Disney Monorail - The First Ride At Walt Disney World

We're Disney Transportation people. We leave the car keys in the room while we're at Disney. We take long,
convoluted routes between resorts and parks just so we can use the Disney transportation system. We love the boats and even the buses that move you around the World, but from my earliest Disney memories, I've been totally in love with the monorail.

I mean, if you can look upon that thing, futuristic even though it's as old as the park, and not get excited, you're wasting your money on a Disney vacation. If public transportation was like this, I'd support the heck out of it! I love waiting at the station, peering down the track to see if it will be Monorail Blue, or Monorail Orange, or maybe, just maybe, Monorail Red. I love the silly door warnings in English and Spanish. I love seeing the resorts as we slide past, especially getting to go inside a hotel! I love people watching and seeing what "types" seem to be staying at the different resorts. I don't mind standing at all but I love when we get a whole car to ourselves. I love the whole experience. It's the perfect introduction to the Magic Kingdom, a little magic outside the gates.

So here is a tour of the monorail loop, with stops at all three monorail resorts, the Transportation and Ticket Center and of course the Magic Kingdom. It's shot by my son at almost 13 years of age, so understand you're seeing what he is interested in. Watch for the Avengers Monorail, the docked Electrical Water Pageant and Mary Blair's awesome mosaic in the Contemporary. Enjoy the trees and the parking lots and the glimpses inside the Magic Kingdom. But most all, Please Stand Clear of the Doors.

A Teen's-Eye View of the Monorail Loop

39 Lessons

Well, not exactly that many, but I thought I'd finally put down a few of the things I took away from my experience stage managing The 39 Steps last month. This was a different experience. Not bad, it had many good moments and on balance I had a really good time, but it I didn't walk away with the same feeling I did from Wizard of Oz, or even Tuesdays with Morrie or the Talkin' 'Bout My Generation shows. I don't think anyone did. Truth be told, this is my second attempt at writing this. I wrote a post about a week ago with the same name, posted it one night and within about 12 hours I deleted it. It was honest and fair, I thought, but after a night sleeping on it and reading it again, I decided it wasn't what I wanted up here. That experience alone tells me volumes about my mixed feelings after this show. But I'm going to try again. Maybe sanitized isn't the right word, but this will be an easier thing for me to read in a few months, I think.

1. Playing It By Ear

39 Steps was my first foray into "calling a show." This is a stage manager duty that entails helping to let the tech people know when to execute a light change or play a sound effect. I was in communication with Gillian, our light tech, during this show using a set of headphones and a mic. This was cool in that I love gadgets and this totally played to my walkie-talkie nostalgia. It always seemed Gillian was asking me a question or telling me something at the most inopportune moments, but it wasn't her fault and it was more amusing than anything else. The tricky part of this was that I had to give Gillian cues based on the actors on stage being in place and ready when I had no way of actually SEEING the stage. I was behind a blackout curtain. This meant I learned to know the pace of the show and the actors and to use my ears to tell what was going on out on stage. Luckily, the hollow stage made every movement quite loud enough to hear, so it wasn't terribly challenging. It was just pretty funny to me that my introduction to this aspect of stage direction was done blind.

2. Community Theater Is Held Together With Duct Tape

Well, maybe not exactly, but it would be much harder without it. I started the show with four rolls of different colors of duct tape and finished with, I believe, seven. Black, white, glow-in-the-dark and my personal favorite, Liz-in-Winter all had uses that required that color and no other. Duct tape held the fog machine pipe in place, kept the knife in Annabelle's back, held the shadow puppets together, let us know where the curtain opening was and kept random wires from clotheslining actors. My stagehand used it in manner not appropriate to discuss on a family blog. Duct tape is my friend.

3. DIY

We had a troublesome prop on this show. A lamp we used in one scene started shocking me during tech week and continued to do so pretty regularly. The tech director and director weren't bothered by this, so I just let it be rather than looking closely at the lamp to see what the problem was and fix it my own bad self. It turned out to be just a matter of replacing the ludicrously tiny light bulb. Anyhow, I didn't and so the completely predictable happened and we ended up shorting out about a third of the building. We blew lots of fuses in control boxes and blew out several relatively expensive light bulbs. The second act of that show featured a rather improvised shadow puppet effect and no fog machine and a darkened stage right and actors had to navigate some very sketchy steps with only little flashlights to see by. I could have prevented this with a trip to Lowes. Next time I will.

