Post-Gala & Pre-Trip

HEY HEY HEY!

So last weekend was the 2008 California Shakespeare Theatre Gala: Gateway to India. It was absolutely INSANE! We arrived at the Rotunda building in Oakland at 9AM on Saturday morning. We sorta just hung out for the first half hour. While Paul Doyle and I indulged in some delicious Odwalla Orange Juice (props to Liz for food that day) Beth Sandefur (Gala Queen) had a rundown of the day's events. That's when the heavy lifting began and to be honest, I still had a good time. It was really hard work but it was still with really fun people who are all putting in their time to raise some money for theatre. It was cool.
The BEST part of it, though, was Winkie. Allow me to explain: The Rotunda wasn't allowing us to use the regular elevators to load things up to the second floor, so we needed to use the freight elevator. It looked like this inside except bigger and more terrifying. Let me give you the rundown of events that take place when you take a ride on Winkie (our name for the frieght elevator).
1.) Open doors of death. (LOUD NOISES)
2.) Step inside and close doors of death and cage of terror.
3.) The brakes attatch to the elevator. (SCARIEST NOISE EVER)
4.) Then you ride either up or down, being able to see the walls move on both sides of you, which still makes really scary noises.
-If you're lucky, Winkie will make a piercingly loud screeching noise that reminds me of the revival of Sweeney Todd.
5.) OPPOSITE WALL OPENS UP INTO DOORS.
I swear you guys, it was the best part of being on Gala Crew. Paul and I literally rode it about twenty times either for sport or to do actual work.
So then baisically once everything was set up, we took a break. I took a nap in my car and then went back in my homecoming best to the gala! All of the decorations looked beautiful and it all came together. The event itself went by really fast (either because I was mentally asleep during it or because I was over caffinated) and after the party was done we started carrying heavy things again. Little by little the staff left, but there were a magic 6 that stayed to load everything into the truck. Jean-Paul Gressieux, Jessica Richards, Ian Evans, Paul Doyle, Beth Sandefur and I. After waiting for the tech guys to finish loading their stuff we finally loaded ours and we were out of there by a fresh 4AM.
Again, hard work but with fun people all for a good cause.

ABRUPT SUBJECT CHANGE:
Monday Cal Shakes is taking another trip down to Salinas! Jessica, Tara and I are being accompanied by Jon Moscone (Artistic Director), Stefanie Kalem, Octavio Solis and a few fabulous members of Word for Word Organization. It's going to be way fun and I'm excited to go back, it's a beautiful area. More on this later! Also: stay tuned for an official BLOG-OFF between Stefanie Kalem's Cal Shakes' Bull Pen Blog and me and my blog!

VIDEOoftheWEEK:


This is the brand new Broadway show In The Heights about the beauty of living in Washington Heights. How awesome does it look? Check it out here. I'm thinking that this might be the show to watch this season.

That's all for now!

Peace and Love,

Derek