After a year of life on the road with multipule locations, performances, workshops, tiffs, laughter, and starbucks giftcards it all came down to this: our final week. My final performance week was in Hunter, Nd but I still had one more week as a Tour Actor/Director in Hendricks, Mn. I think in all we couldn't have ended tour on a better note. In Hunter we had a wonderful cast and in Hendricks we had an AMAZING Contact. Our Contact found out that this was our last week on tour and she and her family went out of their way to make sure we had an awesome week.
We pull into Hendricks, Mn, a small town with a population of 713, and headed to the school to meet our Contact. She was there with two of her girls and one of their friends and instantly we knew this was going to be a good week. The youngest of her kids was there and she was SO excited for us to be there because this year she was finally old enough to be in the show. That's what we do, bring joy to little children everywhere. We're kind of a big deal. ha! We got a tour of the school and discussed the details of the week and then our Contact showed us where we would be staying that week and boy were we surprised. 
The town is super small and consisted of one main strip that had a restaurant, the post office, a knick knack store for gifts/ pharmacy and then the place where we stayed. Now this town doesn't have any hotels because well it's just so small but this one man (who happend to be friends with our Contact) travels to and from Hendricks for work and we stayed at his home away from home. It was this fully furnished MODERN apartment and it was SO cool. My room had two twin beds and what kind of way would it be for the end of tour if I didn't put them together? A NO FUN way thats what! We got settled in and then we met up with our Contact and the rest of her family for dinner. They took us out for pizza and ice-cream and we had so much fun. At dinner we swapped all kinds of stories of life on tour whilst Loretta convinced the youngest daughter that she could "time travel" and then afterwards the family gave us a bit of a tour of the town. Remember this was a very small town so needless to say the tour was very short. We then headed back to our place and rested up for our last Monday.
Our Mondays usually ran the same; we have an audition and maybe even a workshop, not this week. This week Loretta and I did something a little different, we had to speak at a Kiwanis meeting. Now I had never been to one of these much less ever heard of one. The closest thing I could associate it with was like a Boosters or a Moose Lodge Club like what we have here in Lynchburg. From what I understand these people have meetings and donate money to things in the community to help imrove things like the local playground or whatever. Well since they were bringing in Missoula Children's Theatre our Contact asked us to prepare a little skit or something to encourage them to keep supporting "The Arts". So we got up there and performed the beginning part of our Actor's Tools workshop and I think it went over well. :) 
That afternoon we noticed a lot of little wooden trolls and golf carts all over the place. The trolls was apparently a Norweigen thing and most of the town was made of Norweigens so that makes sense. The golf carts was because the people of Hendricks had a little golf club not too far away and because the town was so small everyone just drove their golf carts everywhere instead of their cars. Ha go figure. We later held auditions which to be honest didn't go as smooth as we would have liked but I think we handle the situation pretty well and cast the kids in the right roles. After that we finished up our last Monday on a good note because the rehearsals went really well. YEA! Tuesday we got to sleep in a little and then headed to the school for our last Tuesday rehearsal. Monday and Tuesday? Check! No more Knights/Squire and Fab Four/Terrific Ten rehearsals for this Gill. I knew Wednesday would be the killer for me...Wednesday we had all three of our workshops which meant we finished up tour with our favorite/most performed workshops which were Creative Dramatics and Improv. They both went... relatively well so thats good but what I wasn't looking forward to was that day's rehearsal. Wednesday is the day when I teach the Minis the show and I'll admit I was a little sad to say "Goodbye". I LOVE the Minis and I LOVE teaching the 5-7 year olds. Every week something they do makes me laugh. On this particular Wednesday we found out 5 minutes before that some of the kids had dropped out and that one had an "eye appointment" and couldn't come to rehearsal today. Well poo. Now I have to be the bad guy and tell the parent the next day, if the kid shows up, that little so and so can't be in the show anymore because it would be unfair to the other kids who showed up everyday for rehearsal and maybe if we had known this earlier we could've worked around it and blah blah blah. That speech is never fun but the parent usually understands because we mention this at the audition and in the parent letter we send home on Monday. Something told me that this week would be different and booooooy was I right.
Anyway, I've learned to work with what I got and what kids were there did such a great job! They picked up on the songs and lines really well. I did feel a little terrible/thought it was funny because there was this one little girl who kept crying at EVERYTHING! She cried because she had to stand next to a boy, she was nervous to be infront of other people, the music was too loud, she had to pee, the dragon sound scared her etc. Bless her heart. I've dealt with cryers before but usually you let them get a drink of water and sit and watch how much fun the other kids are having and then they wanna jump right in. Not this little girl! I was convinced that I was gonna cry that day but that didn't happen because I was laughing at how extreme this little girl was. Hahaha! Like I said I felt terrible that she was so upset but at the same time there was no win so it made me laugh in my heart. I'm teyyible.
Loretta really wanted to go for a drive to Iowa so she could cross it off her list of states visited and I'm always up for an adventure. The problem was we only could really go to the border and get lunch and head back before rehearsal, not much time for gallavanting. However, on the border of Iowa was a Casino. Wooohooo! It was decided, we were going and I wanted to live dangerously. How dangerously? Three dollars worth at the Slots hahaha! We ate lunch and then found Loretta a T-shirt to prove that she was there. It made a fun afternoon indeed. We then went to rehearsal and this was the day the kids were supposed to be off off book so rehearsal was a little bit rough with lines but what made it worse was the Mom I had to give the whole speech too about her son not being in the show. It did NOT go over well. This lady went NUTS and I learned the true definition of a "Stage Mom". All I will say is that she and her 7 year old made the rest of the week interesting. If you want the FULL story just ask me and I'll be glad to fill you in. :)
Friday started off well, our Contact let Loretta and I drive around town in their golf cart. I've never driven a golf cart before so I was REALLY excited. After we toured the town in a matter of 15 minutes we wanted to see how many golf carts we could find parked in town or in people's driveways. Our final count was 27 and I don't think we counted ours soooo 28. HA! Rehearsal went better than Thursday's and Stage Mom sat queitly on the gym bleachers. Some of the kids had really been struggling with their lines and on this day we saw a HUGE improvement which was really awesome since the show was the next day.
The day of the show our Contact worked out for us to go horseback riding but because it was raining that morning we couldn't go. :( Although it made us feel like our Contact really cared because she went out of her way once again for us. :) We head to the school and start setting up lights before anyone showed up for the day and what happens? The power goes out and there is no emergency lights which meant we were in complete darkness. Oh dear. Just like a lot of things that week we just HAD to laugh it off. What would be a week of tour without SOME kind of disaster? A boring week. Haha! Thankfully the power came back on and we had our shows. The kids were a bit nervous so a few lines were dropped but Loretta covered really well and after the final show we packed everything in the truck.
The next morning we had to start our long trek back to Missoula for our Final Check-in. Our Contact and her family got up at 7:30 in the morning just so we could eat breakfast together and say a final Goodbye. You know you are loved when someone is willing to wake up that early for you and their still wearing their makeup from last night's show. It was a fun breakfast but sad at the same time. While on tour I've run across some very nice people and the some not so very nice but I feel its the not so nice people that make the kind hearted ones seem that much more wonderful. I honestly felt like our Contact and her family in Hendricks will always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you for taking us in and for treating us so kindly.-Jen
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