4. Dealing With An Off Night

The night the fuse blew was just an off show. I suppose it was good, in a way, that the lamp snafu didn't happen during a good show, but still, having such an off night was troubling. It was awkward and negative from the very beginning, when we all arrived at the theater long before show time. The strange thing was that we were coming off the best show of our run as of that point and had every reason to be proud and happy with ourselves and each other, but it wasn't like that. Anyhow, the important part was that we all came back for the next show and shook everything off and put forth a great performance. That was an important lesson, nothing in live theater is lasting, neither the good nor the bad. A great show doesn't ensure the next will be even better, but by the same token, a poor one doesn't throw the train off the tracks. Every night is a fresh slate.

5. Be Part Of The Immune System, Not A Band-Aid

This is far and away my favorite, and I suspect time will prove it the most valuable, lesson. Director Jen was happy, she said, with my ability to see a problem and fix it quickly. She wants me to learn, however, to slow down sometimes and think of a solution that not only fixes the problem, but does so within the show. I was a band-aid, I need to be a white blood cell. This is tricky for me as this is NOT the way my mind works. I'm not theatrical, but I want to be and I am trying to learn to change the way I think. It's a challenge, but a really fun one. This is why I enjoy working with Brunswick Little Theatre, and one of the best parts of my friendship with Jen. Both push me to open those new doors. And I'm getting more and more comfortable doing so.

Hat-crobatics

Director Jen made up that word, hat-crobatics, to describe a part of The 39 Steps wherein two actors switch between six characters during one short scene mostly by changing accents and hats. The scene is a great representation of this show in particular. Four actors not only portray dozens of characters and undergo numerous costume changes, but they also often act as their own stage crew, clearing and setting sets during the show. That's not to say the stage hands themselves are sitting on their hands letting the actors do all the work. The three of us also set and clear most of the scenes while also performing shadow puppets and running a fog machine. This is a very small operation. It includes only Jen the director, four actors, three stage hands, a dresser, a light board operator and a sound board operator. That's ten people handling the show in total while it's in performance, not counting Jen in the audience taking notes on ways we can improve. We all wear a lot of hats, if the truth is to be told.

But it seems to me in my very limited experience that wearing lots of hats is the name of the game in community theater. Maybe it's not so usual to have the actors play multiple roles or participate so much in the handling of sets during the performance, but it certainly seems to always involve a lot of multitasking. My model for this is Jen. Watching her create a show, because that's what it is, creating, is a lesson on multitasking. I was amazed both during Wizard of Oz and this show at how much the woman manages to keep in her head. She knows the script frontwards and backwards, knows her blocking, develops a vision for a set and keeps track of prop needs all at once. At the same time she's thinking about rehearsal schedules and cast parties and publicity and sound and light cues and finding tech help and creating special effects. I've seen her keeping a notebook full of lists and things getting added and crossed off all the time, but ask her and usually she can pull any tidbit in those notes straight out of her head. I don't know how she does it.

My job on her shows has been as stage manager. I'll admit, when Jen asked me to help her on Wizard as one, I had to come home and Google it. This is what I found on the interwebs:

Stage managers typically provide practical and organizational support to the director, actors, designers, stage crew and technicians throughout the production process....... Once the show opens, the director's work is essentially complete. Now it's the stage manager's job to make sure that every aspect of the production runs just as the director intended time after time, until the production closes. 

There was a whole page of stuff in the middle that made little sense to me. Another website offered the advice that a stage manager shouldn't show too much cleavage. I got that one covered.  Basically, a stage manager wears lots of hats as well.

Jen is a very hands on director, she delegates as little as she has to, I think. Stage managing for another director might be different, but for Jen it's mostly being there when she needs a hand and helping make what she wants to happen happen. During Wizard, I was one of three stage managers. I didn't call the show (more on that later) and another guy was largely responsible for organizing the set changes. I was primarily there to fix problems that arose with the cast and help any way I could. It was a great learning experience as I got to participate in lots of stage manager things without having all of it on my shoulders. Almost like Jen planned it that way....

This time, I'm all she's got. But while it's a complicated show, it's a small cast and crew, so it works perfectly as another step up my learning ladder. I rarely see the cast during this show. The babysitting aspect of Wizard is almost completely absent this time. Now I'm focusing on the set changes and technical aspects of stage managing during the show. It's a challenge that I'll write about after the whole run is over. I'm sure I'll have more and better stories after another three more performances.

