The NextStage

The NextStage is the off-Broadway size theatre that is attached to the Geva Theatre in Rochester. I am enjoying this theatre very much. It is just the right size for my show and the audiences have been great.  We sold out on Saturday night and for  1:30 pm show on Sunday (a very odd time for a performance) we were at about 75%.  Next week is when we thought we would see the increase but it seems to already be building.  It is great to be back doing the show again.  I love to tell this story.

A production of "Sweeny Todd" is on the main stage.  Because our theaters are back to back I take an odd route to get from my dressing room to my backstage.  It is a series of doors, brick hallways and dimly lit stairways which over lap with passage ways to the main stage cross over and dressing rooms.  You can open a door or turn a corner and be face to face with the ghostly figure of a Victorian player who is making a quick change or cross over during Sweeny Todd.  Street winches, gentlemen with their throat's cut and cadaver-like apparitions waft down the hallways at any given time. I neither see them nor hear them except when I am going to or from my stage.  It fits my sense of the Gothic.  It is a truly haunted theater as I traverse the bowels of the old hallways, like living in the world of Disneyland's haunted house ride. A couple of nights it was me who scared the ghost as I rounded the corner and bumped into an actor who was not expecting me to be on the stair way. 

Wednesday I will make a return visit to the morning radio show of Brother Wease. He is the king of Rochester Radio and a great guy.  There was an immediate response of ticket sales last week when I was on his show.  He was there Sunday afternoon with his kids, and really seemed to love the show.  He wanted me to come back so we could talk about it on the air. He wants to really pump up the word for next week end.  I love radio people.

Stu Silver one of the writers of SOAP lives in Rochester and came to the show on Friday night. Great to see Stu again.  We will have time to catch up this week on a day off, when I don't have to make sure I don't over talk. He has been here a long time and seems to be one of the elders of the Arts of Rochester. This is a town that is rich in arts and supports every venue.  I think it is really an under appreciated, unknown jewel of New York state.  It did snow on the first day of spring, but it melted quickly and is warming up now. You would hardly know that dog sleds were needed recently.  They tell me that the lake effect snow is so specific that one part of the town could get a foot of snow and the other side none. Even in Rochester the rule of real estate is location, location, location.

I got a voice mail from the Wiz for opening night as well as a text message from Julia the PSM from the London production. This show has such a wonderful family of friends associated with it and continues to make more friends at each theatre. 

As you were,

Jay