new york

hey there, had a really good show tonight. good sized audience and they were very receptive and responsive. leaving in the morning for new jersey. turns out we have two shows there, so this time tomorrow i will be done in. then have a matinee on sunday in...delaware?... i think. oh well, doesn't matter - i just get on the bus, get off the bus, do the show, look for pizza and donuts, get on the bus, get off the bus,...............

queens

no, not those guys... i mean the city...that's where i am in new york. i think bayside is part of queens, ny.gonna be here 'til saturday morn. the ride here was fine. snowed pretty good in the mountains of pennsylvania. i went for a walk and bought some supplies. everything around here is written in english and chinese. and boy do all these people talk funny. they have new york accents mixed with other ethnic things. very interesting.

can you believe i'm in new york?

jeepers

........................the view from my hotel window...look closely.

stopped at a rest stop in new jersey - this design was on a hillside...i guess that's the shape of new jersey...it was made of little rocks...another sign said this rest stop would soon be closing permanently...

bloomsburg, pa.

okay.....another 12 hours on the bus. not fun. rode through indiana, ohio, and most of pennsylvania. i am on eastern time now. lots of toll booths today. whatever that means. have an easy day tomorrow. 3 hours to new york, then nothing until friday night's show.

merrillville, in. #2

well, the show went pretty well for me tonight. the theatre was big, but the crowd was small. that's okay. today's treat was breakfast at IHOP. yum. gotta get to sleep and be on the bus at 7:30.

merrillville, in. #1

hey, got on the bus in nebraska at 8:45 am.......got off the bus in indiana at 8:45 pm......

what a ride. ate dinner and went to bed, and am about to go to breakfast and do some shopping. will do the show here tonight and get on the bus at 7:30 am for an even longer ride to pennsylvania, which is just a stopover on the way to new york where we show on friday.

austin, mn. & columbus, ne.

hey you guys, the performances are going really well. we performed last night in an old-timey theatre in minnesota. i believe we had about 600 people there. it was a sell-out. this morning i woke up at 4:15 to get on the bus for a long drive to nebraska. we got here just in time to go to the theatre, because today was a matinee at 3:00. it was a big theatre and i don't know for sure, but there were at least that many today, probably more. it was pretty full. my voice survived the day and i am now happily resting at the hotel, watching one of my favorite christmas movies, "a christmas story"(the one about the red-ryder b-b gun...and the weird little brother named randy). and this made even better by my tummy full of deep dish pepperoni pizza and pepsi i had delivered to my room. it is indeed almost perfect.

there is no show tomorrow so we will ride the bus all day to indiana, and do the show there on tuesday. so i get an extra day of rest.

the bus rides are okay. not terrible , but it's rather bumpy. we stop every 2+ hours for potty breaks, and sometimes for quick meals unless we are on short time to get to the venue. usually the theatres feed us something when we arrive.

i guess i should tell you, because it is silly (and you all know me well), but at the first venue, and any others that have the facilities, i had my own dressing room with a special sign on the door... and yes, everyone else teases me about it terribly.

i am working on getting new pics to post.

the picture above is of a frozen pond next to a rest stop in north dakota.

grand forks, north dakota

hey, this will be short. we opened tonight in a beautiful theatre to an audience 0f 830 people. amazing. did a 45 minute telephone interview today with a reporter from new jersey. gotta be ready to go at 7:45 am. nighty-night.

 

"...and i sing for you, though you can't hear me, when i get through, and feel you near me..."

that's that

hey all, well there it is. no more show until we open in north dakota friday night. today went well. i'm one tired dude. had them drop me at the big store on the way home. got some groceries and a little pizza for dinner. then walked home in the SNOW. pretty...........coooold and pretty. gonna relax tomorrow, watch a parade on tv... they made me a reservation downtown for Thanksgiving dinner. will be some technicians, musicians and others there too, we that don't have any people here. so that'll be good. the picture lady got some really good shots - don't have the digital files yet. she gave me some prints she made and i copied them with my camera. maybe i'll have more soon.

toeses is roses

hey, it's late tuesday night. just got back from rehearsal. went in at 10:00 this morning. worked some stuff, then got ready for a tech-dress-rehearsal-through-thing. when we go in, we first must get our microphones on and go onstage for a sound check. everyone has a wireless microphone attached to their head somewhere. girls have it hidden in their wigs, guys put it over the ear and tape it in place, then there is a battery pack strapped to your body. i have 2 microphones for some reason, and they are attached to a pair of glasses that i wear, and that means 2 battery packs in a little holster thing worn under my clothes. so we go in and say some lines and sing a song for the sound man, then into costume and make-up and do the show.
then later, after a one hour break, we did it all again, this time with a small invited audience watching. it went pretty well. still having some technical difficulties. near the end of the first run, i smashed my big toe pretty bad. i wear cloth slippers mostly, and that made it worse. it's black and blue and red. OUCH.
tomorrow we do some scene work and fixing things and then do another preview for an audience.
a lady was taking pictures today, don't know yet how to get ahold of them, but will try.

