Tour Adventures: Fly Guy & Other Stories
Spencer Wilson, Ryan Andrews, Carly Blane, and Mary Elizabeth Drake pose for a Meet and Greet after their performance of Fly Guy & Other Stories at the Paramount Theatre in Abilene, Texas.
I recently returned back home to New York after a 3 month tour with Theatreworks/USA! We toured around the country, performing the storybook musical Fly Guy & Other Stories. This production was directed by Veronica Reyes-How and choreographed by Jenn Donohoo. "Fly Guy" was a 50 minute production of seven children's stories comprised into a musical. Vignettes, if you will.
The storybooks were Fly Guy Meets Fly Girl, Lilly's Big Day, A Prize for Fluffy, Kitten's First Full Moon, Horace and Morace But Mostly Dolores, The Paperbag Princess, and Diary of a Worm.
The tour started in Brooklyn, New York and then headed for the South. Here are some highlights:
- Paramount Theatre in Abilene, Texas
- One World in Austin, Texas
- The Charles W. Eisemann Center in Dallas, Texas
- Brighter Horizons Academy in Garland, Texas
- Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston, Texas
- Spencer Theater for Performing Arts in Alto, New Mexico
- Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Ocotillo Performing Arts Center in Artesia, New Mexico
- Parker Pace Center in Parker, Colorado
- The Grand Opera House in Oshkosh, Wisconsin
- Abbey Theatre of Dublin in Dublin, Ohio
- Folly Theater in Kansas City, Missouri
- Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Illinois
- Florissant Civic Center Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri
- The Clemens Center in Elmira, New York
- Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey
I had some of the most fun I think I’ve ever had in my life. I laughed harder than I ever laughed before. As cliché as that sounds, it’s completely genuine. If I had to be around a group of five other people twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, I’m glad it was with the five other actors in our show. We were a dedicated, hardworking, and extremely weird group of people which made things easy. Grateful for them because the rest of tour was not so easy. Sleeping in hotels every night and eating out were not as fun as I would’ve liked them to be. Eating sometimes felt like a chore, and that’s big for me to say because I’m almost always hungry. BUT I'd still choose to do it any day if I'm doing what I love and inspiring other kids to do what they love as well. It's worth it to me to perform this show I’d come to love for children all around the country. It was an absolute joy to see these kids’ faces react to all the goofy things we were doing for them, and I do think we inspired kids to find a love in reading and most importantly, storytelling.