The two months of preparing this show saw me wearing a few hats as well. Jen told me at the outset that she'd be asking more from me in terms of time at rehearsals than she ever has of a stage manager before. I ended up at the majority of them doing something of varying usefulness. When an actor was missing, I read his lines, and once even tried acting his part, which in hindsight was probably a mistake. When everyone was there, I was "on book" which meant feeding lines to the actors when they couldn't bring one forth. That's not as easy as it would seem. It's hard unless an actor is well-trained and knows to ask for a line when he or she needs one. We only have one actor of that sort in this show. The others tended to stand there for varying amounts of time struggling until either they bust out with SOMETHING or someone fed the line to them. It was tricky finding a rhythm, jump in too early and you interrupt the flow and step in on the actor's character, but wait too long and it gets the actor frustrated and everyone else feels really awkward. I got better at it, I think, as I got some more practice.

Between rehearsals I got to play at set dresser and prop man. I spent a day searching through thrift stores and consignment shops for just the right armchair. I sent lots of pictures to Jen, anyone who looks at the photo gallery in my phone is going to wonder what the Hell I was doing.  I finally found a good one and talked the seller down a decent bit, which is totally out of character for me. I also created a small prop, a fake newspaper page. That was great fun as Jen only had a couple instructions and let me play with the rest. I helped with a few more things, acquiring a big piece of paper for a map prop and finding fake, throw-able snowflakes.

When we moved into the Amuzu theatre, I got to put my lighting tech hat on.  I had learned the basics of

Scary Ladder. This photo only shows the top half...

lighting during our rock and roll show in the park, so when lights needed to be hung (using the scariest ladder EVER) I was the guy. I got to change gels and hang and focus lights and string extension cords and such. It was fun. Everyone pitches in during load-in, so we all had lots of hats. We painted props and built a screen to project our shadow puppets and installed a curtain to create some small little "backstage" area to work the puppets and store props. We managed to work the wiring so there's been no blackouts and the building hasn't caught fire. As we moved into tech week, we sorted cues and the smoke machine and the puppets and figured out how to (and whether or not to in some cases) move props on and off stage

Aside from my various stage manager duties, I was busy at home between rehearsals with publicity and keeping up the website and managing ticket sales. This is the first show we've used PayPal to sell tickets on our own website, and there have been a few glitches and some second guessing that really annoyed me and complicated things needlessly. Before shows, I have been closing out that day's ticket sales online and printing the ticket buyer lists, contacting the local newspaper editor to beg for space, and stopping for last minute supplies of duct tape and glow rings and batteries and art supplies and such. Nights after rehearsals and shows, I'd find myself downloading and editing pictures, sending photos and writing cutlines to the same local paper and checking sales and putting buyers on lists for future shows.

It's a lot of hats for sure, but it's been fun. I can't wait to do it again.

Hat-crobat. Wonder if I can put that on a resume?

Wordless Wednesday: Disney Weenies!!!

Check out all the Weenie pics at Focused On The Magic

Wanna know what a Weenie is (if you don't know and can't figure it out from these pictures)? Ask me tomorrow when it's not Wordless anymore ;-)

Magic For The Middle Child

Sophie is my niece, my sister's middle child. Sophie is sweet and funny and smart and fun to be around. She is also very much the middle child. Her sister is the older one, the one who is already in school and bringing home homework and grades and getting fussed over because she does so well. Her brother is the "baby" at just two and commands a lot of attention because he is never still, and very, uhhh, let's just say he's very persistent and creative. He really commands attention. That leaves Sophie in the middle. She isn't old enough for school (yet, she starts in a few weeks) but she is too old to be the baby. She can do things for herself, but she doesn't have the opportunities to do the things her sister does. It's tough for Sophie.

Sophie is very much girlie. She wants to wear nothing but pink and LOVES Disney princesses, especially Belle. So today, when I saw this photo from Enchanted Tales With Belle, my heart leapt. Sophie was chosen to play the part of Beast during the story, which apparently meant she got to dance with Belle at the end when Beast turns back into the prince. They chose Sophie out of all those kids. Not her sister, not her brother, just her. She got to do something special, she got to take part in her favorite Princess' story, all on her own. I don't know if you can see all that means to her written all over her face like I can, but I can't imagine anyone not loving this picture, a picture of real Magic.

