Hopefully he'll get his invitation?

Lemme tell you a fun little "gimmick" we've got going for this show, possibly at Sir Elton John's expense.

It's rumoured that Sir Elton John and his husband, Canadian-born David Furnish, have a home in the Caledon-Orangeville area.  My fellow castmate, Abi (playing The Yellow Girl) and I are pretty certain that we pass by it every time we drive to rehearsal from Brampton.  We were initially kidding about walking up to what we possibly thought could be his front door with two tickets in hand for Shout! and a number for a trusted babysitting service (for their new son, Zachary!), inviting them to a night of entertainment, since he's entertained us for so many years.

Uh, the joke had gone from playful "pressure banter" to actually trying to get him there.  Ha!  How are we going to do that?


Well, "The Secret" has been in practice for a while, throwing that energy in the universe that he'll catch wind and drop by.  (Could you imagine the stunned reaction from the box office agent?)  I've also heard that other 'more direct' measures have been taken, hopefully with some results.  There have also been quite a number of close coincidences that have to do with Sir Elton and our show, so we're running with that, too ... unless we're reading too much into it.  Yep, either way, we're trying!

And getting to how crazy we can get with this, I got a phone call on Monday from Abi, asking: "Do you wanna do something crazy?"  Sir Elton's highly successful musical adaptation of Billy Elliot was premiering the next day at the Canon Theatre in Toronto, and he was going on a morning show tour around Toronto to promote the opening night.  Did we wanna make some signs and possibly crash one of these morning shows to get his attention?  If you know me, you'd know my answer already.

To clarify, it was "yes".

So, I spent that evening making big signs with paint and bristol board.  I'm not the greatest artist, but they turned out quite well!

The paint was all dry for the next morning's guerilla promotion.  Bright and early at 7 am, we headed out, parked right next to the Canon Theatre to make our way to Breakfast Television.  We knew Elton wouldn't be there, but BT has a history of inviting people in who stand at the window with interesting signs.  I'm sure this'll get their attention.  Once we got in, we were set.  We had our mental script what we would say, just in case.  The entire car ride down, we were saying to each other, "What the hell are we doing?"  Adventure!

Alas, when we arrived at BT, they had a tinted tarp thrown over the windows, enough for us to see inside the studio, only to find INXS!  Whaaaaa!  They have a concert this week at The Sound Academy, I guess they'll be talking about that.  Well, we danced behind them with our signs anyway - enough for security to see us and nearly chase us off the property.  (They didn't look like the kind of guys with a sense of humour to pose for a photo.)

Ah, we tried.  Abi had to go to work, so we drove back home to Brampton and chalked it up as an experience.  Mind you, see that inconspicuous vehicle behind Abi in the last photo there?  Later that evening on television, did I not see Sir Elton and his husband exit out of a vehicle identical to this one outside of the Canon Theatre. 

I'll chalk that one up as a coincidence, too.  If I think anything else, I'll drive myself crazy.