Oklahoma! key dramatis personæ, from the left:

Cord Elam. The moral and emotional core of the Oklahoma! narrative. Basically the lead. Brags that he could eat a gatepost. No homo.

Will Parker. The clumsy—but alarmingly bendy—one who does his press junket splayed out on the floor like a common hussy. Couldn’t count to $50 if his potential marriage depended on it. Minor character at best.

Curly McLain. Sings about corn. Lies about fringe. Someone runs into his knife. Someone runs into his knife one time.

You can see by our outfits that we are both cowboys

#Oklahoma! #CowboyHats #TheStreetsOfLaredo

We don’t need no stinkin’ musical about dancin’ farmers and cowmen to be basic bitches in boots

But it sure makes a super-cute excuse.

We’re only an hour into our first Oklahoma! rehearsal and after many grueling rounds of auditions and callbacks I’ve already snagged the coveted first chorus solo

WATCH AND LEARN, LESSER CASTMATES. WATCH AND LEARN.

One show closes and another opens

And this one has elephant-eye-high corn. And apparently a severed thumb.

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.

Where did you come from ...

Say you’re walking through downtown Cedar Rapids (hypothetically) from your car to the theater where you’re doing Hello, Dolly! (hypothetically) and you walk past the convention center where a bunch of kids are having their homecoming dance (hypothetically) and a girl walking by with a couple friends looks at you very excitedly and exclaims “Hi, Joe!” and looks still very excitedly at you as she waits for a response, do you:

1) Do what we all know is probably best for her and excitedly say “Hi!” back to let her keep living safely in her delusional Joe universe
2) Yell “I’M NOT JOE!” and embarrass her in front of her delusion-enabling friends
3) Use her greeting as an in to say “Gurrrl you are ROCKING that knockoff Prada!”
4) Explain solemnly that Joe died and you’re his inconsolable twin brother on his way to the funeral
5) Look frantically over your shoulder and run away as though you know there’s a hitman named Joe lumbering after you with a chainsaw and William Shatner mask
6) Toot audibly and say “oops—you startled me!”
7) Melt into the ground in embarrassment because people terrify you
😎 Get really pissed that typing 8 and ) side by side automatically and irreversibly turns into 😎 on your phone
9) Tell her where you did come from and where you did go
10) Post an online survey

My eyes are up HERE, Miss Money

Sundayclothes Seersucker Selfie!

Another weekend of Hello, Dolly! performances is over

If you’re on the fence about seeing us because of potential OSHA hygiene violations, be known that Theatre Cedar Rapids is so hardcore method that the Harmonia Gardens waiters have to wash our hands in the dressing room before we report to work on the stage. YOU CAN REST ASSURED THAT WE WILL NEVER GET SHOW-TUNEY ACTOR GERMS ON YOUR PLASTIC FOOD OR HOT-GLUED CHAMPAGNE FLUTES.

Getting all the waiters together for a photo on the Hello, Dolly! Harmonia Gardens staircase has to happen at intermission when the staircase is assembled and we’re all in our waiter uniforms at the same time

But the “getting all the waiters together” part is insanely complicated given the fact that all the other waiters (but not me!) are distracted LSD-vaping kittens chasing hallucinatory laser dots all over the theater (allegedly) and impossible to get all in one place at one time if there isn’t a downbeat involved.

BUT LAST NIGHT I DID IT!

Unfortunately, the stage curtain prevented our photographer from backing up far enough to get the actual staircase in the photo and the intermission lighting left the back rows in increasingly gradient shadows.

BUT I DID IT!

Maybe I’ll try tonight to get everyone lined up for a shot from one side of the staircase à la the Brady Bunch kids (HINT! HINT!). Or maybe I’ll vape LSD with everyone (allegedly) and demonstrate my super-kitten powers at finally catching the elusive red dot instead.

Note to future historians: The second-to-top row of waiters here is standing on the staircase’s official Jake StepTM. We left an engraved bronze plaque on it to mark the location and commemorate the dedication. Please see that our estate keeps it burnished and respectfully lit in perpetuity.

My Hello, Dolly! costumes are pre-set deep in the underbelly of the Iowa Theater Building

They're so deep that we gradually lose melanin from lack of sun exposure and get altitude sickness and nosebleeds every time we ascend (slowly, so as not to get the bends) and emerge back on the stage.

Anywho, each set of costumes is organized in order of how I put them on:

shirt > tie (if applicable) > pants (always applicable) > vest (ditto) > coat (usually applicable) > joyful smile (by contractual obligation)

And then in order of Act I songs:

It Takes a Woman (in earthy, workaday blues) > Put On Your Sunday Clothes (in MEGA AWESOME PINK SEERSUCKER) > Dancing (in a geometric explosion of Vermeer blues) > Before The Parade Passes By (you’ll just have to come see that costume now, won’t you?)

On a nearby concrete plateau that echoes with the trickles of a sub-sub-sub-terranean cistern: assorted hats and bottles of Gatorade.

Because I AM NOTHING IF NOT PREPARED.

Fun fact:

Hello, Dolly! was originally called Hello, Guy Just Over Dolly's Right Shoulder Who's Smiling Handsomely If I Do Say So Myself But Unfortunately Cut Off At The Edge Of This Photo! But Dolly got that crown of feathers and suddenly the show was all about HER.

Find the old guy who can't jump as high as all those kids

THEN FIND YOUR WAY TO THEATRE CEDAR RAPIDS TO SEE OUR MEGA HELLA KILLER AMAZING SHOW.

Shirts I have found while excavating:

• Social Climbers team T-shirt for the BEST-NAMED *EVER* Hustle up the Hancock stair-climbing team
• (motto: We like it on top)
• AIDS Marathon team tank top that I personalized with GO JAKE GO
• (Putting GO JAKE GO on the front of your marathon shirt is like giving a handy script to 26.2 miles of people who are ready and willing to cheer you on at the tops of their lungs)
• The back of the T-shirt I wore for my first marathon
• (Putting MY FIRST MARATHON on the back of your first marathon shirt guarantees 26.2 miles of back slaps and atta-boys from every runner who passes you)
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for many subsequent Chicago Marathons
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for the New York Marathon
• (New Yorkers always wear black)
• (Because they’re all artists and tortured intellectuals who snap when they hear poetry)
• My Pigman Triathlon T-shirt
• (The pig head used to glow in the dark)
• My Forever Plaid T-shirt
• (That’s me on the bottom)
• (Notice it doesn’t say GO JAKE GO)
• (Because the character I played was named Smudge)
• (But that’s the only reason)

Hello, corner of unambiguous gay stereotypes!

Vocabulary quiz

My cute little hexagonal-column knickknack pedestals arrived today and I organized them in artful clusters on my knickknack shelf and then carefully displayed my carefully curated running and theater and Disney knickknacks on them and how many times can I say knickknacks in one sentence?

OR:

My cute little hexagonal-column objets d’art pedestals arrived today and I organized them in artful clusters on my objets d’art shelf and then carefully displayed my carefully curated running and theater and Disney objets d’art on them and how many times can I say objets d’art in one sentence?

Another show finished. Another audience delighted. Another standing ovation savored.

I had a voice lesson scheduled for right after today’s matinee, which somehow seemed like a brilliant idea a month ago when I scheduled everything. But my voice teacher and I just very wisely realized it was, in fact, a terrible idea. So I went right home, coincidentally as the 91.7 fm classical station played the “Goin’ Home” themes from Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony. Which was coincidentally written in Iowa. And which was also coincidentally written in 1893, which is roughly the time in which Hello, Dolly! takes place. Which is all pretty cool.

Thank you, five! Even though we’re all TENS.