Stoneleaf Day 1

Fraught with peril is not exactly how I would usually describe a trip with our theatre group 2 ½ hours away to do five performances of our show at the Stoneleaf festival, but getting out of town yesterday proved challenging, to say the least. Last year, for Stoneleaf, we produced The Vagina Monologues, which required practically nothing and cast two of the three actresses locally, so we only had to bring one actress along for the ride.

This year, we decided to actually tour a full show, Intim@te E-pistles, written by Glenn, our artistic director. So we brought along 3 actors, a 7-foot sofa, a couple of doors, a couple of bookcases, and a pile of props. No big deal, right? Yeah, well. So I decided that a cargo van would be plenty to haul all our shit around, and if you’ve ever driven through downtown Asheville, you know that’s also about the biggest vehicle you can successfully navigate the streets with. Unfortunately, not all of our set would fit in the van. So we had to cut a set piece, and decided to build a door frame on site rather than try to carry two with us. Not a big deal, really, just a couple of 2x4s and a moulding set from Lowe’s.

Except Emily, our production manager manages to fall out of the van loading the couch and twist the ever-loving fuck out of her ankle. So loading the van Wednesday night was an adventure. Then Thursday morning we’re a whopping three hours late getting out of town for various reasons (SunCom sucks), and we have to reschedule to get someone to cover our light hang duties that afternoon. Fabulous.

SO Em & I finally get to Asheville several hours late and check into a surprisingly roach-free Best Western. When I booked the cheapest rooms I could find for this jaunt, I figured it was totally going to be one of those sleep on top of the covers fully dressed after wrapping the bed in Saran Wrap kind of lodging arrangements, but the Best Western Asheville West was actually clean and comfy, despite the circa 1972 Sunshine Yellow tile in the shitter.

Dinner at Applebee’s (yawn) and then back across the expanse of the parking lot (Applebee’s makes more sense, now, doesn’t it?) to play a little heads-up for $5 a match. And Emily owes me dinner for tonight. Glad to see there was someone I could beat yesterday. For the record, the people that play NL100 during business hours are tougher competition than the donks that play the same level after work/dinner hours.

I have a theory on why the Stars NL100 tables are actually softer than the NL50 tables. When you log into Stars and click on Low Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, the level at the top of the screen is NL100. You actually have to either rearrange the columns or scroll down to get to NL50. SO the newdonks, who don’t want to start of with “micro” cause they know how to play poker, and who want’s to admit to playing a “micro” table (except me), log in, click “Low” and find the first open seat, which is at the NL100 level. And it’s truly donkilicious.

And yesterday I was the live one. So for a couple of days I’ll scroll down halfway down the screen and play within my bankroll, before bumping back up to the big fishpond.

So today, like all good, highly-prepared theatre professionals, I’m sitting in Staples updating my blog while the nice copy center lady runs off programs for tonight’s performance. I would feel more like an idiot for this if I hadn’t heard from a little bird that the high mukey-mucks of one of the largest companies in NC had just left Staples right before I got here. Heh. Budget does not equal preparation.

More later, and the cool opening night gala runs tonight, so I’ll hit you back with updates tomorrow.