Seussical Week 12 - Final Show

Alright, we've made it to the final show of Seussical. This was on Sunday, September 20th. There are a lot of pictures so I wanted to make this it's own post. 

This was a matinee show so it started at 2:00. That meant we had to be at the theatre at 12:30. I slept in until like 11:00 so it felt like I was getting ready for the show almost as soon as I got up. 

When we got to the theatre it felt a little strange to be there in the day time. And we'd just finished the show 15 hours earlier so that felt weird too. 

Many people had gifts for cast members. There were cards from Danica and bookmarks from Jaclyn. Many of the kids had Dr Seuss books for people to sign. 

There were two main themes for this show. The first was PICTURES. Many people were going around taking pictures to capture the memories. We had plans to take pictures after the show of all the set panels that Charlotte and Lydia painted. And most everyone knew it was tradition to go outside and take group pictures during intermission. Also Carol was going around taking lots of pictures. 

Here's the one she took of my family. I'm glad she asked, I knew if I asked my kids to pose they would be like, "Mom, no!" But this was I was like, "Hey it's for Carol. Now smile."

And here is Carol and her husband Kelly as Mr and Mrs Mayor and Capri as their child Jojo. (Capri was clearly a girl, but the script had her as a boy and we couldn't change that. So things were a little gender fluid in this show.)

 This show was lovely. I can't remember anything super specific about it. I mostly just had a feeling of gratitude during the show. Gratitude that it was almost over, gratitude that it had been such a good experience, gratitude that I could do this with my girls.  

Oh wait, I do remember something specific. We were all SUPER SPARKLY. Someone had gemstones that we could put on our faces. Soon the whole cast had gemstones on. I put some on in the corners of my eyes to match the ones Andrea had on her face. 

When we were waiting in the wings to go on for the opening number me and Chance were joking that this was, "Seussical: Glitter Edition." or Seussical: The Last Sparkle. 

Here's a picture I took in the dressing room at some point. You can see my gem stones. I really liked my green dress, but by this point I was so sick of it. I never wanted to wear it again. 

Carol was taking a few pictures back stage. She took this picture of Mayzie in the tree before the twins pushed it on stage. This was always one of my favorite back stage moments so I was glad that Carol took a picture. I always thought Hannah looked like a queen up there. 

At intermission its tradition for the casts to run out to the alley behind the theatre and take pictures. This is only my second play so I was waiting for other people to kind of take the lead on that. But then I was like, "Nope, I'm making sure this happens."  So I told all the Whos we were going out for a picture. Here's our group picture. I love it so much. 

Many other people came out too and soon the whole cast was taking pictures. 

Here's Charlotte and Lydia with Rachel as the Cat in the Hat. 

Here are me and Veronica. 

Me and all my girls. 

I took this one of Little Lydia and Thing Lydia. It's so sticking cute. 

Lots of other groups were taking pictures. Here are some of the jungle citizens. We have the Sour Kangaroo and the Baby Kangaroo. They were played by a mom and daughter. Then another mom and daughter pair of two leopards. Then Kerri as a Poison Dart Frog. A lemer and Vald the Black Bottomed Eagle. Vlad was played by my friend Kasey. When she first got her big black cape she said, "Oh wow, this makes me feel powerful. I think I'll go take over eastern Europe now."

The bird girls were taking pictures to show off their beautiful tails. 

Their costumes were so pretty. 

From left to right we have Lara, Alyssa, Rachel, Hannah, Jaclyn, another Rachel, and Heather. 

Here are the main 5 bird girls. 

Someone thought it would be funny to have a picture of all the kids. Kids is a kind of fuzzy term for our cast. We certainly have a lot of "little kids," but then we have "tall kids" like Veronica and Lila. Veronica would turn 13 after the show and Lila had only turned 13 a few weeks before the show. Then we have the "teenage kids" like Charlotte, Lydia, Capri and surprisingly Lara. Lara was a bird girl so she was often lumped in with the adults, but she was only 16!  I knew she was in high school, but I'd assumed she was a Senior. Nope! And then we threw Jaclyn into the picture too because she's so short she looks like a kid. Colt was one of the last people in the picture. He turned to Jaclyn and asked, "What are you doing here?"

