New Adventures |

I’m going to push the boat out this week and try something radically different. I’m going to merge weeks two and three into one epic installment. The only reason I’m doing this is because of the curiosity and excitement of doing something new and nothing to do with the fact that as the first weeks diary went up slightly late I forgot about doing the second one till half way through the third week and had to figure out what I was going to do about it. Just so we are clear!

There’s always a dilemna when touring which is that by the end of the week you are pretty much ready to demolish your morning alarm the next time it goes off, yet you still want to get up to see the sights of whatever town you’re in whilst you can. For me this usually ends in a compromise of leaving the evil, taunting, luscious dream interrupting bleeping till past midday. I get up to find half the people have already gone off to find something interesting to do whilst the other half, recovering from the night before, still haven’t gotten up, so take advantage of being able to make my own plans. That first Monday off I went to visit the National History Museum (though I got there only 2 hours before closing as I went up the east side of Central Park instead of the west side), and discovered a new found respect for frogs when I came across one the size of a baby Hippo. It wasn’t alive of course, that would be absurd, it was just a model, but still I never knew frogs that big had ever existed! I ended the night with a visit to our local bar Hurley’s where a group of us spent some time with the now famous among the company barman for being such a cool bloke, “Steve”. One of the girls of the company (whose name I’ll not mention as she might castrate me if I do) one night turned to him and blitheley shouted out, “Have you got any nuts?!” Steve simply stood there, slowly raised one eyebrow and let his trousers fall to the ground around his ankles. You couldn’t write this stuff even if you tried!

We still had some press in the second week, though they came sparingly and mostly just to see other casts do the principle roles. For most of us I think this week was more enjoyable performing wise as we had relaxed into the venue a little more and had begun to get into the rhythm of the shows. I finally got to perform my other track by the end of the week, I hadn’t done it up until that point because until the first week was finished the show was being kept pretty much the same casting wise. There were one or two moments in act 2 where I slipped into my other track out of habit, I managed to catch myself both times before I did any obvious damage though I did once give my fellow dancers reason cringe in that, “Oh my god what’s he doing!” way before I got back onto the right track and they let out a sigh of relief.
We had a party held for us that week in a bar downtown by a wealthy fan. I heard afterwards that he was at one point the legal representative of Starbucks, so even though we ran up a tab close to 2000 dollars (I snuck a peak at the till display with a running total) it probably wasn’t much more than pocket money to him. Bizarrely there was one of the women who had worked in the wigs department on Edward Scissorhands in Sydney there as she was here on holiday! It’s a small world! Well no, actually I don’t like it when people use that phrase, because let’s face it it’s not really a small world is it? I mean, it’s circumference is 40,075.16 km. Try walking it singing “It’s a small world” as you’re mantra and soon I think you’d find the futility of the lyrics.

The following Monday I actually got up before midday (though it took me about half an hour of grumbling to get over it) to catch a group of people heading out to Brooklyn. We found a park underneath the Manhattan bridge which had some spectacular views of the financial district across the river, you could also see Lady Liberty off in the distance waving her green (no global warming pun intended) torch. It was great fun walking around the residential houses of the area as they were all getting ready for Halloween. A few had gone full out with the decorations and had put gravestones, skeletons and cobwebs all over their front porches into which we snuck to get out photos taken impersonating zombies. During the next week of performances some of the cast had as our company manager would say, “An exciting opportunity” when they were invited to a photo shoot for the magazine Vogue. Apparently one of the guys trousers had slipped down during part of the photo shoot so that he was stood there in his boxer shorts. He said they were low cut to begin with and that he hadn’t realised but I don’t know...

I hadn’t realised that security here was so strict even at the tourist attractions. At all the major museums and the Empire State Building you have to go through x-ray screening like at the airport. Which reminds me of something I had actually forgotten about which I found hilarious at the time. We have a dancer in the company called Anwar who looks like he could be Indian though he is actually Scottish, but as we came through American customs he was pulled over and asked to go over to “Area 3.” I didn’t know that the American customs were as cliched as they are on TV but I’m glad to see that they are living up to their reputation of randomly selecting people to be interviewed. They asked him where he was from and if he had ever been to the middle east, no to the latter and Dundee to the former, though they had no idea where Dundee was so he had to explain that it was in Scotland. They also asked if he had ever been to Pakistan, which he also hadn’t. But what if he had? The irony of course is that I’ve been to the middle east more times than he has, does that make me more of threat? Anyhoo, I found the whole situation ridiculously hilarious as I thought it was only the kind of thing that happened in shows like Family Guy.

We ended this week with a bang as we were invited to the “Cages aux Folles” Halloween party. It was great fun seeing everyone dress up in embarrassing costumes. Guests of Honour included: Batman, Peter Pan, Bad Alice, The Invisible Man, a jelly fish, four M+M’s, three scary clowns, two dead swans, and a dead partridge in that tree of death from Sleepy Hollow.

I don’t think many of us can believe that our last week in New York has actually arrived. It sounds a cliche but it has gone so quickly. I hope to go see the new Adams Family musical next Sunday evening as we don’t have a show that night. I’ll let you know if it’s worth dying over.

Yours in dance,

Jack Jones