Yo diary!
Our journey to Iowa began with two warm tropical plane trips and a short drive to our hotel. What else was there to do but go to Aphra Behn’s favorite store, Wal Mart?
We went for a wonderful dinner in Downtown Cedar Falls called Bourbon Street, and although they didn’t have bananas, they did have some lovely New Orleans food, including Pickle Chips, which were a delight.
The day of the show, we returned to Wal Mart for a lovely photo shoot, where we danced around the aisles looking for as much interesting food as possible. Aphra also got several bras on sal for our opening "sunrise" bit in "Feminists Are Funny". Mine is a left over Valentines Day bra and the women in the check out line in front of us exclaimed "Oh, that's too pretty to hide!" Guess what? I'm not planning on hiding it!
Before we knew it it was time to go to the University of Northern Iowa. It was a fantastic theatre, and to my pleasure and surprise the tech went extremely well. Our student volunteer, Jessica, was very excited and she did a great job at the rehearsals.
Suddenly it was showtime and our audience was hot! We could feel the enthusiasm bursting onstage. My favorite ad libs were when Aphra described pulling the topics out of the hat as “Avant Garde” and when I had the audience all applaud for “yay, discrimination!”
The commedia skit was hilarious, as our super enthusiastic student volunteer almost stole the show. She made Edith Evans drop her cigar twice during the skit, which I thought was a slapstick routine but turned out to just be an accident. Talk about upstaging. Who knew we would have met our improvizational match in Jessica!
The Q&A was thoughtful, poignant and hilarious. Almost everyone in the packed house stayed which made it comfy and cozy.
Edith, Aphra and I headed back to our hotel exhausted but not too tired to have a cast party in Aphra's room complete with Wal Mart wine and snacks courtesy of Gloria our grad student cohort. Until we meet again Iowa...I will dream of you.
Monkey love,
Audrey Hepburn
March 29, 2011
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