Here's Chance and Aeyden. They are getting married in October. They were so cute all through the show. They often entered on either side of the stage. So they would stand on either side of the stage and lip-synch songs to each other while they waited for their cue.  

Here's Brendan who played Horton and Capri who played Jojo. 

Tiana and Sage as the Kangaroo family. Tiana's daughter Dakota was the lemer. 

Here are our Wickersham Brother's Monkeys. Cameron and Lauren are standing. They are sisters. Peyton, Lila, and Lilly are on the bottom. 

Here are the Things with Jojo and the Cat in the Hat.

Here's Andrea with her kids Capri and Colt. In case you can't tell there were A LOT of families involved in this production. 

And here are me and Andrea. I can't believe our idea to do a play together with our daughters worked!!!!!


Intermission was only 15 minutes long so soon Danica was ushering us back into the building. 

Here are more pictures from Carol. This is Julie and her grand daughter Alice. Alice was probably the person I felt the saddest about saying goodbye too. She had been fun to talk to. I was like, "Alice, how do we keep in touch?"  She was only 11 and her mom wasn't into plays. Also she lives in Jerome. I really don't know if I'm ever going Alice again. 

And here are Emily and her daughter Sophie. This was Emily's first play with the Rep. It was fun to get to know her. 

Here's another back stage photo from Carol's camera. You can see the tree. That tree had done so well. 

And here is Rachel with her daughters Lydia and Claire. Claire was Cindy Lou Who. 

Here's Veronica goofing off with Claire in the dressing room. I said this picture makes Claire look like a hostage, but in reality she LOVED playing with Veronica. Claire had the amazing ability to tell Charlotte and Lydia apart. She also gave Veronica her play name. Every time I put Veronica's hair up in pigtails Claire would say, "Oh there's Little Susie."

The show ended and surprisingly I didn't cry during bows. But it was bittersweet to do bows one last time. When we all held hands for the bows I would hold Veronica's hand in my left hand and Little Lydia's hand in my right. I thought, "We'll never do this again. It's over."

Usually when the show is over we run out to the lobby. But on the last night they have us stay on stage and they read off the names of everyone who helped with the show. Laura came out and thanked so many people - including the whole "Illguth clan" for their help on the set. 

Then we did the run out to the lobby and thanked the audience as they left. My friend Amanda came with her twin girls and my friend Natalie came with her daughter. 

Brandon and Derrick had gone to church and then come to the Orpheum. They were ready to work! After the final show we take down everything and clean up everything. It's actually really tragic because it's like, "Here is this home you've loved for three weeks - We are tearing it all down NOW! Right in front of your eyes"  But then we have a party afterward and that takes away some of the sting. 

So Brandon and Derrick were there to take apart the set. But first Brandon took pictures so that we could have a record of what Charlotte and Lydia had painted. 

Here's Whoville.  

And the helicopter. I love that Derrick is in the cockpit. 

Here the Jungle of Nool.

The bathtub. 

And the cloverfield. 

I was technically part of the set crew, but I was really on the "clean up all the Illguth stuff" crew. I'd brought a laundry basket and the kids put all their stuff in there. Plus I made sure we had all our makeup and hair stuff. I made several trips to the car to get it all out of the theatre. 

I couldn't find my glasses case so I spent a long time going back through everything looking for my glasses. I could not find them. Finally, about 5 minutes before we left the theatre I found them in my purse. 

I turned in our costumes. Charlotte and Lydia had originally HATED their headbands and jumpers, but now they loved them. Andrea said they could keep the headbands. I talked to Laura about buying the jumpers from her. We agreed on a price and I was able to bring them home. The girls were so happy.

We were also able to buy Veronica's fish for $5. She was happy about that.  

Brandon and the kids and a few of the guys started taking things apart. Here they are working on the tree.  

