In London this past year we did 5 shows at the Bloomsbury Theatre for a week run with an amazing turn out but i think often times the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in order to keep our company functioning and running smoothly so the shows look polished requires a bit of organized chaos behind closed doors. This particular day was no such exception. Moria was sick and taken to the Doctor by Stevo our tour manager, so we were ‘on our own’ in a sense – MOMENTARILY. Miles was there along with our awesome London crew but they were in up to their ears with merchandise and a sea of hip scarf’s and couldn’t waste a second playing mommy to us as they needed to get everything ready to sell by showtime. Brian, our sound engineer, bus driver, and assistant manager was there to help out, answer questions, and be our ‘go to’ guy. We’ve performed at the Bloomsbury many times before and we’re no strangers to the theatre layout. Dressing rooms are on ground floor, and floor 2 along with Green Room (coffee, tea and snacks/ general lounging area for the company), and stage is 3rd floor. Dinner, because this theatre is at a university site, is in a separate building in their cafeteria. In the past, they open a little early, you grab your lunch tray, pick your dish and drink, take a sit, eat and be merry. Schedules keep our wheels turning in BDS. A delay in anything throws a wrench in our entire day effecting tech rehearsal time, sound engineering, hair and make up and general preparation for the show. There is no room for error. We run a tight ship. But during our dinner time on this particular day, the odds were against us. WIth curlers in our hair, one eye with fake lashes glued on and one eye naked, lunch trays in hand – we eagerly awaited our dinner server to show up. We waited and waited and waited. 15 minutes later (this is an ETERNITY in BDS time), the lady comes at her regularly scheduled time unaware of our special programming needs only to be met with panic stricken faces concerned that we just might have to perform with one eye naked and one eye complete if we didn’t start eating right away! We quickly one by one troll through the line asking for what we want and don’t understand why you can only have the salad if you get fish, not pasta. Or why the ‘vegetarian dish’ is a sausage of coriander and sweet potato and we try to work our sisterly magic by trading one another for what someone else got after our disappointment from the set menu. See, we try to cut dinner options to a minimal in our own setting to prevent this very thing from happening. We usually offer a red meat dish, and a fish dish, with some steamed veggies, potato’s of some sort, and salads. So for us the choice of pasta and looking at a salad, but not being able to ‘get it’ – is foreign. It’s out of our norm. Sitting and scarfing our food down in 10 seconds flat we began feverishly discussing how this delay was now going to push our dancer tech rehearsal back, then effecting Issam’s sound check, and delaying our make up/hair and preparation time… Lauren and i looked at each other and lost it laughing! We began remembering how things like this always seem to happen anytime we’re left unsupervised for longer than 10 minutes by Stevo, and we began to realize how ridiculous we must look to that lady and all the people on the outside who don’t operate under the same intense scheduling that we do. Let’s just analyze this from her perspective for a moment: She shows up to work at her regular time to be met with a line of 20 (including crew) oddly fashioned women and men who must be starving because they are panicked about eating right away and don’t understand the concept of a set menu; which to her knowledge is how every day runs at her job and unintentionally, we just made her job so much harder! It became so obvious to us how funny it must be to watch us take everything so seriously in such weird make up and the fact that we’re panicked about food! OF COURSE even though tech rehearsal was delayed, THUS CHANGING THE REST OF OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM for the evening, Moria came back from the Doctor feeling better, Stevo re-joined us, everything got accomplished and we put on a stellar show met by a generously applauding audience to kick off our week run at the Bloomsbury Theatre! ! Sometimes it’s better to bend like a willow tree than to stand unwavering like an oak tree because that humor and ability to adapt can get you through things less stressfully in life!