Tyler, Andrew and Sarah Friday night after the show.
• The cargo van broke down on the way to the Newport venue Saturday morning. At one point we had to push it down the street, and we esssentially coasted into Newport and the venue. My GPS came in handy as with it, we found an auto repair shop in Concord and had the van towed to that location. Carie had to accompany the tow truck driver and returned for the evening performance.
• We rented a U-Haul truck for the drive Sunday 10/23 to Canton. Apparently making all the necessary arrangements in Canton has been extraordinary difficult. Greg and I drove Carie back down to Concord, where she stayed in a motel overnight in order to pick up the van today and re-join us in Canton. Greg and I drove back to New London to re-join the troupe and we all took off for Canton, arriving about 6:15 PM to the contact's house (which is actually in Potsdam). The drive went through some lousy weather, including snow in the higher elevations of the mountains of Vermont.
  
• We had a very nice dinner at Lyle Little's house (our host), and then we took off to drive each troupe member to their respective guest house. In Canton we are being housed by families or other interested parties, so we are scattered across the city. Most of us are in walking distance. I ended up in a one-bedroom efficiency apartment hosted by an adjunct member of the English department, sleeping on a couch, about 2 miles outside of Canton. The GPS again came in handy as we had to find each host house one-by-one at night.
• We are in residence at St. Lawrence University for the rest of the week, performing each show twice, with one midnight production of Planet on Friday, I believe.

So I guess you could say it's been a bit hectic over the past few days. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a day off, and I will probably spend the time doing laundry, researching some plays for the 06-07 season at Fredonia, and writing a bit more on the blog. I will also try to update the video pages so you can see some of the video I took while doing those hikes. Quite astounding.

One thing I really have to do more is, when I get a good idea for something to write here, to make a note of it on my memo pad. Sometimes I find I come to the keyboard, and my head is so crammed with things that have been going on that I can't even start to type. I would bet that if I took the time to note the good ideas and referred to them while writing I might get more accomplished.

I do know I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the St. Lawrence campus. They have a pretty good student center and library, and although the library is not wireless, you can easily plug in and go. They also have a great gym, so this week I think it's back to the treadmill. The weather is lousy - cold, rainy, low 40s - my absolutely least favorite weather conditions. I finally now believe summer is over.

More tomorrow, with some finer details. -TWL