We have so much time and so little to do!

Wait! Strike that— reverse it. We do have a significant amount of time— but still— lots to do!

Auditions—check. Cast—check. Scripts—check. Promotional Photos—check.

Set, costumes, practices, lights—well……………………………we’ll get to it. It was a brisk Thursday night—this past Thursday if we are being picky—when Matthew, Susanne, and I made a trip to cold storage. Cold Storage is one of the many areas that Cotton Hall stores used set pieces. We went in with a single flashlight in search of a tree. It wasn’t a real tree, mind you, but a rolling tree that was built for Swamp Gravy—then used again in Alice. The back of the tree is open, with interior shelves to hold props on stage.

We found the tree in a sea of wooden barnyard animals, defunct stage lights, and a mountain of wooden platforms. Luckily, the tree wasn’t trapped in the middle of all of it. We found it nicely pressed against the edge of Cotton Hall’s storage section. Getting it out of the building was no problem—roll it to the edge of the truck platform and flip it off! The tree is sturdy and that is the ONLY way we’ve found to get it out. Once we got the tree upright—we placed two wooden chickens on the shelves inside the tree.

The ground was sandy and the wheels began to sink…as expected. We ran into the same problem last summer. What else would we expect rolling a heavy tree down a sandy red drive way. Matthew was pushing the tree and I was pulling the front. Susanne was there—walking along beside. Then with a little jolt—to pull the wheels from the sand—the chicken decided to attack! It flew out of the shelf and pecked me—HARD—on the head. I did a little jumping jig, rubbing the huge lump on my head, while Susanne laughed like a banshee and Matthew asked what was going on. He missed the whole thing from behind the tree. Susanne tucked the wooden chicken under her arm, and the rolling was underway again. A second chicken, this one on a lower shelf, made a leap for my foot. Thankfully, I dodged that attack. Susanne tucked chicken number two away as well. Once we hit asphalt, the trip was breezy. I wheeled the tree up the hill, while Matthew and Susanne kept those chickens the heck away from me. We only passed a few people on the way up the road—which kind of defeated the purpose of retrieving the tree at night.

When we finally got the tree to the InterACT Building—it wouldn’t fit through the door.

Really?!?!?!?

It was one of those things I should’ve expected. It didn’t fit into the Cotton Hall doors last year! We had to open one of the large doors—you know, those huge red ones from the days when Cotton Hall was actually a place to store cotton. The InterACT Building has a garage door, but at that point, none of us wanted to deal with the tree anymore that night. We jettisoned it under the peanut jig beside the building. I decided if it was there the next day, it would be worth the trouble to get it inside. If it was gone—so be it. If someone wanted it bad enough and could move it without being seen or heard—they deserved that tree!

Friday Morning: The tree was still there. Shocker!