Mrs. McGavock owns the property where the Grand Ole Opry was built. She has been dead for quite a while but apparently she wasn't too happy with the building of the Opry. The legends at the Opry says that she has been known to cause problems at the Theatre. I believe she has quite a bit of fun with us from time to time. Whenever something goes a little crazy at the Opry, we always blame Mrs. McGavock.
A few weeks ago, the funniest thing happened while I was on stage. My fellow elf, Pancho, and I were flinging porridge at one another during the workshop scene. He flings porridge at me. I react and wipe it off. Then I fling porridge at him. He reacts by putting his head back and wiping off the porridge. When Pancho put his head back, his hat fell off. He was the only elf whose wig is not attached to his hat. His hat fell backwards and his wig fell forward. He exclaimed, “Oh sh**!” Luckily our microphones were turned off. He was sitting on the stage with all the lights shining on him with just his wig cap on his head. I saw the whole thing happen and was laughing my head off! He hurried to grab his hat and put it back on. He thought he fixed everything. Then he looked down in his lap and saw his wig! He didn’t have a pocket so he just stuffed the wig up his vest where he kept it until the number was over. After the elves all got off stage, we laughed and laughed! It was the funniest thing I had ever witnessed on stage! Funny Mrs. McGavock! Here is Pancho messing around with his wig. He really doesn't have a mohawk. (At least, he shouldn't!)
The other crazy thing that happened occurred a few weeks later. We call this the Great Hold of 2009. The second show was going well. We were all looking forward to getting out of the theater an hour earlier than usual because the show started at 7 PM instead of 8 PM. After the Nutcracker scene in the first act, the show stopped. They put the curtain down and told everyone to wait. Backstage they told us they had stopped the show because they were having lighting issues. They were going to try to fix it and continue with the show. In the dressing room, Leann, Mike, Laura, and I played Phase 10. We played for quite a while. Some of us even got to Phase 5. After almost an hour, the show finally resumed. The first two numbers were done with work lights which was just white lights shining down from the ceiling. The spotlights were also working. The show looked really bad! I felt bad for those people that paid so much to see it! We had a ten minute intermission instead of fifteen minutes. The lighting looked a lot better after intermission but not all the lights were working. Our scene probably looked okay. It was good for me because I could see all the way into the house because the really bright lights weren’t working. I could see the audience in the balcony. It was nice for a change but I was grateful they fixed the lights during our day off. During the Great Hold of 2009, the Rockettes were in their soldier pants waiting for the show to resume. These pants are starched HEAVILY so they couldn't sit down. Here's a picture of one of them waiting and waiting and waiting...
