The set is struck, the Jake twins have parted ways and Dolly’s not coming down those stairs again anytime soon

It was a fun show, but I’m greatly looking forward to washing and putting away all my knee braces and compression sleeves and getting a haircut and going back to the gym without worrying that I’ll get a show-compromising injury. LET THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE-ING BEGIN!

Closing show!

It’s my last opportunity to sport my jaunty cap (twice!) and race up and down the Story And A Half Sub Basement Spiral Staircase Of Certain Unstoppable Grisly And Disfiguring Death.

My eyes are up HERE, Miss Money

It’s easier to be in a show if you know your lines

9 to 5 has gone the way of the steno pool and the perma-press shirt

We had an intense rehearsal process and we more than met the challenges of this intensely challenging show. I’m sorry we had just three performances—especially given the rockstar performances of our leads—but I think we’re all proud of what we did and thrilled to have gotten to do it. Now all that’s left is to boil my sopping wet show shirts and scrape the last stubborn chunks of dried spirit gum out of my skin and hair. And—duh—to post all of my photos.

My selfie arm wasn’t long enough to capture this, but we’re all posing on the bed that makes multiple appearances under multiple people in the show. Our cast was ... um ... very close.

Here’s a list of every set piece I moved and every prop I needed and every location I needed to be in every scene and for every song in the show. I made it as a cheat sheet during rehearsals, but the show had an insane amount of stuff to remember and the list became an oft-consulted security blanket and even though it got sweaty and smudged to the point of unreadableness it never left my person for the run of the show.

RANDOM PIX ONSTAGE AND OFF:

The good thing about doing a show set in an office is you have tons of prop pencils you can use to erase all your markings in your libretto when you’re done. The official count: I wrote 2.5 erasers of notes.

It's not a 1979 musical without a '70s-themed closing-night party. That I totally forgot to dress for.

We have an emergency elf hat magnetic-clipped to our upstage-right flylines scaffolding

Do YOU have an emergency elf hat magnetic-clipped to YOUR upstage-right flylines scaffolding? No. No, you do NOT have an emergency elf hat magnetic-clipped to your upstage-right flylines scaffolding. We totally win.

When you’re in a show but you’re not onstage much and you clearly spend too much time on your phone when you’re waiting backstage and your damn phone narcs on you

Stage-right flylines. Theatre Cedar Rapids. Elf the Musical. Finale.

Fun fact:

There’s a camera in the Theatre Cedar Rapids pit that’s aimed directly at the face—and the very cold, black soul—of Benjamin the music director as he conducts Elf The Musical. He thinks it’s there so we backstage singers can follow him when we sing in the stage-left backstage-singer place.

But it’s really there so we can see if he ever picks his nose.

Elf The Musical preset time!

It looks like I’m wearing my Doug The Christmas Cop hat in this artfully composed photographic portrait, but I’m not! Because it’s PRESET!

And that, my uncultured friends, is the magic of theater!

Learnings from an early morning Elf the Musical performance for area grade-schoolers:

1. They’re too cool to laugh at Ted Talks jokes.
2. Gay-coworker jokes are totally bougie and last-year to them.
3. It is easy to identify and know to avoid the one mild swear word in the script in the nanosecond between when it’s said and when the kids file it away mentally to repeat ad nauseam on the bus on the way back to school.

Secrets of #ElfTheMusical theater magic, Lesson 1:

The Greenway Press employees who are “sitting in their cubes” are actually “squatting behind some wooden things on wheels and taking FOREVER to notice that I’m trying to take their picture across the stage as I squat behind some other wooden things on wheels.”

Let the record show that I was guns-at-the-ready for their retaliatory photography:

The more you know (sparkly shooting star!)

The citizens of New York, ready to welcome Buddy the Elf to the mean urban streets

But with rhythmic dance and soaring melody.

#ElfTheMusical!

Crew View!

It’s our first run-through in front of our Elf crew ... and the first time Doug the Christmas Cop—who is basically the show’s Baroness Elsa Elberfeld character and therefore the emotional backbone of the narrative—takes a backstage selfie in his the-police-who-investigate-crime-but-not-the-district-attorneys-who-prosecute-the-offenders millinery:

Our final “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” is playing out onstage as we speak

“Why Can’t Jake Put Down His Phone and Watch?” is playing out backstage right as I sit with Eliza Doolittle and Mrs. Higgins.