Lydia put the nest on her head. We took the leaves home with us, but everything else went to the storage building. 

Brandon had brought in the Orpheum cake that Veronica and I made on Saturday. We'd put it in our freezer so it was nice and hard and so nothing had fallen off it while Brandon drove to the theatre. 

Andrea told me that when Colt saw the cake he staired at it for 10 minutes. He was like, "This is incredible!"  That made all the effort worth it. 

Archer, who often works in the sound booth, was impressed that it even had a sound booth in the back. 

I had to get something from Brandon's car and so I took this picture of the Orpheum does while I was out there. I love this second home. 

Brandon got all the stuff off the stage and half of it loaded up into the truck. By this point all the costumes and props were accounted for and the dressing rooms were clean so it was time to party! Everyone in the cast had brought in food so there were lots of things to eat. 

Derrick loaded up THREE plates. He had two plates for dinner foods like pizza, meatballs, and little smokies and one for desserts.  He then worked for a long time helping Brandon get the set pieces loaded and unloaded so he definitely needed all this food.  

Here we are sitting together. 

While we were eating we had our Jackie Awards Presentation. These are awards for fun things. 

My award was "Thing-a-ma-communicator." This was because I had the most kids in the play and because I was super good about keeping everyone in the loop. 

Charlotte and Lydia got "Thing 1 Thing 2 Thing Do" because, well because they did EVERYTHING.

And Veronica got "Nooooooooo" because she was so dramatic over the scene where Jojo supposedly dies. 

It was fun to hear all the awards the everyone got. Here are the twins during the ceremony. 

And Veronica. 

I went and sat by Brandon and put my head on his shoulder. It felt good to be celebrating this big thing that we'd been part of. 

When the award part was over it was Karaoke time. Brandon and Derrick took off to start taking the set pieces to the storage building. They would take two loads. 

Karaoke started with little kids so they could leave early if they got tired. Then some adults started going up. I wasn't interested in participating so I just watched. Same with my kids. 

It was so fun to be part of all this. I decided to take a picture just to remember it. I have so many good memories in this building. Shows I've seen, shows I've been in, weddings, parties, it's just a really special place. 

After a while we decided it was time to bow out. We waved to everyone as we left. Most of the cast I know I'll see again. But we'll never all do this show together again and that is sad. 

At home I washed out our makeup brushes. I'd been wanted to do that for at least a week so it felt good. 

Brandon came home, but he wasn't done yet. He needed to take Jared's truck back to his house. So we drove back to the Orpheum and got the truck. I drove the pilot and Brandon drove the truck. We dropped it off at Jared's house. (Jared was out of town for a funeral so that's why he wasn't there.) Then we drove home. 

And then we were done. Seussical was officially over. 

I want to end this with a song the twins added to our hype playlist. It's called Golden Days by Nerin. You can listen to it here. 

The lyrics sum up this experience so well.  

Sun on my face, nowhere to be
Old friends calling out to me
Windows down, singing loud
Like we figured something out

People dancing by the park
Music floating through the dark
Every little thing just fits
Nights like this are hard to miss

No holding on
Just moving with it

These are the golden days
The kind we're gonna miss someday
Laughing hard, staying out late
Living like the world can't wait
Every little thing feels right
Like we got nowhere else tonight
These are the golden days
Wish they could always stay

Warm air drifting through the trees
Talking easy in the breeze
Nothing special, nothing planned
Still, the best nights always land

Someone shouting from across
Running barefoot through the grass
Looking 'round and taking in
Everything we're standing in

No counting time
No thinking twice

These are the golden days
The kind we're gonna miss someday
Laughing hard, staying out late
Living like the world can't wait
Every little thing feels right
Like we got nowhere else tonight
These are the golden days
Wish they could always stay

Thanks for reading

Seussical Week 12 - three more shows (but not the final one)

Okay, let's get one thing clear from the beginning. This post is NOT going to cover our final show on Sunday September 20th. There are so many pictures and memories and I just feel overwhelmed trying to write about the whole week AND that final show. So that's just going to have to be it's own post. 