A Couple More Steps

I had, briefly, the brilliant idea to write 39 posts on this blog about my experiences helping bring The 39 Steps to the stage. As much as I dislike math, I do like numbers and I sort of thought that would get me writing more regularly. But the last exercise to help me write regularly was an attempt at a Blog Challenge to put up a post for each letter of the alphabet in the month of April. It took me over a year to write 27 (yes, 27. I did two "I" posts. I'm an over-achiever) blog posts. I'm not thinking 39 in a couple months was very realistic. Aside from that, I'm always nervous writing publicly about a play I'm involved in (heh, I say "always" like I've done this more than a couple times) because I'm afraid that in my enthusiasm and excitement, I'll write something I shouldn't or give away something that would be better kept a surprise. So while this isn't going to be the last update from the world of 1935 Britain, I'm not going to turn this into a play diary. But this blog is about what makes me happy, basically, and last weekend saw some small steps forward for the play and one bigger step for myself, and that made me happy.

Saturday we (my family along with Director Jen and her dad, Jonathan, who is building sets/props for the show) visited  the Historic Amuzu Theatre to have a look around. I've been fascinated by this building since we moved here so I was really happy to get to poke around the whole place. The Amuzu was a movie theater begun by the current owner's father, but it's since been remodeled into a venue for live shows. It has a stage and the balcony houses lights and tech equipment. To say it's a bit cramped backstage is a huge understatement, but this show has a cast of four and minimal sets, so it won't present much of a problem. I'm not going to say this is the ideal theater space for any show, but it will work very well for THIS show, we think.

I'm not going to give away Jen's ideas for staging the show, but the fact that the stage features two "balconies" is going to be perfect. We spent an hour or so poking all around (that was mostly me) and measuring things (mostly Jonathan and John) and taking pictures (all the little shots of the Amuzu you see on this post are Lisa's work) and imagining how the show could be brought to life in this space (that was mostly Jen, who is a flat-out genius at that). It was a great morning, getting to indulge my curiosity about the interior of one of my favorite landmarks while watching my friend go into Imagineer mode. Jen's the closest thing to Walt Disney I'm ever likely to meet and I love being there to see how she works through ideas and starts bringing a show to life. Then, when we got home and I downloaded all of Lisa's pictures, I was reminded once again what a treasure she is and what a great eye she has. She shot that place so well, it actually led to me putting a little blurb about our trip on the show's website. Just because I HAD to use a few of her photos.

Also on Saturday morning, Jen shared a bit of news that led to Sunday's fun. The show was cast after auditions the week before, but one of the four actors had second thoughts and backed out before the first rehearsal, scheduled for Sunday. This was to be a "read-thru" of the script. That is just what it sounds like, the actors read the script aloud, each reading his part. It's fun. Jen wasn't too worried, she said. She'd already contacted a couple people and was putting a last minute call out on Facebook with the idea of carrying on with the scheduled read-thru and turning it into a sort of audition if need be. I volunteered to read the missing guy's part if it came to that and no
one showed to try out on short notice.
I guess the idea was already started in my head. I'd had a lot of fun watching the auditions and actually found for the first time being around theater stuff that I wanted to be taking part in what the actors were doing. It was a series of improvisational games followed by readings of parts of the script. I'd read the script twice already before the auditions and found myself thinking about how I'd do it if it were me up there trying out. Not that I wanted to be IN the show, mind you, just that I thought it'd be fun to get to act out this stuff. So, when it looked like Jen might need a warm body to read, I jumped at the chance.

Then, while running errands and walking around Walmart of all things, I got to thinking. That really did look like fun, the acting thing. It seemed, for the first time, accessible to even me. There was no singing or dancing. It was a lot of lines, but maybe I could memorize that. No, I could never do that on a stage, in front of people. Well, maybe. I just don't know. I sent Jen a message reiterating my offer to help read. She read between the lines I guess and understood and said what I couldn't bring myself to say, "Unless you're ready to make your stage debut...." 

