The Clue in the Crumbling Wall

As of today, our tour of Ohio is finally complete. Dayton, Colombus, Cleveland, Cincinnati - we've done them all. Ah, Ohio - "So much to discover!" If by "so much" you mean "so much empty space it will boggle your mind." Seriously. I thought Ohio was smallish. What a fool I was. It takes four hours to get anywhere in this state. Anywhere.

In Cleveland we performed in a Masonic Hall, that, while built in 1900, was still functioning. Yes, mysterious Masonic rites and rituals! (and quality children's theatre.) The first dressing room they showed me, on the stage level, had only two mirrors, a single flickering lightbulb, rust damage on the floor, and a wall crumbling before my eyes. Like paint flecks were falling on me. And it turned out I could only walk 2/3 of the way into the room to avoid some sort of toxic mold situation. But they assured me it was perfectly safe. Huh. Yeah. As if. We couldn't have fit in there anyway, so they directed me down to the masonic dressing rooms.

I have seen my fair share of slasher-movie-set dressing rooms this tour. Particularly in the south, actually. All in run-down old buildings, in a dark, dank, basement maze of HORROR full of creepy corners and dripping rust stained pipes and crumbling walls and flickering lightbulbs and I'm sure, I'm SURE psycho killers with axes lying in wait. The Masonic Hall was a special stop on my subterranean tour of dressing room terror.

It was dark, and creepy, and truly, truly endless. The halls wound around and around into and endless series of different rooms and locked doors. I felt like Nancy Drew (plus sewing kit, minus flashlight) trying to solve the Mystery of the Masonic Temple, searching for the secret room full of makeup mirrors but only finding dead ends and locked doors! And THEN I stumbled upon the mysterious "Robing Room." It was filled with asian-looking robes and giant SPEARS. For serious. I quickly left the robin room and ran smack into a giant padlocked metal dungeon door surrounded by cinder block walls. It looked like they were keeping a giant beast inside. Or DEAD BODIES.

Thankfully we made it out alive, and Ned Nickerson didn't have to tackle any mysterious bad guys to free me from the robing room. (That's a Nancy Drew reference, boys.) And today in Cincinnati, there was NO subterranean situation! The dressing room was right off the stage, with its Mulan Jr. sign still on it, and although we were all cramped together in one cozy little room, I was much happier above ground away from the psycho killers. It was said that the coffee tasted extra good today - probably because I made it with a sprinkling of love, not of abject terror.