Sunday, June 17, 2007

Week Two Continued... the Rest of Week Two

Avast! Ian here, continuing the story of my sea-based adventures. I’m kind of behind in my recounting, so I’m going to pick up the pace this week, and tell you all about our first week at sea. Don't forget, you can click on all these pictures to see larger versions).

I told you all about the ship, and our first night. Well, after leaving New York we set sail south, towards the Caribbean. Except we didn’t really take much in, given that we had two shows to rehearse for in a matter of days. By the time we got on the ship we were looking pretty good, given that most of us (myself included) had shown up in Chicago with our lines memorized and ready to go. We each only had two scripted scenes to get down, with a handful of short blackouts as well. Our first rehearsal on the ship was in the large Stardust Theatre, and we worked for a bout 6 hours straight. After rehearsal we had a nice 5-course dinner at one of the shipboard restaurants, Windows. It has enormous 2-storey windows that look out the aft of the ship.


The crazy part about this cruise is that it’s all-inclusive (minus booze), so you don’t actually pay to eat in these restaurants. There are several others onboard, a steakhouse, a sushi bar, a French bistro and such. After that we explored around some more, and Derek and I discovered the decorative captain’s wheel that they have set up (presumably, so that tourists like us can take pictures like this).




Our first stop on the cruise was in King’s Warf, Bermuda. As you can see, it’s quite the beautiful port with a rich, British military history.




And I celebrated by... staying on board the ship all day. Our crazy schedule up to that point had finally caught up to me, so while everyone else was exploring off-ship, I slept in, swa and the largely tourist-free pool, and relaxed in the hot tub. Meh, we’ll be back. That afternoon though, our travels took us straight into the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. The sea was clear when we left port, but literally as soon as we got out to sea we encountered this fog:


No ghost pirates though. Sorry Kris.

The first show that we checked out on the cruise was “Standing Room Only”, a Broadway Musical Revue show put on by the Spirit’s resident dance company. The show was very well done, though there’s only so much old-timey Broadway and Andrew Lloyd Webber that I can take. The night after that though... wow. Has anyone reading this ever heard of Jeff Trachta? He was billed as a “celebrity entertainer” on the ship, and was flown in all the way from Las Vegas. He did a one-man show, and we caught the late one. The show opened with a video montage of various TV personalities, all talking about Jeff Trachta. Except all the TV clips were from about 1991. The job of the video was basically to remind people, “hey, even though you don’t remember him, this guy used to be kind of famous”. Apparently he was on the soap opera “Bold and the Beautiful” playing a character named “Thorne”. After the video montage, Trachta’s live show began. In it he sang, danced, and did random impressions, all while being accompanied by a video screen where he would play different characters singing backup for himself (all pre-recorded). I will say this, he did one of the best Archie and Edith Bunker impersonations I’ve ever heard. Other than that, his show as one of the cheesiest, silliest, cruise-shippiest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life. But the closer...

Earlier in the week, Derek was joking about how we should end our Second City show with a rousing rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American”, in an effort to appeal to a more “American Tourist friendly” cruise ship market. His version would be complete with waving flags, shotgun blasts, and a laser bald-eagle which would screech over our heads. We joked about this for a while, and forgot about it. But lo and behold... Jeff Trachta’s show ended with that exact song. We nearly all burst out laughing in the middle of the theater. But Derek had skipped the show to do laundry. Here’s a picture of us, all crowded into mine and Derek’s room, excitedly telling him about what he had missed:


The next day was spent at sea, but more importantly was spent in our final rehearsals for our show. We worked on a new bit for the show that we all contributed to, based on Amanda’s prior experience working on cruise ships. Amanda played an overly cheerful cruise ship staffer, and she led our tourists in the “electric slide”, and various other dances. Go satire! The bit fit nicely in the show, and we went into our first two shows feeling well-prepared. Here’s a picture of us backstage, about to go on:


Damn, I look good in a suit. I mean, we all look good. But mostly me.

I won’t bore you all with the details, but the first show went well and the second show went great. We had huge crowds for both shows, and got some really good notes from Matt between sets. After the show we all got changed, and headed upstairs for a crew party that was going on. At first I thought it was a nice gesture for them to have a party on our opening night, but then I found out it was completely unrelated. Ah well, free booze is free booze. We also met some of the dancers and singers.