Was I? I don't know. I knew for a fact that the guys she contacted to try out would be great and if they showed I was out, I said. Another volunteer responded to her call and said he'd come out. I didn't know his acting background and figured if he was as new to this as I, I would go ahead and read for the part with him. Jen told me whatever else happened, she'd give me a chance to read. I guess she understood what was going on in my head, she's been through this herself as an actor and seen many others go through it as a director. And she gets me. 
Sunday came and I surprised myself by not being nervous at all. I was happy, really happy. I was imagining my friends and family coming to the show. I was imagining being one of a small cast and all the camaraderie that I figure goes with that. I had myself convinced  it was totally doable for me to remember all the lines. I was excited and happy and looking forward to three o'clock. Then, while I drove to Adrian and Jen's office where the rehearsal was to take place, it hit me. I had been asked that morning to stand up in church and sort of wave "hi" to the congregation as I was introduced as a member of a new committee, and I hated it. It made me nervous and uncomfortable. What the Hell was I thinking volunteering to get up and ACT in front of an audience at a real show that people expected to be very good? I'd freeze and embarrass myself, embarrass the other actors, embarrass Jen. What sort of friend was I to put everyone in that position?  And if I did get the role, that would mean I wouldn't be stage manger, something I've been looking forward to all year. I loved stage managing Wizard, but I was one of three and this time I would be flying solo on a show that presents some real interesting challenges. That, and I love being Jen's helper, part of her production team.

 

When I got to the office, I saw that the other volunteer, Dan, had come out and I resolved to take Jen aside and tell her I was out as far as trying out. Let Dan have it, good or bad Jen would make him work. But I didn't. I went ahead as planned and read for the part like I wanted it. And if Dan hadn't been as great as he was, and Jen thought I would be right, I'd have done it. Really I would. And that surprised me about myself. I gotta say, I'm proud of me.

As it turned out, everything went about as perfectly as we could have hoped. Before we started, Jen announced I'd be reading for the part, but that she was a bit upset by the possibility of losing me as her stage manager (something that truly never occurred to me, I figured I was very replaceable). Dan and I and the rest of the cast had a really great time with the script. Dan was perfect for the part, he has acting experience and can flip between truly wonderful accents with ease. I know everyone saw that, so after we were finished and it looked like Jen wasn't going to say it, I did. I would be happy to stay stage manager. And I meant it.

The Cast: (l-r) Ryan Joyce, Adrian Iapalucci, Liz Cervantes and Dan Gedman

So, Dan got his chance to return to the stage, Jen found a perfect Clown One and kept her stage manager and didn't have to tell her friend "no, I would rather use the other guy," and I got my chance to audition for a part in a play along with a real actor. And while Dan was clearly much better for the part, and obviously more experienced in acting in general, I didn't embarrass myself at all. It wasn't like "isn't it cute, Jeff tried," not at all. I did well, and I think better than "for a first try" well. It was soooooooo much fun, too! It was every bit as much fun as it looked, I gotta say. 

Big thanks to Lisa for humoring all my crazy ideas and supporting me even though she knows it's going to mean a lot of nights away from home. Big thanks to Adrian and Liz and Ryan and especially Dan for welcoming the rookie and making me feel like I belonged there. And Big Thanks to Jen for understanding, for encouraging and for once again showing me a new door to open. This acting door hasn't been flung wide open by any means, but it has been left ajar. And that is huge for me.

                                                

   

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With A First Step (or 39 of them)

Tonight I'm going to sit in on auditions for Brunswick Little Theatre's next show, The 39 Steps. To say I'm happy and excited understates it quite a bit. I didn't get to be much of a part of this summer's big musical production of Beauty and the Beast due to vacation and time conflicts (mainly), and with its run finishing up this past weekend, I am getting really itchy to be a part of a show again.

It's disingenuous to say tonight is the beginning, the first steps.  This show began when the director looked into The 39 Steps as a possible play she'd like to propose. She read the script, maybe watched a few YouTube videos and started thinking. There's A LOT of thinking involved in this. She proposed the show to the BLT board, they approved it, secured the rights, secured a venue and off we go.

While auditions aren't the beginning, they are a milestone and this time the beginning of my part in the adventure. My involvement with last summer's Wizard of Oz began at the first rehearsal, so this is a new and exciting thing for me. The director of this show, as if I need to even say so, is my great pal Jen. She is allowing me to try my hand at stage managing again, this time on my own. I'm really looking forward to the experience. This will be a very different show from Wizard; a cast of four rather than 50, minimal props, a small stage with next to no backstage area and at most a handful of crew rather than the 50-some we had backstage last summer. It's going to be a very different experience and I have no idea, in large part, what to expect. That starts with tonight. I don't know who will come (aside from a couple actors who have said they are) or what Jen has in mind for those who do try out. That is the best part, the not knowing. I love new experiences.