OTD

hey there, relaxing in my hotel room today. have the day off. yesterday we ran the show twice, with a dinner break in between. they both went well. got through almost unscathed. got all my lines in and right. need to work on a few song lyrics. i can stand still and sing, but some of my songs have lots of movement and detail stuff in them. if you could hear them, you would understand, and if you could see how intense the pace is. i also spend alot of time on the floor, hiding from scary ghosts or being emotional or because the director said fall on the floor.

i put some links on the show schedule page of my website for some of the theatres i will be at. if you are interested, you can see some of the cool places i get to perform.

tomorrow we begin "tech" work with the actual set and sound and special effects. so i will have new details to report. it will be very busy. on tuesday we will start early with tech stuff, then do a dress rehearsal, then do a "preview" that night, then another preview wednesday afternoon.

i have thanksgiving thursday off, and we leave on the bus friday morning for north dakota, to open the show there friday night.

chapped lips and more

hey all, sorry life's not terribly exciting. getting to where we mostly will "run" whole acts, or the whole show. supposed to have a little extra time off during the next few days. for me that means rest. not feeling up to par. voice still rough. have to push those high notes out. things will soon get more interesting, so i will have more to tell.

shhhhhhhhhhh !!!

hey there, sunday is a day off for us. i need it. yesterday took a toll. after singing rehearsal, we ran through act 2 and after a dinner break, ran through the whole show. when it was over my voice was gone. it went well. it is going to be a good show. so i'm resting my throat today, going over notes from yesterday, and still memorizing some lines and lyrics. and to celebrate being here a week, did my laundry (yuck) and had a PersonalPanPepperoniPizza (yum). oh, and some oreos... so we've blocked the whole show, which means we know basically where to move and what to do at any given moment. now we will start going back through and being more specific and working on difficult parts and working on character details. everything has to be done this week. next week will be tech rehearsals and dress rehearsals - there is a lot of tech in this, lots of special effects which we can't really prepare for 'til we get there. so we get as ready as we can, then we have to adapt it to set pieces, props, lights, sounds, costume changes, and such.

tour schedule

hello all, very busy day, lots of talking and singing...i am tired, my voice is tired. a week ago i was on a plane flying here, and two weeks from right now i will be onstage in nebraska for opening night. i have updated the show tour schedule on my website. they say it is complete now, for those who might get the chance to attend. here is a link to that page: http://www.randykeiththompson.com/Current_Upcoming_Shows/current_upcoming_shows.html

out to lunch

hey, pretty good day, worked on act two (ghost of Christmas present), and songs of act two, and other stuff. had a food break about 3:30. three of us walked up the street a ways, there's not much around the rehearsal space, went to a little "cafe", and i ate a $9.00 bowl of macaroni and cheese.

it was reeeeeeeally good macaroni and cheese.

act one

busy long day. did some dancing and singing catch-up today and then we ran act one tonight, straight through, more or less, to get a sense of continuity. some parts were pretty good, some were pretty bad. my first song is difficult, and it was a mess, but it got better from there. tomorrow begins work on act two. got two pics as you see, and they have been taking more so i should have more soon.

spooky

hey, on a lunch break. going back soon. did first two ghosts this morning and danced a bit in the fezziwig scene...eeek! more blocking tonight and tomorrow along with singing and dancing. one of my co-horts has been taking pictures and is supposed to send me some. yesterday morn i walked over to the post office with snowflakes drifting around me...double-eeek!

brrrrr

hey - sorry i can't do this as much as i and you might hope. i will try to do better. worked late last night and preparing to go in today. so far so good, i am happy with it, mostly. have spent much time on singing and dancing. i only dance in one scene, and only one of my songs is with the whole cast, so while they rehearse all that, i work on lines, and work on my stuff separately, but today starts scene-blocking in earnest and that means me all the time. i leave the stage two times in the show and that is for quick costume changes and right back on. i will write more soon, and try to take a pic or two. special requests accepted...(or excepted, maybe). oh and by the way...
it's COLD here.

turbulance and looking for mr. cheerio

sorry i couldn't report last night, i was dead. took 2 flights to get here, flew from oklahoma city to dallas, then from dallas to minneapolis. 30 minutes into the flight from dallas we flew over oklahoma city.........very silly. by the time i got a shuttle to the hotel and settled in it was after midnight. went for a walk in the brisk 40 degree morning, looking for mr. cheerio and his friends. no luck. went to first rehearsal, met most of the rest of the cast, and did some singing. i got to leave a bit early 'cause they were working on group things and most of my singing is singular. that gave me a chance to go searching again, and with the advice of a local, found the spot, and bought mr. cheerio and his friends milk and sugar and pepsi and ho-ho's and peanut butter and...

my faaaaaaaaaaaavorite part so far is - upon exiting the retail complex, i glanced over and glimpsed the words...."PIZZA HUT" ........ahhh, deep dish pepperoni...

well, here i go. i'm not a blogging kind of guy, and i don't know how interesting this will be, but a couple of my friends suggested it. i decided to do the "lists of things" on the side here - songs i like and favorite movies. i will add more to these lists as i go along. you can listen to the songs if you click on them. also, you can send a comment to me from these posts by clicking the "comments" at the bottom, but your comments will not be seen on here without my approval. so it'll be like sending me an email. nobody will see it unless i want to post it.
tomorrow i fly to minneapolis, and rehearsals start saturday afternoon. i've been studying my lines and music. it seems to be coming along well. i need to put a link on here to a list of venues. there's one on my website, but it needs to be updated. i will do that as i find out more info. got my sweaters and long-johns packed. i will soon post a picture of me in my long-johns...

...you wish........

well, wish me luck... it'll be an adventure.