work hard and one day you, too, could wear a flesh-colored body suit

Show Day #3: Phoenix, AZ.

The last number in the Benise show - Carnaval - is a real whopper. This song and dance involves flesh-colored body suits snazzed up with wild splashes of paint, Mardi Gras beaded miniskirts, thongs, fluorescent hairpieces, African and Brazilian dance, and prolonged periods of booty shaking.

When I first saw the body suits during rehearsals, I was wowed - mainly, I think, by the IDEA of a body suit, rather than the BS themselves. I referenced the BS in an email to one of my Stage Matters bosses and he replied that he was thinking about instituting flesh-colored body suits as the new Stage Matters uniform.

I imagined myself performing my duties like putting towels in the bunks and pushing road cases to the loading dock. Then I imagined myself doing that in a body suit. And the rest of the roadies going on strike in protest.

Going through the line in catering, carrying big bags of laundry over my shoulder to the bus at night, even making the simplest phone call: All of it would be funnier in a body suit.

'BUT,' I reminded myself, 'it will NEVER HAPPEN.'

So when someone in wardrobe flung one of the spare body suits in my direction a couple of nights ago, I flinched and jumped back.

'Go ahead,' she said, 'put it on.'

'No,' I said.

'Just the top,' she insisted, 'and the hands.'