Tale #40: The World’s Cheapest Carnival

Behaviors are learned as much as they are inherited. When you learn behaviors from the same person you inherited them from, they become cemented in your core.

Newsies was not the first massive set we’ve purchased and therefore had to haul back to VACT from some far away land. Oh no.

One chilly spring night in 2016, Mama Terry and I were enjoying one of our many late dinners at It’s Time (formerly Monte’s) in Verona.

Coming up on the end of my first year back in Wisconsin post NYU, I was becoming more and more involved with the organization. I was in the middle of directing Bring It On the Musical and heading into Mary Poppins as a performer and assistant choreographer.

I loved to scour the theatrical licensing websites to see which new shows would be available soon for us to perform. I would even sign up for the email alerts to let me know when certain titles would become available.

The Tony Award-winning, Elton John smash musical, Billy Elliot had just become available for amateur theaters from Music Theatre International. I told my mom and we both instantly knew we were going to do it. So we sat there, eating our french fries, and hemmed and hawed the way people do when they know for certain they are going to do something but feel the need to go through pros and cons just to cover their bases.

Now we were going to be the first in our immediate area to perform Billy Elliot, but we weren’t going to be the first amateur group in Wisconsin. That honor went to La Crosse Community Theatre who performed their production in May of 2016.

For research, a group of us drove to La Crosse to see their production. We fell in love with their set which had been designed by Dillon McArdle. It had all of the elements we were looking for. It was period appropriate, it was functional…

it was big!

The set was massive. Large flying wall pieces, a large house unit that rotated, pillars, etc. It was a beast; right on par with the Newsies monstrosity I brought home from Illinois.

We worked out a price with the organization and a plan to pick up the set after their final performance.

Now, my mom and I were co-directing Billy Elliot so the decision was equally ours to purchase the set for our production. However, seeing as I was only twenty-two at the time, I didn’t have the clout I did in 2019. I didn’t have the clout needed to essentially authorize making such a large purchase for a production.

Mama Terry however, had plenty of clout. Check her resume. The woman was dripping with clout.

Now Mama Terry was strategic. She knew that when you regularly direct each season, you can’t always have a budget buster of a show. You don’t get the massive set each time, you don’t get to rent jaw-dropping costumes for every musical, and more importantly, you don’t get to ask the tech staff to run circles for you every show.

You do that and people either don’t want to work with you or they do it begrudgingly, curse you under their breath, and tell you to go away all the time. I personally was not above bribing with caffeine, sweets, and alcohol.

Anyways, Mama Terry knew we wanted this big set, so she was going to make it happen.

Memorial Day of 2016 was the last day of their performances. My Mom assembled a team of family/friends that included my dad, Uncle Charlie, Uncle Louis, and family friends Charlie and Jenni. With two trailers, we drove up to La Crosse to get our colossal set.

Their set strike was not as efficient of a process as we would have all preferred.

My family craves efficiency. We need it. If a process isn’t done in the most efficient way possible, it physically irks us.

So there we were in La Crosse waiting semi-patiently for a set. The set designer was adamant that certain pieces had to stay completely assembled otherwise they would be unable to be rebuilt. My Uncle Charlie was having none of this as he knew we could not drive down the highway with a sixteen-foot wide set piece laying on the trailer. He grabbed a hand saw and split the sucker right down the middle and assured my mom and I he’d fix it later.

Fast-forward to finally being done (much later than we’d hoped to be) with the set and props fully loaded. Every inch of trailer space was covered. Pieces were stacked on top of each other held tight with the strongest straps. It was an impressive, and slightly nerve wracking, sight to see.

We were starving by this point. We stopped at a Perkins we had passed on the way there. Perkins, being open twenty-four hours, was all we really could find for a decent meal in the small towns with it being so late at night.

After our meal, we slapped our cheeks awake and got back in the trucks. I was in the second vehicle so I could stare directly at the set on the trailer in front of me. So many pieces in awful shades of brown, green, and yellow all collected together. (The color scheme is perfect for Billy Elliot it’s just not very aesthetically pleasing in the real world.)

As I stared ahead, I said to my mom, “we look like the world’s cheapest carnival” as we drove down the highway at 11pm at night. Stopping for gas was interesting as we weren’t sure the trailer would fit under the gas station overhang with the set stacked so tall.

Now, I’ve learned more from Mama Terry than I could ever fit in a singular blog post, however, there are two behaviors here that are important to highlight. There is the obvious comedic one of “like mother, like daughter” in finding massive sets to purchase and haul back to VACT for our elaborate productions. More importantly though is the second one: understand that it’s ok to ask for a lot as long as you are kind, respectful, and unbelievably appreciative of the people that help you get it. People are happy to help you but not if they don’t feel appreciated for doing so.

I can only hope that my immense appreciation for everything my family and the team at VACT has done for myself, my productions, and my career comes through fully.

You gotta show appreciation for people willing to haul your cheap ass Carnival four hours across the state. You just gotta.