Monday, May 28, 2007

Open!

Hello!

So ImprovAcadia opened on Friday night to a sold out house! The first cast is Rebecca & Rich Sohn and me with Larrance on the keyes. The show went well and we had a good time. We tried a lot of the new improv games that we learned on the ship and brought back some old chesnuts.

For some reason, the opening this year wasn't as stressful as year past. I suppose it could be that Rich & Rebecca are a very relaxing presence or that we got to relax for four months on a floating town or that by this point we know what we're doing re: opening - whatever the reason the stress level was low. This actually made me a little nervous - I was like, "Where's the stress? This can't be good. Or can it?" Turns out to be good. Funny how stress can be a security blanket or a barometer of things "going right." I mean not really because it's not. You get it. Don't act like you don't. Okay then.

We also had two sold out houses on Saturday night and we had a great house last night. We're closed today!!! Day off for everyone!!! This definitely merits the use of exclamation points as Larrance usually doesn't get a day off but this year he does!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our dessert person, Cas, made Coconut Cupcakes for our dessert special. Please note I LOVE coconut cupcakes. I haven't eaten one (they're for theater!) but we did cut one up so everyone could taste it. Delicisasty = Delicious + tasty.

I think we're going hiking today or we might go to the Wyeth museum in Rockport/Camden. The hike is 30 minutes away and the museum is 90 minutes away so the hike might win.

We're trying to get some photos but here's one of the cast from last year - see if you can figure out who's who....



Here's a pic of Larrance at the piano...


So ImprovAcadia is open for season four - Yay!

~Jen

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

A time to go through our stuff

Hello!

Well Larrance and I've been working on getting the house and the theater ready for season #4. We've been doing lots of cleaning and reorganizing.

We were worried that we were coming back to a very messy and unorganized house but we left it really neat and fairly organized. The funniest part is all the notes we left ourselves....notes that we forgot about....I just found one yesterday on the bar about what I need to buy for the theater/bar. I was so together before I left! I impress myself.

The house is very close to being ready for the summer of actors! We just have to finish tidying up the living room and dining room. And we have to move our room out to the summer bedroom aka the converted garage. Just last week it was so warm that we were thinking we might move soon but it's turned rather nasty and cold this week so we'll wait..

I've been continuing my workout regime here at home. I don't work out quite as frequently but I've been going for three times a week - walking, weights and jumping rope. I hope to continue this over the summer. I need to find a medium ground so my arms don't ache and feel like limp noodles during the shows.

We spent most of the day at the theater today getting orders - today we got about half of our beer and all of our food. So that meant that I had to reorganize the storage room. The storage room is also the dressing room so I had to make sure we had plenty of room for the actors and for all of our stuff. I also cleaned out the freezer and turned on the freezer in the bar/kitchen area. We have two freezers and two fridges. The two that are in the storage area are left on all winter to keep stuff....uh, cold. So I cleaned those out to prepare them for the new arrivals and turned on the one in the bar to get ready for Summer.

Sarah Marino (improv student, former waitress and all around swell gal) was helping me today and what a help she was! She washed all of the glass wear, cleaned the lobby and set-up the kitchen. She is fantastic. Sarah won't be working for us this summer because she's going to Chicago in July/August to take the i.O summer intensive. Chicago! Be good to her.
All of Sarah's help left me free to tackle some other projects which was great. I finally made order sheets for SYSCO (our food and paper products people). This involved tracking down all the SYSCO boxes and finding the item order number and writing it down. I also made a master order list of all the things we order from SYSCO and everyone else. As well as a master grocery shopping list. I've never done any of this - I always redid it everytime I had to order. How dumb is that? I know, super fracking dumb. So no more, now I have an order sheet! Yay for organization after 3 years. It took that long to sink-in but it did sink in. I'm like limestone!!!

So today the bar started looking like the bar again and we were once again serenaded by the soothing sounds of the freezer compressor. The dressing room/storage area looks wonderful. I've been on a big kick of going through everything....sorting drawers, baskets, stacks.....and I've managed to clear up a lot of junk. I feel much better about the house and the theater. At home I've gone throught my clothes again and done another purge. Being on the ship made me realize that I really do just live off of 1/3 of my clothes so good-bye other 1/3. I still need the other 2/3rd's as a security blanket. No, just kidding. I've gotten rid of another big pile of clothes and some shoes. gasp.

We're still working on filling one gap in the theater schedule. We have a two week gap at the end of the season. It looks like we might have it filled but we're waiting to hear. I hope so. Cross your everything and hope with me!!

So our list has shrunk to one page each....we open in just over a week and I think we're going to be ready. We just have to finish the house, the theater, get the rest of our orders in and flyer. We can do that.

~Jen