Word: truckfuls
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There is a theater crowd in places like Davenport, which is why bus-and- truck tours exist. The doyenne here is Mary Nighswander, a little old lady who wears her white hair in a bun and speaks telegraphese ("Knit it myself," she asserts of her sequined cardigan). Nighswander runs the Broadway Theatre League, which has been bringing bus-and-trucks to town for 27 years. She has a $25,000 check in her pocket for tonight's show. If she doesn't hand it over by intermission, she says, "the cast sits on the curtain for the second...
...audiences are paying their $20 or $30 a seat for glamour and a taste of the theater life, the theatrical types say they signed on with the bus-and- truck mainly for the money. The members of the company all collect a per diem expense, and the idea is to live on the per diem and stash the paycheck for when they get back to New York. "You need a nest egg in this business," says Bruce Daniels, a lead, "so you can survive while you're out trying to get . . ." -- his voice deepens and Tivoli lights blink...
...Franklin, who did his first bus-and-truck in 1954, is dauntlessly cheerful. "An exciting day before us," he declares, putting on an artsy accent. "Bringing the-ah-ter to the masses." Franklin nips at a bottle of Maalox and goes off to work singing "It's a beautiful day in Peoria" to the tune of Mr. Rogers' theme song. Burns starts his day with Mountain Dew, because he has checked the label and found caffeine prominent among the ingredients...
...around 1 a.m., when the lights and scenery are packed up after the night's show, then start unpacking it again with a local crew at a new theater at 8 the same morning. They have a delicate and demanding job. The scenery and equipment fill two 48-ft. truck trailers, and some theaters aren't big enough to accommodate the whole show. Some theaters aren't fit to accommodate any show. Burns is still muttering about one theater where the local crew chief, a plumber, counterbalanced 800-lb. light pipes and pieces of overhead scenery not with the customary...
Peoria, which has a roomy new theater, goes smoothly. No one in the local crew shows up under the influence of cherry Robitussin, as happened at an earlier stop. No one threatens a sit-down strike, as happened when Burns lit up a cigar in the truck trailer in Madison...