With everyone now in Southern California, we were ready for our first performance here.  We arrived at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center around 11am.  This is a really beautiful space and relatively new, less than 5 years old.


I backed the truck into the loading dock and was greeted by the crew, ready to go to work.

The crew, under the direction of Brody Steele, was GREAT!  They were ready to roll as soon as we pulled in. We made a few adjustments to the soft goods on stage and then opened the trailer to start bringing it all inside.  Cindy and Ethan coordinated things well.

Once all the cases were in, the real work began of putting the show together.  We all have our responsibilities and everyone got to work.  I also realized that I had some repair work to do on the truck. Remember those terrible winds in the California desert?  Well, turns out the peeled back the roof on my truck considerably!

Now, I’m not a repairman of any kind but this couldn’t wait.  A quick trip to the hardware store for liquid nails, a few screws, and some roof sealer and I was ready to go to work.  In the end, it’s not pretty – but it’s functional!

I headed back inside to find that we were having some technical problems.  Seems our light board wasn’t “talking” to their dimmers – that’s a big problem! Keith and Brody worked on it for several hours before we decided to move to Plan B.

Keith and I completely wrote a new show on the house light board, programmed the intelligent lights on our board, and then moved forward with making it all work.  With this challenge behind us, we moved forward with tech rehearsal and made ready for the show.

Doors opened at 7:30pm and the audience rolled in.  What a great crowd!  The theatre was a full house, almost 1000 strong, and they were full of energy and excitement.  This is the perfect crowd for a performer!

Several of our friends drove in to see the show including two of our favorite people – Jim Steinmeyer and Frankie Glass.  In addition to being our friends, Jim is also one of the creative forces behind our show.  His brilliance can be seen in so many area of our production – the show would be very different without him.

I also met up with Ron Porter and his family.  We had had several email exchanges over the years but I had the chance to “officially” meet Ron at the 25th Symposium of Project Magic in 2007.  Ron was one of the founders of the Project Magic program with David Copperfield.  It was great to see the whole family at the show – and they drove a LONG way!

We had a wonderful time in Santa Clarita.  The audience was fantastic.  The staff and administration were exceptional.  And the technical crew was a blast to work with.  Now, we’re on the way to Redding, CA and the Cascade Theatre.