Broken Family...

Yesterday we said goodbye to one of our cast members. We heard the official news yesterday at 6pm that one of the girl dancers was being replaced. She had sprained her ankle this past week and we thought she'd be okay. There was no news from the office that any replacing was happening only concern for her situation. The doctor said she'd have to spend a week in recovery while icing her ankle. This was too long since we are learning a brand new show and production wanted to make sure she'd be at full capacity since the head honcho from Seattle was going to be on our ship the first 2 weeks. I guess he causes a lot of drama when on board reviewing new shows and they didn't want to take any chances of her rolling her ankle again while he was there and they wanted to give her proper rest time so she can come back. The good news out of all this is that she has a contract in her hands for October on the same ship, so we'll see her again as we're signing off for turnover. Lots of love went out to her last night when we all said goodbye. I hope she has a restful summer and comes back strong. Hey, she'll have 2 shows under her belt when she gets back so rehearsals will be a piece of cake. It's tough to see a cast member go especially at this stage of the bonding process. I hope we get to cross paths again. In other news, we are still in emotional turmoil because one of our other dancers has been dealing with abdominal trauma. At first we all thought it might have been food poisoning (bad tuna). Then it was the flu so we all got worried for ourselves. I'm going to veer off here for a moment. Whenever someone coughs, sneezes, feels woozy, or just looks like death warmed over our first reaction is "Are you okay?" (moment of concern for their well being) and then if the response is in the sickly direction we all back off and start taking our vitamins and Airborne. Especially the singers. No one can afford to be sick right now. Oy!! Anyway, we all thought it might be the flu and then the news came that it might just be his appendix. So, now we are awaiting the official news. He's worked for the company several times, so there's no concern about him getting another spot. The sweetest thing is he doesn't want to leave this cast and we don't want to see him go. Although, a living dancer is better than a dead one. The appendix is a serious thing. I hope it's just the flu at this point for his sake. It's a scary thing and I'd hate to see another family member leave us. I'll know by the end of rehearsal today. He looked much better yesterday, but the company is insisting he get it checked out. All of this happened yesterday on Friday the 13th!!! Well the heightened trauma of it all happened yesterday with the replacing and the serious news about our boy dancer. The events leading up to it happened all throughout the week. Yikes!

The new girl comes in today. She's friends with one of the other girls in the cast. As I type she is at the costume studio fitting into her clothes. She'll have a lot of information to process in the next 2 weeks before we leave. I hope she's the only newbie. On a side note, one of our choreographers came back from putting up a brand new show on one of the other ships and it appears we have a bumpy road ahead of us until mid June. The head honcho from Seattle is very picky and seems to have contradicting/hypocritical ideas. It's confusing and frustrating to our production team since they are being restricted in so many ways. I hear a good rule of thumb is that whenever he sails, they always have to send someone with him to tone him down a bit so he doesn't fly off the handle and fire everyone. He'll be on our ship as we put up 2 new shows. Yikes!! Kind of makes me sick when I hear about people like this in power positions. I haven't met the man personally yet. It's only hearsay right now. So a lot of my thoughts about him are prejudemental based on other people's opinions, but when the head of the production company even says bad things about him you have to wonder.

It's a day off for me tomorrow and I'm visiting my peeps down in San Diego. It'll be a nice get away. Signing off for now.