Getting on the road

I got my first "real" acting job. "Real" means, of course, "paid." I feel a little old to be going out on my first tour at this age, but I figure, what the hell, I'm gonna live to be at least 90-100 years old (if genetics are any indication, and barring, naturally, any unfortunate encounters with Mr. Death via a runaway bus or the like), so I might as well do it now while I still don't have children.

So, being my father's son, I started doing research - what do you take on a national tour? I'm going to be away from home for 4 months, what will I need? How many outfits do you realistically need? What about books? What about eating on the road? How about fitness? How do you keep your mental attitude straight? What about relationships - how do my wife and I stay connected? And you know what I found? Not a damnned thing.

As I said, I am my father's son. I figure anything worth knowing can be learned from a book, or from somebody showing you how. Since the internet is coming up dry, I suppose I'm going to have to talk to some of my friends who've done tours and figure out what they have to say. This is difficult for me, because I always feel inferior asking anybody's advice, like I somehow owe them. But, fuck it. If I'm going to have a good experience doing this, I'll just have to bite the bullet and feel stupid.

So, the story so far: I got laid off my job about 4 months ago. I've been acting in shows almost continually since last November, so I figured I'd go out on some auditions while I had the time, see if I could maybe earn some money in this business. I did very well on an audition for a national tour that does adaptations of short stories for students, and I booked the job. They've given me a tentative date for going out of Aug. 10, which is just about 3 weeks away. Not much time, especially since my better half is heading to Ireland this week. I rely on her pretty heavily to keep me organized and think of the practical stuff that I have a tendency to flake out on. Here's hoping I can pull it together and figure out what I'm doing, since I'll be on tour through December. I've never traveled much, and I'm looking forward to it, you bet, but I'm also a little (a lot) nervous.

I've been sweating the departure date - they've been sort of slow getting their act together to let me know when I'm leaving. The woman working the admin position is a real dear, though, and she's been trying her best to keep me informed, even when she doesn't have much to tell me.

What I'm hoping to accomplish with this blog is:

(a) to leave some sort of record where people can check out what's going on with me while I'm away and,
(b) to create a resource for people who're going out on tour, so they can see what it's like.

It's entirely possible that I won't be able to do anything of the kind - I may get too busy, or not be in places where there's internet access. But that's my goal - to write at least once a week to recap the week with my thoughts about the tour, the shows, the road, the loneliness (cue "Forever Yours" by Journey. Thanks.), the experience with the company, etc. So here's hoping. Thanks for reading.