The girl on the left is Hazel, a really sweet girl from London, England who has absolutely no attention span. She will literally approach you to talk, and then zone out and walk away when you are mid-sentence (as Derek and I have repeatedly experienced). The girl on the right is Dayna, a really cool and friendly chick from the mid-west. Her and I chatted about theatre schools for a while, but we were all eventually drowned out by the unbelievably loud music that was playing. Nice folks though.

The next day we docked in Tortola (one of the British Virgin Islands), and all set out on a post-opening beach trip. We grabbed a cab in the town, and were driven across the island (only about 15 minutes, but over an entire mountain). This is the town we docked in (you can see that we’re heading up the mountain in the picture):


And this is a shot of the beach were taken to:


We hung out for a while, and were eventually joined by Matt:


This is my sexy beach picture. I’m thinking of writing a series of Harlequin Romance novels, and using this as the first cover:


The beach was absolutely the most beautiful one I had ever been to in my life. The water was crystal clear, as warm as bathwater, and the beach wasn’t at all crowded. We ended up chatting with a 2 couples from the boat who were part of a Long Island firefighter’s group trip. They really enjoyed the show the night before, and were quite friendly. And had cool, “Loong Ih-lund” accents.

Here’s a picture I took of Derek, where you can’t see any houses and it looks like he’s on “LOST”:


We’re both fans. Soon we left the beach, and got another ride back. This one though was more of a truck with benches in the back, so we drove all the way up a hill with no seatbealts, practically hanging out the back of the jeep. Later, I wrote some e-mails on the top deck and watched a beautiful Tortola sunset.


The next morning, we woke up in beautiful St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands. I know I sound like a braggy-asshole, but this is the view I had while I ate my breakfast waffles that morning:


(Don’t worry, karma bit me in the ass by giving me a massive sunburn from the beach. Its 11 days later and my shoulders are STILL peeling.)

Here are some pictures of the town we landed in. We had all gotten our fill of sun the previous day, so we took in some shops instead:




Here are some really cool birds that we saw. In the upper left corner you can see one dive-bombing into the water to catch fish:


We were also quite impressed by the St. Thomas Wendy’s. We didn’t go that day – don’t want to burn out all the tourist attractions at once:


Another cool thing we saw was a cute girl standing on the sidewalk, handing out free rum-based ice drinks. After that I went to apply for citizenship.


We also went into a cool pirate museum, where they had a bunch of old authentic sword and marine stuff. Except it wasn’t a museum and was actually a store. So they kicked me out for taking pictures.




After walking the town for a while and buying very little, we took a cab back to the ship. This is a weird picture of Michelle and Katy from that trip. I’m not sure why I’m including it.



That night we all took it easy, and had a cast night in. Luckily the previous Second City cast aboard the Norwegian Spirit (including Carly Jones and Darryl Hinds, two very cool people from Toronto, and Homer Marrs, an absolute prince of a man) had left behind several board games. Including Trivial Pursuit, 80’s Edition.


The game started well. Except for two facts that we had not counted on. A) Marco was a teenager during the 80’s, and thusly remembers the 80's, and b) the game is rigged. Seriously, Matt and I were on a team, and kept getting incredibly hard questions about forgotten TV series and the inner workings of the Iran-Contra scandal. Team Amanda and Derek would get questions like “Name this Michael Jackson song title: Billie Jean is ___ my Lover”.


(okay, maybe their questions weren’t that easy. But as Matt’s picture can attest, it felt that way)

After that night we spent another day at sea, and did our first two “Scriptless” improv shows, which went great. The crowds loved them, and we were quite pleased with ourselves. And that brings me to the end of this blog entry. Holy shit, that was a long entry. I’ll try to cover less ground next time. Until then, have fun on the mainland.



ps. Go back to my previous posts to see new pictures that I added. Cheers!

3 Comments:

At 11:37 PM, Blogger acurrie said...

Hey, if you berth at the Dockyards next time in Bermuda ask where the Rum Cake Factory is... They have free samples, though that probably won't impress you all-inclusive cruise ship-types ;-)

Keep up the blogging!

 
At 1:08 AM, Blogger Darren Brewster said...

Mental Note: Next time I am in a naval battle (and there are many) get the guy in the blue shirt on my side.

 
At 12:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had no idea you were having this big giant adventure! Apparently I haven't been keeping in contact with my Halifax theatre peeps while Riley's in Korea.
I'll be sure to check your blog more often.

 

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