Thursday, April 4, 2013

4/3/13: Champaign, IL

I was really excited to this show - its the first (and probably one of the only) shows that we'll be doing in an Arena. 

I come from an Arena show background - Curious George and Thomas and Friends were both 90% arena performances.  They are different from shows in a theatre in a number of ways.  The sound is often harder to deal with as a performer (if you've ever been in an arena for a sporting event...), they are so much more open, there's half an arena's worth of 'backstage' and generally they are cooler than most theatres temperature wise. 

We were booked to play the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois - which is one of the nicer
arenas because the sound issues actually aren't all that bad.  It was also kind of cool because...I've played that arena before - almost 2 years ago to the day, with Thomas and Friends.  And it was doubly cool because my parents used to live in the Champaign/Urbana area after they were first married.  And it was triply cool - because the arena is shaped like a giant UFO.  Made for a fun evening - even though we had a fairly long (7 hour) travel day into the show...which we will be repeating tomorrow for our show in Columbia, MO.

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