City: Flint, MI
Distance travelled: 55 miles
Total distance: 9,560 miles
Theatre: Whiting Auditorium

Flint is in trouble.  The federal government recently declared a state of emergency due to the terrible management of their water.  Due to the fact that the city switched its water supply from the clean Lake Huron to the unclean Flint River and further exacerbated the situation by inadequately treating that water the town’s drinking water is no longer fit to consume.  It is a problem of epic proportions, the politics of which I will not go into here, but needless to say that the city faces many challenges in the coming months and years to restore their water systems.

We were lucky that everyone at the hotel and the theatre were so accommodating and we were supplied with bottled or filtered water, much of which we brought in ourselves to avoid using the water that the people that actually live there need.

All these troubles aside the shows could not have gone better. We sold out every show and there was real sense of joy in the auditorium; that the people who came to see the shows could forget about their problems for a while.  I don’t want to sound too dramatic or pretentious but everyone I spoke to in the city could not be happier that we were there, some even thanked us for still coming.  In my opinion there was never any way we would not have gone.  I spoke before of the traditions of the theatre and one of the biggest is the show must go on. That is not a cliche, it is true for so many reasons.  We owe it to the creators of the show, to the people who paid for tickets, to ourselves as artists and to the art of theatre itself to always make sure that curtain goes up.  On this occasion we were able to do that and make sure that everyone in those sold out shows had a great time.