From Rehearsal Camp to the Road

After twenty days of grueling rehearsals, injuries and technical difficulties (and a lot of fun), the 2004 Celebration Iowa cast is on the road and touring Iowa.

The last day of camp was our dress rehearsal. We spent all morning working in our respective crews in order to get the parking lot outside of our dorm ready to perform on. I am on tent crew. We're in charge of putting up tents to change in, checking in and Fabreezing all the costumes and taking care of all the props and shoes. We also have set-spike crew, band set up, sound crew, and truck crew. When our rather rocky dress rehearsal was over, we spent a little under two hours loading everything on a 26-foot Ryder truck.

At 8:30 Friday morning we were on the road to Eldora. Despite technical difficulties with our head set mikes and a certain Toreador splitting the back seam of his tight black pants, things went well for our first show. After the show and truck-load (now down to 56 minutes), I went to a host family's house with Shelby Sievers, our very talented assistant vocal director. The next morning we had pancakes at the surprisingly interesting Eldora Farm Museum. Then it was back on the bus and off to Storm Lake.

Bus rides are one of the best parts of tour. Usually everybody sleeps to catch up from the night before, but we stay up long enough to tell host family stories over the mike and have a bus auction of everything left at our site from the night before. My bus partner, Drew, is a self -described handsome and laid-back guy whose graceful back flips off the high dive gave him the nickname Pocahontas. We sleep well and have fun sprawling out in he very last five seats of our Windstar charter bus.
Between our crews, bus rides and the "party pod" at our dorm, we have become a big family. Nick, my tall, dark, and handsome dance partner from Glenwood, is so funny and one of my favorite people to hang out with. We all get along so well that we already have plans for a reunion and camp out at Nick's seven days after we leave each other

We're scheduled for Davenport on Sunday, July 18, in the Petersen Pavilion in Le Clare Park at 7 p.m. Our Davenport show is always one of the best ones so make sure you don't miss it! I'm so excited to perform for my hometown and I expect a big crowd! It's a great show so come on out (okay, maybe I'm a little biased).