Let's Go Phillies! clapclap clapclapclap

Today was the victory parade for the Philadelphia Phillies! All day the radio was reporting millions (yes, millions!) of people flocking to Philadelphia from all over, the public transit being completely overwhelmed, Broad Street shut down...

My new apprentice Melissa and I are in our pre-production week for our first show of the season, A Tuna Christmas. Today was floor taping day. For those of you not familiar with this term, part of my job is to get a groundplan of the set marked out on the floor of the rehearsal hall with tape. This way the actors can rehearse with a spatial sense of where the walls will actually be once we move from the rehearsal space into the theater. Sounds fun, right? It's not, really. I never thought I'd use trigonometry after high school. Turns out I use it almost every day. How irritating.

Anyway, stuck in the rehearsal hall with rolls of tape and a scale ruler, we could hear the pandemonium from the street. I decided we needed to check it out. This is a historic event! We grabbed Bethann and Bruce Meyers, our head of maintenance and all around big guy (very helpful in the unruly crowd!) and set off toward Broad Street.

As we approached, the roar of the crowd got louder and louder. People were everywhere. We walked around for a bit, hoping to get to Broad Street, marvelling at the crowd.

We didn't get much past 13th Street. It was absolutely packed. People were doing whatever they could to get a good view of Broad Street:


We quickly learned not to walk under parking garages, due to the rain of beer and god-knows what else:


Finally, the closest we could get to Broad was a parking garage entrance between Spruce & Locust. I didn't see much over everyone, but the excitement was palpable. Everyone was in a great mood, cheering and chanting and blowing air horns. There were kids everywhere, and everyone was sporting their white and red jerseys. It was an awesome spectacle.


Melissa and Bethann show their Phillies spirit:

A big congrats to Bethann, who recently announced that she was pregnant! We declared her yet-unborn babe to be a Phillies fan who experienced victory for the first time in utero. Many more to come!

First rehearsal is Tuesday. I'm really excited. It's going to be great to see the boys and Madi again. Taping out the set was like revisiting an old friend. It's going to be a great start to our new season!