The Official Salvage Vanguard Theater Blog

Hurrah! Another Neulander now graces the planet Earth. Please join us in welcoming Scarlett Amanda Neulander who joined the party on Sept. 29th.

Mom and Board Chair Sarah is doing well. Artistic Director Jason is doing well. Judging from the picture above, Big Sister Piper is also doing well.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Way to procreate! Welcome, Scarlett. Welcome.

Buzz took all of these. Buzz is a mad man. He is constantly taking pictures. Like, you’ll be walking along and Buzz will just have his camera out taking pictures 360 degrees. He takes pictures of dust. He takes pictures of signs that have telephone numbers that look like dining room hours. He. Just. Takes. Pictures. Here’s some from the road. Whoo! Carbondale! Whoo! Glen Ellyn!

All photos are to be credited to the one and only Buzz Moran. Seen here.

Let’s start off with the food, shall we? Overall, the food we ate on the road was, you know, average to above average. My personal favorite meal was in Carbondale when we hit this place called the Chicago Grill. It was decorated in mauves and ‘beige pink’ (according to LB) but the food was just faaaaaaaantastic. After the show we went to this restaurant that had world food and Graham said they had some of the best sweet potatoes he’d had. Wow. But we also had some really shitty food. I think that Waffle House in MO wins the worst food on the trip award. Look at this:

This is the salad that Graham ordered. Look at it! Look at it! It’s all brown and slimy and half frozen. Oh. Jesus. It’s just so horrible to even think about possibly consuming. Boo. Yuck. Gross. Needless to say, Graham did not eat it.

These are the cheesy grits. Basically, they just poked a square of cheese into the center of the grits. Now, I know. It’s Waffle House. It’s not going to be a **** reviewed restaurant. But can you at least make the attempt of mixing the cheese square into the grits, or at the very least putting the cheese square on the side. For some reason, it just being half-assed poked in there makes me feel uncomfortable.

You know what else frightens me? This sign that was posted at the Waffle House:

If you can’t read it, just know that the best part is when it tells the cooks to ‘count there meat.’ Words we can all live by. I’m going to count mine right now.

The hotel we stayed in the first time smelled like cat piss. Especially this hallway. You would walk down it and your eyes would water. Sometimes people would make popcorn in their rooms and that smell would linger in the hall with the cat piss odor. It was difficult not to vomit.

I fulfilled a childhood dream of riding the suitcase merry-go-round. I jumped off before some stranger tried to claim me.

Needless to say, there was no drinking while we were on tour.

None whatsoever.

None.

Not. At. All.

No. There was not a drop taken. Sometimes people play football in the rain in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart completely sober. It happens. I’ve seeeeeen it.

What the hell is that on your head, Shannon?

This picture just frightens me.

And perhaps the most artful picture of the bunch…

LB walks down a long hallway.

We had 1028 people in the audience and over eleventy billion butterflies in the stomach. In the meanwhile, an awesome photographer named Mark Rutowski was documenting our momentous moment. Here’s a few choice pics. Pictures from the Carbondale and Glen Ellyn fun coming soon. Promise.

Hilary and Laura getting some pre-show iPod action going on.

Higs and Werzner getting some pre-show agent talk going on. “I said no grapes in my fruit cup, Frank. JEEEEEZUS.”

Buzz and Hilary getting some pre-show hugging going on.

LB getting some pre-show Lee powdering action.

A non-shiny LB leads the audience through the miracle of Radio Silence.

A bird flies over head and wonders which head is most appealing.

The hug was just the warm up for this incredible acrobatic move.

Ah, the action! It’s so intense.

I think this should be on Shannon’s next Christmas card.

And this one should be on my next Christmas card. Well, that’s figured out.

Thanks to an unbelievable turnout by an incredible audience, the Hogg show was something else! Nearly 1000 people showed up to cheer and applaud, to say “one” one too many times, to laugh at all the right moments, and to send us on to our national tour.

The cast was elated when the whole thing was over. And deservedly so. They were AWESOME! Laura told me that the show was the highlight of her musical career. One of our visiting producers told Lee that she gave one of the best performances she had ever seen. The PAC peeps were the nicest, most generous hosts you could ask for. In short, it was an awesome evening.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out and made the show such a success!

Next stop: Carbondale, Ill. on Sept. 22, and Glen Ellyn, Ill. on September 24.

There were TWO bags of beef jerky in the green room. And a box of cashews. Three types of cheese and some organic crackers. Some Odawalla was sitting in an cooler. Fruit of various varieties. Coffee. Tea. Lemon.

Holy Shit.

Craft services? For real? Like, they get you stuff for doing a show? Holy crap. When Jason asked us 9 months ago what we would require in our dressing rooms, I said beef jerky. It’s good. It’s beef. It’s jerky. And here it was- nine months later, sitting in a small room backstage at the Hogg Auditorium.

Holy Shit.

I think that I’ve been doing a really great job of just not thinking about it. Of not thinking about how it’s going to feel to stand up in front of 800+ people and perform. Last night, during tech, I realized that everything changes when you are in a venue that large. I mean, we are used to doing this show at The Off Center or at The Blue. The booth would be where I looked when talking to Timmy. The bathrooms would be my visual reference when LB’s characters talked. The AC vents to the right would serve as spaceships landing, tall robots talking, etc. You can’t do that in the Hogg. You can’t even see the booth, let alone the bathrooms. Instead, you’re directing your focus at box seats, at mezzanines, at properly marked fire exit signs in the very far back corner of this very large space.

Holy Shit.

800. That’s tickets that are officially out. Some are comps. Most are paid. They predict that we’ll have a bunch of walk-ups on top of that.

Holy Shit.

I’ve still not absorbed it completely. Tonight I know I’m going to be popping a couple of Tylenol PMs because the brain has the ability to keep me up at night asking questions that I won’t know the answers to, repeating lines in my head (even though, technically, the show is a super-staged reading), freaking out about the improv sections of the show. (What if they shout out Margaret Thatcher? What kind of voice would I do for Margaret Thatcher?)

Holy Shit.

It’s TOMORROW. We’ve been talking about it for so long, planning for it so intensly, anticipating it with so much enthusiasm… and tomorrow it happens.

HOLY SHIT.