Oh Waterbury, you shouldn't have..

After some serious procrastination, I am starting this blog to document my travels as I tour the country with the national tour of South Pacific, based on the Lincoln Center production. I am thrilled to be part of this beautiful production, and equally thrilled to be seeing the country. I suspect I will grow very familiar with hotel rooms, travel size toiletries, airport security, Dunkin Donuts, my bus seat, and the frightening lack of meatless menu items at chain restaurants. Our tour is very fortunate to have a lot of sit-downs, so I hope to get as much out of our time in these cities as possible. So here we go..

We rehearsed in Times Square at The New 42nd Street Studios for two and half weeks before hitting the road. By far the most beautiful space I've ever worked in (and let's be honest, will probably work in for a while). During this time I was also packing up my entire life for 9 month. I feel like I learned something about myself in my packing process: I have too many possessions. After dumping two trash bags and two trips to the thrift store, I was successfully able to fit my life into two suitcases, with the rest under my bed in the top of my closet.


Our first stop was the bustling metropolis that is Waterbury, CT. I might as well say now that our production company prohibits us from publicly saying negative things about the cities we visit (fair enough), so let's just say that Waterbury has seen better times. It was clearly once a lovely city (I believe the center of the brass industry), but it seems that the way the welfare system was set up really took its toll on local business.  I'd look up coffee shops and restaurants and go there only to discover empty storefronts. A lot of them. We still did manage to find a few gems, including the John Bale Book Company, a used book store and cafe (the only place in town with soy milk..and chill employees). On our last night we found the Crossroad Cantina and were kicking ourselves for not finding it earlier. Decent Tex-Mex and a slew of margaritas and speciality drinks (served in mason jars!).  Fun Waterbury Fact: Waterbury was once the home of Holy Land USA, representing a mini Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a huge tourist attraction in the 60s. We had hoped to to go over to see the abandoned site, but the sight of the 50-foot cross in the distance was enough.

We teched for a week and did four previews in the beautiful Palace. A recently renovated theatre, we were probably bit spoiled with huge dressing rooms, a huge green room and clean bathrooms and braced ourselves for what theaters we may be dealing with later.

One thing that is going to prove to be difficult on the road will be eating well. The only grocery store within walking distance was a Saves A Lot, a desert of off-brand processed foods, my personal nightmare. As fortune would have it, my Uncle Larry works across the street from our hotel and lent me his car for a morning, so I was able to escape to a downtown Waterbury to a proper breakfast and to Targetto stock up on Lara and Luna bars.

Tomorrow we travel to Boston! We will be continuing out rehearsals in Boston, so we won't have quite as much down-time as we'd hoped, but I plan on spending my mornings (and late nights) getting my fill of Boston life.