I’m back!! Both to the blog and back home 🙂 Zack’s tour is over and it took a couple of weeks to find the house, graduate the oldest from high school, and catch up on late appointments etc… I know some of you were missing the blog, which is surreal to me, so thank you for your patience.
This week I’m going to talk about several different miscellaneous things I picked up during this adventure. None of them really go together in a nice theme, but they are important enough to mention, so bare with me if this seems a little tangential. They are random things, traditions or expectations, that come with your child performing that I would have found helpful to at least have had on my radar before we embarked on the journey. Here they are in no particular order….if anyone knows of any others that I am missing or perhaps have already forgotten, please feel free to contribute in comments.
There are a lot of different occasions for gifts. There are opening night gifts. These are not only for when an individual cast member joins a company as a replacement, but also happens when an entire production opens. There are several tours currently casting kids’ roles to either start on a new tour or for replacements as kids outgrow their roles i.e./ Finding Neverland, The King & I, and Annie. When Zack joined his tour as a replacement I was shocked by the gift giving that took place. To me, coming from a larger family where we try to minimize gifting, it was overwhelming! The gift of going on was really enough but you can’t fight tradition. As we integrated into the cast, spending time together in the laundromats, etc, we noted that they all seemed to have a number of items with the name of the tour emblazoned on them. There were draw string knapsacks, laundry bags, water bottles, pencil cases, hoodies, etc…Apparently on the original opening night they had all exchanged gifts and apparently this is tradition….who knew??
There are also “happy trails” gifts. This happens when someone performs for the last time with the production. The tour Zack was on also had a very touching “happy trails” ceremony which was actually quite sweet but very emotional. I was not prepared for all the tears after each goodbye.
There are many websites from which you can order these novelties but I noticed there was almost a “dibs” factor on ideas so things weren’t duplicated. If you’re like me and a little less creative then I’d suggest getting a jump on this!! A couple of the girls on Zack’s tour even bought wooden Jenga sets and had each cast member autograph a piece and pen a memory that they shared on them as a very meaningful keepsake. This level of creativity definitely escapes me!!
Another expectation that I wasn’t aware of was the tipping of the dressers. No…this is not some strange city game mimicking cow tipping. There are actually people called dressers involved with the cast. They are locals in each city (or in the city if not a tour) who are hired specifically to assist the cast with the management, donning , and doffing of their costumes. In community theater Zack was always expected to be able to orchestrate his own hair, make up, and costumes, getting help only with a quick change and generally from his fellow cast mates. Typically on our tour, in each city
there was one boy dresser and two girl dressers. It is traditional to tip the dresser at the end of the stay in each city. Zack LOVED these people! They were kind, attentive, and seemed to go out of their way to make the kids feel at home. People generally tipped $10-$15/week on tour. I know there are also dressers on Broadway and that it is traditional to tip them as well but I’m not sure how much or how often as we have not yet had the Broadway experience ourselves. Zack particularly enjoyed writing each of them a personal note to go with the tip, and he’s not typically a kid who enjoys reading and writing, so they were definitely special to him.
A cast with several children may also have a plan to handle birthdays. If you find yourself involved in one of these casts and there isn’t a birthday plan I would volunteer to coordinate one if I were you. On our tour each child would contribute $5 the week prior to a birthday and the parent coordinator would shop for a gift card for the birthday boy/girl that would be of particular interest to him/her. They also bought a card for all the kids to sign. This practice made sure that no one was ever forgotten and that everyone got the same or similar recognition.
Another tradition on our tour was something called “Onesie Wednesday’s”. Not sure if this is a common tradition or just one that our tour did, but these little things the cast did helped to foster some continuity despite their worlds constantly changing. This meant a lot particularly to the kids who were in swing nation. These kids work super hard often performing in 2, 3, or even 4 roles but unless someone was sick or on vacation they only performed 3 or maybe 4 times/week. When we’d get into a new city Tuesday’s would be preview night, Wednesday’s would be publicity or “opening” night, and the swing kids would rarely perform until Thursday. “Onesie Wednesday’s” gave them their own special tradition they would have to open a new city and I will say they got pretty darn creative with those onesies and the other kids who were performing were pretty darn jealous of those onesies!! I will also say that onesies are NOT the easiest thing to find for a tween! I think Zack finally had one for the last two weeks of the tour.
One final miscellaneous item is show “swag”. Man do these kids like their “swag”. T-shirts, pajama pants, hoodies, tour jackets, onesies, all with the name of the show on them and often with their name and the name of their role on the chest. We were very lucky to have one mom who was willing to take “swag” on and occasionally coordinate orders including the personalization etc…If you have kids who want swag then see if there is one parent who is willing to coordinate. It allows everyone to be included, the kids get the exact same items, and there tends to be a discount with larger orders.
I will mention that another surprise to me was the “super fans”. There are some very passionate fans of these shows and sometimes they will cross a line in terms of personal space and general social appropriateness. This doesn’t happen often but it does happen and it tended to happen more if we were in a city for 2-3 weeks or in a couple of one week cities closer together. During these stays we would put the swag away for a bit. It just became too common for the kids to be stopped for pictures and autographs disrupting field trips and interrupting some already very tight meal breaks attracting a lot of public attention. I wasn’t prepared for all of this and my advice is to close the window on social media keeping it all very private and if not private then vague. Sadly there are some very scary individuals out there.
I hope to be better with the blog now that we are settled back home. If you have any questions or topics you are interested in then please let me know and we can tackle them together. Until next time 🙂