From Lisa – The Weird Things I Do for My Job

The Background: We leave for the Bhudoo tour in one week. As we prepare to pack everything– personal and production-related– and divide it up between the folks traveling, it’s clear we need a hard-shelled suitcase for the three ukuleles. No one in the company has one, so it needs to be purchased.

The Weird Thing: I went to Marshall’s with an empty uke box, both airline luggage dimensions, and a tape measure. In the process I had almost a dozen suitcases down testing if they fit three ukes and then measuring them (why are the measurements not clearly on the luggage label?!). Definitely received some looks, but ultimately this is not that weird of a thing to do… or maybe I’ve just done worse? 

In the name of art, I’ve gone into Home Depot and, in an aisle, put pieces of pvc together to make sure I could create a large enough circle with them that was the size of a human and could roll easily (cannot remember what show I did that for…); I’ve been asked, “What are you doing?” in a fairly accusatory tone, when I was in a higher end clothing store taking pictures of outfits (I like to walk around stores and get ideas first, whether it’s a full costume look or just checking out materials in arts & crafts stores before I attempt to create something, like the Bhudoo flower power holster); I’ve used the phrase: “This may be a weird question, but I work for a theatre and wondered if…” many times, most recently when I asked the pharmacist at CVS if I could have an empty pill bottle for a Bhudoo prop; I’ve bought multiple sizes and colors of a similar article of clothing because I wasn’t sure which would work best and then returned all but one, and I’ve also bought the same exact article of clothing in multiple sizes to fit each cast member (both of these were, on numerous occasions, for Follies).

Not to mention my “weird” online presence; Etsy still thinks I love large costume fish heads because I bought one almost two years ago for Follies and weekly sends me links to new fish heads to buy and related fishy items like scale leggings or fish jewelry. Amazon is very confused by my and Jp’s profile, which, after the Young Playwrights’ Festival and Bhudoo, ranges from costume sunflower heads to Hawaiian leis to a kids leprechaun costume to uke stands – the “featured recommendations” and “recently viewed items” are pretty hilarious to view.

We’ll be off in two foreign countries soon with the Bhudoo tour, so at least if I need to do any of these (or other) weird things overseas, chances are very slim I’ll ever run into the same people again!