Week #2 in San Francisco brought our official opening night on Wednesday. It was a little surreal to be preparing for a big opening night that was also performance #1277, but it was fun to have that buzz in the air. Eric Idle came for opening night along John Du Prez (the show's author and composer, respectively) as did our Associate Director, General Manager and Press Agent - it was quite a night around the office. The show went super well; the audience obviously enjoyed themselves quite a lot. Afterward, we all retired to the Hotel Monaco for a fancy opening night party.
Everyone jockeyed for a photo w/ Eric: Geoff, Eric and Ken
Opening night was also Karl's birthday, so we celebrated with a round of cupcakes and a toast.
The San Francisco Chronicle accompanies all their theatre reviews with a cartoon graphic illustrating the reviewer's impression. For our review, the cartoon man was described as "wild applause". We're a hit!
Friday, I visited the oldest existent building in San Francisco, the Mission Dolores. The sixth of Calafornia's 21 Spanish Missions, the Mission San Francisco de Asis (as the Mission is formally known) was established on June 29th, 1776. The town that grew up around the Mission on the banks of the creek named Arroyo de los Dolores took the name of the Mission and became San Francisco. In 1782, construction began on the adobe mission building that still stands on the site today. The current building has withstood several major earthquakes, conversion to a secular building and back again as well as the filming of Vertigo on the grounds (the grave of "Carlotta Valdes" was in the church's adjacent cemetery). Though the Mission's chapel is still regularly used for services, the Mission Dolores Basilica stands alongside the older structure. Both rooms are magnificent, in their own way, and both are beautiful places for quiet contemplation.
The 18th Century Mission Dolores alongside the 20th Century Basilica
The interior of the Mission's chapel.
My visit to the Mission drove home the point that California had a long history separate and apart from the story of the rest of the United States. The history I learned in school focused on the events of 1776 back east and hardly mentioned the massive colonization effort that the Catholic Church and Spain were undertaking on the West Coast. To read the list of Spanish Missions in California is fascinating - so many of the Missions have grown into the major cities of modern California (Mission San Diego de Alcala, Mission Santa Cruz, and Mission Santa Barbara are but a few examples). It's interesting the way that history is viewed and taught through current prisms - the kids in California get a whole year of California specific history (like the kids in Texas also do). They build sugar cube models of the various Missions while I was learning the geological history of the Great Lakes...
The weekend passed, as it so often does, in a flurry of shows - it's been quite nice, however, to not have to pack up the show on Sunday evenings. To just do the show, wish everyone a "great day off" and walk out the stage door is refreshing! We've all settled into the Golden Gate Theatre and are making ourselves at home. Admittedly, it's a bit of a shabby home, but I'm happy to be staying for a while longer. The Golden Gate opened as a vaudeville house in 1922 and later became a major motion picture theater (even boasting a Cinerama screen when that was something to boast about) before suffering a major decline in the 1970's. The theater reopened as a legitimate venue in 1979 under the joint ownership of the Shorenstein Hayes Nederlander Group. Today, it feels a bit neglected, much like the "Tenderloin" neighborhood that surrounds it.
The Golden Gate Theater stands at the intersection of Taylor Street and Golden Gate Avenue just off of Market Street in the heart of Sketchy Town.
Sunday marked both Ken and Merle's birthdays, so a party was in order. The Spamily celebrated at the Tonga Room with tropical drinks, dancing and frivolity after shot night. A bunch of us hopped the Hyde Street Cable Car for the ride up the hill to the Fairmont Hotel. From the moment we boarded the cable car, 'til the moment we left the Tonga Room, I was grinning. I absolutely love a good tiki bar and the addition of the cable car only made things more fun!
All aboard for the tiki bar!
DVZ, Jame, Roy, Geoff, Ken, Karl & Francesca all caught a ride up the hill
Ken, Merle and Suzanne (Suzanne's birthday was the following Tuesday) share a birthday Lava Bowl
Gurr & Jeff in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room
And with that, the second week of our engagement in San Francisco came to an end. I've been enjoying my stay here and am excited about having a whole month still ahead of me in which to explore and ride cable cars!
JV
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