This post will cover from Monday September 14 to Saturday September 19th.  

On Monday after work I went to Barnes and Nobel and bought a copy of The Cat in the Hat. Somehow we were missing that book. And the girls wanted everyone in the cast to sign that book. By the end of the show we had a lot of books going around getting signed. Jaclyn started it when she had everyone sign Yertle the Turtle because that's where Gertude's story is.

Then we brought in our book. Rachel also brought in Cat in the Hat for people to sign for her girls. She was the Cat and her girls had been Whos. Capri had Horton Hears a Who and Colt has The Lorax. Lila had Sneeches and other stories.  

We had a show on that Monday night. Audiences had been a little slim for that show so the powers that be decided to have a free ticket code for close family members. And since I didn't have any close family in Twin Falls I decided to let my friend Megan have the code. Megan had asked a few days earlier if there were any discount codes for the shows. She was just looking for something like 30% off or something. But she ended up with 100% off. 

She came with her daughter Addy who is Charlotte and Lydia's age and with her son Ty who is between Derrick and Veronica's ages. I'm so glad they were able to see the show. 

Some of the young women leaders came too. Jenny, Kori, and Amanda came. They also brought chocolate flowers. 

Megan took these pictures of us in the lobby. 

I need to know what kind of phone she has, because my phone never takes pictures this good in that lighting. 

The Monday show was actually really nice because we'd had a break on Sunday and then just had to do one show and then we had a break again. So it was just kind of one beautiful singular performance. 

The biggest thing that was different was that we were missing two cast members. One of the Wickershams, Lauren, had a medical emergency so she wasn't there. And one of the Whos, Aeyden, had a possible concussion. So she was there, but not performing. 

Since Aeyden wasn't on stage I was in a slightly different spot for the Christmas on Who scene. And that meant I could see Veronica's face better when she came on stage as a Cadet to announce Jojo's supposed death. I'd heard that Veronica had a big lip quiver and pretty convincing fake crying in this scene. But I hadn't actually seen it. We'll I saw it this time. It was so funny. I had to look away before I started laughing.  

I have two other little memories from this show. One was Colt as the Lorax. At the end of the first song we all dance off the stage at different times. I turned a little bit and noticed that Colt was waving at the audience as he took his time getting off the stage. For some reason it just warmed my heart. 

The other memory is from the dressing room after the show. Hannah who plays Mazyie has two huge feathers glued to her face. She came down and sang Gertrude's line from the song, "Take it off, getting it out, I wont do it AGAIN!" As she pulled the feathers off. It was funny. 

Tuesday was a pretty normal day. I spent the morning finalizing my list of people serving on my election board. Normally the county takes care of this, but this year they are changing it so the Chief Judges build their own board. I'm sort of okay with this, but it's also a lot of work that I don't really get paid for. It's a lot of work for me especially since I've been temporarily moved to a new precinct this year. So I'm building a board for a precinct that I don't even have a connection to. 

But I got the board built and sent off the paperwork to the county. 

In the afternoon I went to work at Aspen Grove and got a few things done. But Availity - the website I use to look up a lot of insurance stuff - was down. So there was a point where I couldn't really do anything else. So I went home and took a nap. 

That afternoon there was a dinosaur exhibit at the library. I took Derrick even though we suspected it might be geared toward little kids. It was geared toward little kids and I suspected that Derrick knew more about dinosaurs than the mobile museum volunteers.  But I think it was still worth our time. Derrick and I haven't had a lot of time together lately so it was good for us to go to this together. 

At 5:30 Veronica had her first Ovation theatre class for the Addams Family Musical. The class actually started the Thursday before, but she had to miss it because she had a Seussical Show. So this was the first time she went there. Capri is also in that class. Both of them are in the ensemble. 