See if you can spot the interesting feature in the massive dressing room behind me

I’ll give you a hint: IT’S TOTALLY DEVOID OF BUSTLING, DELIGHTFUL MY FAIR LADY CASTMEMBERS.

And do you know WHY the massive dressing room behind me is totally devoid of bustling, delightful My Fair Lady castmembers? I’ll give you a hint: BECAUSE I OBVIOUSLY HAVEN’T MASTERED RUDIMENTARY TIME-TELLING SKILLS AND I GOT HERE A WHOLE FREAKING HOUR EARLY.

Which means at least that I can secretly try on all the Ascot dresses in privacy.

We’re all smartly bedecked in our finery and right on time for the Embassy Ball waltz at the top of Act II

I’m just 27 hours late posting the pictures.

YOU HAVE ONE MORE CHANCE TO SEE THESE AND THE REST OF OUR CAST OF RIDICULOUSLY TALENTED PEOPLE IN MY FAIR LADY.

Theater irony:

We’re all Henry Higgins’ servants, BUT WE HAVE PEOPLE WHO DRESS US.

Backstage at My Fair Lady!

So each week our costumes get washed and pressed and hung in our dressing areas—except our socks, which get paired and balled and put in this Communal Bin Of Delightful-Smelling Clean Socks for us to dig through every Clean Sock Day to find the delightful-smelling clean socks that are best psychographically matched to our individual characters.

I usually get here early on Clean Sock Day—as I did tonight—which affords me early pickin’s from the Communal Bin Of Delightful-Smelling Clean Socks—which I, to my present horror, totally forgot to do tonight. Because there were free tacos in the green room. SO CAN YOU BLAME ME?

FREE. TACOS.

Anyway, I didn’t even think about visiting the Communal Bin Of Delightful-Smelling Clean Socks tonight until I was tending to my foot apparel 15 minutes before our curtain. And to my eternally scarring horror, ALL THAT WERE LEFT IN THE BIN WERE SHEER-ISH, LIGHTWEIGHT, NOT-UN-PANTYHOSE-LIKE, DISTURBINGLY BREEZY LADY SOCKS.

LA. DY. SOCKS. SSSSSSSSSS. S.

So I’ve been condemned to try being SHIT-KICKIN’ MACHO as I gavotted through my deliciously florid musical all night when I secretly feel SILKY AND SEXY in my FEET and ANKLES and CALVES and did I mention ANKLES and OH MY GOD I’M FEELING SO DELICIOUSLY SAUCY RIGHT NOW DRAW ME LIKE YOUR FRENCH GIRLS DRAW ME DRAW ME DRAW ME!

Plus wispy socks = slip-slidin’ in my shoes. WHICH IS WEIRD AND DISCONCERTING.

AND DELICIOUSLY SAUCY.

Plus—PLUS!—once you and your character psychographically match yourselves to a pair of delightful-smelling clean socks from the Communal Bin Of Delightful-Smelling Clean Socks, YOU’RE STUCK WITH THOSE SOCKS UNTIL THE NEXT CLEAN SOCK DAY.

And since this is our final weekend of My Fair Lady, MY NEXT CLEAN SOCK DAY WON’T HAPPEN UNTIL ELF THE MUSICAL OPENS IN NOVEMBER.

NO. VEM. BER. SSSSSSSSS. S.

* * * * *

HORRIFYING ADDENDUM: I just accidentally caught the bouquet at the end of “I’m Getting Married in the Morning.” Though it’s always a toss-up (ahem) regarding who catches it onstage, it’s never been launched anywhere NEAR my general direction before. It’s like there was some mysterious force drawing it to me like a magnet. A SHEER-ISH, LIGHTWEIGHT, NOT-UN-PANTYHOSE-LIKE, DISTURBINGLY BREEZY MAGNET.

I am now and forever cursed with silken deliciousness. Which I guess might come in handy since my bouquet and I are getting married next.

Jake and his ladies. Coming to a stage near you. Tonight, in fact!