William B. Bell Auditorium
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Knoxville was a great encouragement to all of us. One of our cast members had returned from their quarantine, and that was wonderful! Today would mark the return of the other cast member, and they would both be back in the show today in Augusta. That's great!
What's not great is a 6am bus call. Ever since we stopped at that same tollway plaza two times (and almost a third) on the Illinois/Indiana border, I happily took over planning where we'd stop for breaks. However, with the early morning bus call this particular day, I asked our tour manager to pick a place to stop as I would like to rest. Well, for reasons I still don't know, we didn't end up stopping at all.
It's a 5-hour drive from Knoxville to Augusta. Our bus driver took a route that I can't explain (not only because I was trying to rest, but also because I wasn't paying attention even when I was awake), and it wasn't the route detailed on Google Maps. Our bus driver uses a Garmin GPS device because it has lots of options for him to use, and that's all fine. We went through some very windy roads--not a highway. But again, for whatever reason, we didn't stop at all. Not for a bathroom break (there is a bathroom on the bus), not to stretch, and not for lunch. Nothing.
We got to the theater with about 30 minutes to spare. Was that to be our lunch time? Fortunately, I had leftovers from the day before; but many did not.
Augusta isn't a booming and active city, and though all the people were very nice, there simply weren't close options for people to get food. Also, because our two cast members were jumping back into the show, we were going to have a bit of rehearsal to smooth things over. In addition to that, one of the regular cast members was feeling fatigue/exhaustion, so they went to urgent care, and the person who had to fill in for him had never done the role before. So that required extra rehearsal as well. Nothing bad--just challenges that a normal show would face. Except that we're tired and hungry and haven't had a chance to eat. That's not good, and not fair.
A nice older lady was selling homemade BBQ sandwiches and brownies and cupcakes in the lobby of the theater. I bought a couple brownies and they were delicious. Some of the cast was able to get some food from the lobby as well. We made it through our 2pm show without any problems, and thankfully had the rest of the day to rest.
The space is not a theater, it's an auditorium. It was built in 1940 and renovated in 1988, it is named after a former Mayor of Augusta, and it has 2,727 seats. The nearby James Brown Arena seats 8,000.
In that thirty minutes we had, I did take a walk through a bit of the town.
I am sure the crowd enjoyed it...I'm sure they did. It's just...they were just about as opposite the Knoxville crowd as possible. I probably wouldn't have noticed at all if not for the fact that we'd just come from Knoxville. Like I said, I do think they enjoyed it--our show is adorable and fast moving and colorful and well-done. There's nothing to dislike. Remember, actors feed off the audience's energy, and it's always nice when we can feel that from the crowd.
That night a few of us walked to a nearby restaurant, named Groucho's Deli. It was simple and delightful. I had a ham sandwich; simple and delightful.
Auburn, AL is next!
1 comment:
Hi, Jason, this is robin, Waneta's friend in Westminster. After Waneta, Nancy, and I saw Elf a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to share with you how happy the audience was during the performance of a Christmas play and how in the spirit everybody was after the play. I thought at the time that you too are doing this all over the country for people! It's really a great thing!
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