The class ended at 7:00. I was going to pick her up. But then I realized Brandon had a meeting at 6:30 at the set shop next to the Ovation classroom. So Brandon just picked her up. Brandon is stepping into a role as the Set coordinator for all the Rep shows. He'll help Directors and their set teams know what things are available to use for their shows. He was meeting with Crayson who is the set builder for Ovation. Crayson and Brandon were figuring out the best ways to cooperate and to not steal each other's set pieces. 

I watered my yard in the evening. Mostly I just moved the sprinkler around and then sat on the porch and caught up on a series that is spoofing America's Next Top Model. It's all done by one guy dressing up at the models and the judges and putting it together with green screen. It's simultaneously super low budget and the most captivating thing I've watched in a while. 

On Wednesday I spent the morning updating my blog and then was at work by 12:00 for our monthly team meeting. Then I worked some more, but Availity was still down so I didn't get everything done that I wanted to get done. 

That night none of the kids had young men or young women activities. All the youth were going on a Campout that weekend so they didn't have activities. We couldn't go because of Seussical. 

So we just kind of stayed home and did nothing. Which was nice because we had been and would be so busy. 

On Thursday I went grocery shopping in the morning. And then went to work in the afternoon. 

Veronica had Addams family rehearsal again that evening. When that was over we went to Walmart to buy supplies for the Orpheum Cake Part 2 we wanted to make for the cast party. 

And all that sounds great, but really Thursday was kind of a crappy day for me. Honestly, it just felt like I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I just felt off all day. I was kind of feeling bored, but I didn't want to start anything because I still had three more days of Seussical. 

I ended up just giving up on everything around 8:15. I ate half a giant candy bar, read my book, and was asleep by 9:30. I felt so much better the next day. 

The kids were out of school on Friday so I didn't have to worry about getting them off to school in the morning. I went into work around 8:00 and stayed until about 11:30. Before Seussical started I'd imagined that I'd take one or two vacation days during the shows run. Instead I think I've worked MORE these past few weeks than normal. 

Brandon's parents were coming up for the show. The kids texted me that they were at the house. So I finished up what I was doing and came home. We had a nice time visiting.

Veronica and I started baking the cakes for the Orpheum cake. 

Derrick shows Steve lots of dinosaur things. 

Brandon came home early and had fun talking with his parents. 

The girls and I all took showers and started getting ready for the show. Charlotte and Lydia shows Jacque how they curl each others hair. She looked at all the products that Hillary had recommended. 

At 5:15 the girls and I left to go get ready at the theatre. The dressing room seemed extra crazy that night. The kids under 13 seemed extra loud. One of the twins said, "I know you are practicing for the opera, but can you do it somewhere else?"

I found myself really having to talk myself into my dress. Earlier in the run I'd been like, "I love this dress, I'm going to ask Laura if I can rent it for Christmas." By this point I was like, "I never want to wear this dress ever again."

This Friday show had the most memorable moment of the whole run. We were all singing and dancing to the opening number when the lights didn't come on at the right time. Some of the more experienced cast members immediately knew what it was. The computer that ran the lights and sound was starting to crash. I had no idea. I just thought we had a lighting problem. Soon we were singing in the dark. And a few seconds later the music stopped. 

Rachel tried to cover with a quick line. But there really was no saving the song. We all just kind of stood there awkwardly. Nate came on over the microphone and said that we were on a 5 minute hold. Danica appeared backstage and motioned for us to come off stage and wait in the wings. 

Rachel Stokes told me that this has never happened during a show. It will sometimes happen before a show or during intermission, but this was a first for during a show. 

Everything got reset and a few minutes later we were on stage again and restarted the show. It had been an embarrassing start, but we got back in the groove and everything was fine during the rest of the show. 

During the second act we Whos don't have much to do for like 20 minutes. I had fun talking with Andrea during that time. It's been so fun to be in a show with her. 

EVERYONE has been talking about their next shows. Les Mis had announced auditions for late October so a lot of people were talking about if they would do that show or not. Hunchback of Notre Dame had also been announced for August so there was talk about that too. Andrea is thinking about doing a show with the Twin Falls Theatre Collective and I'm looking at one with Dilatants. It was fun to hear everyone's plans for the future. 

