The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.
I did a theatrical musical, Annie Warbucks, when I was 11. We did a tour and we stopped by Los Angeles.
I made my Broadway debut in the revival of Hair and followed it up with the bus and truck tour of Grease.
The play I did on Broadway a couple of seasons ago started out of town and it moved its way into New York because of the experience that we had out of town.
Nathan Lane's Bus of Broadway Fun will be leaving shortly.
When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.
Immediately after school, I did a lot of regional theater. I was in Berkeley and Princeton and Minneapolis and all over the country doing wonderful plays for the local audiences.
The old actors in the old days, they used to go on tour, to get the play ready for the West End, and to learn their lines. The old timers used to say, "Be very careful, dear boy, what you get in to during the first weeks of a long tour."
