(8) Last Weekend in DC

Thursday, October 2nd: Back in the Office for some more paperwork. Now that we’ve run the show a few times and things have been worked out, it’s time to update all the paperwork. I am responsible for paperwork concerning each venue as well as our production as well. For each venue, I have to call the Technical Director or Production Manager and talk to them about how large their venue is and how our show will fit into their theatre. I also get to play 20 questions with them. Those questions range from what their loading dock is like to what type of lighting and sound systems they have to whether any of our shows will be signed, American Sign Language, to making sure our load in and show times are set and that they will have the correct number of crew members for our show. As you can see, it’s a good 30-45 minutes on the phone hashing out all the details. Often times, they don’t have enough lights to hang our entire light plot. At that point I normally hand off some information to Eric, the Lighting Director, and he calls their head electrician to figure out all the details. That night Eric, Rudy (the Sound Supervisor) and I went over to David Paige’s for a chili dinner and to watch the VP debate. Boy was that an interesting debate to say the least. It was nice to have a home cooked meal before we really hit the road.

Friday, October 3rd: Eric and I went out to do more site seeing. We went immediately to the Capitol to get passes for the Capitol tour. After we got our passes for the 11:10 tour, we walked around the corner to the Supreme Court building. It was pretty awesome! Unfortunately, they do seminars in the court chambers when they aren’t hearing cases so we couldn’t go inside. The seminars were about an hour long and we didn’t want to wait for the next one. They have some great historical information about the differences in the Supreme Court as compared to who the Chief Justice was at the time. After we had our fill there we went back and tried to go into the Library of Congress, which is right next door. As we walked up the steps we notice the enormous line that stretched down the other side. We didn’t have time to wait so we went right to the Capitol tour. The capitol tour was a little disappointing. We were hoping to inside the actual Senate and Representative Chambers but they were debating the Bail Out Legislation so both houses were in session. You can go to your Senators or Representative and ask for a gallery pass but we didn’t have time. We are going to try to go when we are back in April at the end of the tour. I was wearing my SF Giants hat and was really hoping to “run into” Nancy Pelosi so I could say, “HEY NANCY! I’m from San Francisco! Can I have a Gallery Pass for today?” Boy that would have really made my day! Inside the Capitol is also the original Supreme Court Chambers which we walked through as well. After that we left and walked past the Newseum which is a new museum dedicated to the history of Journalism and also where “This Week with George Stephanopolis” is filmed. “This Week…” is my favorite Sunday morning news show. Outside the Newseum they have the front page of one major news paper from each state for that day. They also have a couple of international newpapers as well. We’re also planning on going into the Newseum in April when the tour is over. Finally, Eric and I walked up to Chinatown and had lunch. Then we headed back to the Kennedy Center to do yet another afternoons worth of work.

Saturday, October 4th: Today was similar to yesterday but without the tourist stuff. I got everything packed up and planned what I was would not be taking on tour with me. The afternoon was a lot of printing off paperwork so that I could work from the road without an internet connection. And tomorrow… WE’RE OFF ON THE ROAD!