Where in the world am I today?: At Sea off the Coast of Brazil aboard the GRAND Princess

I joined the GRAND Princess yesterday in Forteleza, Brazil. A very long day of travel to make it to the ship this time around, but no harm, no foul, it’s all part of the gig. As I joined the ship I was handed the usual welcome aboard envelope that gets handed to guest entertainers by the Practica on Princess ships. In it I had a welcome letter, a Food and Entertainment Schedule a phone list etc. and even though I’ve done enough of these contracts to know what the form welcome letter usually says I took the time to read over the information which provided a nice lead in to today’s post. Here’s the quote from the welcome aboard letter –

Please bring your promotional photographs to the cruise director’s office as soon as possible so that we may update the marquee outside the theatre.

I grabbed a selection of what I call “Marquee Pictures,” 8 x 10 photos on which I have also included my name, a catch phrase and a bit of color and walked past the marquee outside of the theatre only to discover that my shot was already up. Now this sort of marquee doesn’t exist on all of the Princess ships, or at least doesn’t always get used to promote the guest entertainers, sometimes it’s dedicated to the resident production show singers, but on Royal Caribbean I find that on just about every ship you go on they want to have pictures for the marquee in front of the theatres and often want multiple copies (usually 4).

I remember getting caught out one contract with out my regular supply of 8 x 10s and needed to scramble to get the photo department to print some out for me. Ever since then I’ve gotten into the habit of carrying duplicates of five different images that I used to promote my show. Often these images aren’t needed for the marquees, but I’ve found that along with giving away a cbg ball cap to my technical crew, signing one of my 8 x 10s and putting a message of thanks on it often leads to the crew posting the picture in the Tech Office or sticking it up back stage. Some ships I’ve gone back to now have a collection of different pictures and I’ll often hear from other performers that they saw my photo back stage on one of the ships they were just one.

Having a bit of a legacy after you’ve left is a pretty cool thing and helps people remember you if/when you end up getting back to do the gig again. It’s not rocket science, but as I’ve said in other posts, it’s the little added details that do end up getting noticed. The cumulative effect of enough of these ‘little things’ often makes the difference between acts that work occasionally and works that work all the time..