The show ended and it was great to see Steve and Jacque and Brandon after the show. Brandon loves to go around and talk with every cast member. He knows most of the cast and so he loves to congratulate them all. 

Back at home we had ice cream with Steve and Jacque and stayed up talking about the show. They had loved it all. They also gave us all flowers. 

On Saturday morning we slept in. Then I did a huge pile of dishes with Brandon's help. Veronica and I spent most of the day working on the cake. 

This cake was a lot of work, but it felt easy because we'd already figured out everything when we made the cake the year before. Also we weren't doing anything with modeling chocolate this time so that took off a lot of work. 

Here's the final result. 

It's just so fun and cute!

Veronica made sure to create specific characters like Thing 1 and Thing 2.

She also added some little fish to represent the fish scene.

I love how cute the little teddy grahams are. 

Steve and Jacque are celebrating their 51st Wedding anniversary next month. I wanted them to see the other musical happening in the area so I bought them tickets to Come From Away at the Twin Falls Theatre Company in Filer as an anniversary present. They had matinee tickets. So around 1:30 Brandon took them out to Filer. The theatre out there doesn't look like a theatre and we knew they would be a little confused. So Brandon had them follow him out there and helped make sure they found it okay. 

They LOVED it. When it was over they texted me and Brandon and told us how good it had been. I'm so glad they saw it. They didn't come back to our house because by the time the musical was over we were all leaving the house. 

Brandon went to a wedding for our friends Brett and Shea. It started at 5:00. Some of our other friends went to the wedding in their Seussical make up. But I wasn't that brave. Also it was just too stressful in my brain to worry about the wedding and the show. So Brandon's just went to represent us. Brett was very proud of the brisket they were serving and and told me all about it earlier. So I asked Brandon to bring some home to me. He did. 

The show was fun, but we were all starting to wear down. I was not looking forward to it ending, but I was also kind of looking forward to it ending. I said, "Can we just all hang out, but not have to do our make up?"

We were all REALLY comfortable in the dressing room. It felt like we were all sharing things all over the place. The Sour Kangaroo had forgot her tights and I let her borrow the tans ones I'd brought incase Charlotte and Lydia busted through their other tights. Veronica forgot her socks and Karri gave her a spare pair. One girl needed a pad and I had one in my bag of "just in case" things. 

Here I am in my make up 

The memorable thing about Saturday was that Lauren got a concussion. She fell right before she went on stage and bonked her head. One of the beads on her headband dug into her head and cut her so she was bleeding pretty bad. But once she figured out it was from a bead she wasn't as worried. 

One of the concession workers brought out a big container of ice and Lauren sat with the ice on her head for a while. She did make it out for Monkey Around in the first Act. But she wasn't feeling well so she went home for the second Act. 

One of the fun things about shows is the amount of lip synching that goes on in the wings. Veronica had quite an elaborate one that she did every night to the Biggest Blame Fool. I loved watching her and I wanted to try to get a video of it. So on Saturday night I recorded her. I'm not sure if she even knew I had my phone on me. The video is great and you can also see Charlotte and Lydia doing their little dances. You can also hear me on the backup singing parts. I feel like the phone didn't get the tone right on that. 

Charlotte and Lydia also had a cute little lipsych to All for You near the end of Act II. They asked me to record it. I wasn't sure if this one would work as well since I watched it from across the stage, but I'm really happy with how this worked out. 

When we did bows this night I was like, "Oh no, it's the second to last night. This is really sad. Am I going to cry during this part tomorrow?"

When the show was over we were all really happy to come home. Charlotte had started a big craft project and I was looking forward to reading my Watergate book. I can't remember if Lydia and Veronica had specific plans, but they were also looking forward to going home. 

So when Andrea texted me later and invited us to come over to her house for Smores I was like, "We'd love to, but not this time."  Also I was feeling pretty peopled out after having my inlaws at my house for Friday and Saturday. I just really wanted quiet. 

And that gets us to Sunday and our last show. I'll tell you all about it in my next post.