On The Road (‘In This World’) – Ottawa in under 24 hours!

Meghan Swaby, Stephanie Jung, Melania Radelicki

My name is Stephanie Jung and I’m one of the two actors in In This World. Meghan Swaby is my co-actor and we’re joined by our stage manager extraordinaire, Melania Radelicki. We opened In This World in the beginning of April and have been touring to high schools in the GTA for the past couple of weeks. Now, we are ready to hit the road for some nights away from home.

Our first overnight trip for In This World was to Ottawa for just one night this past week. Did we decide to drive down the 401 to Ottawa? No, we decided to take the scenic route (also known as Highway 7/Trans-Canada) since we had to take a slight detour through Peterborough. It was one of the best decisions we made that day since we discovered a food truck on the side of the road

called ‘The Spud Box‘ in Kaladar. The Spud Box serves burgers, fries, poutine (with real cheese curds!), chicken fingers, and fish and chips and everything was made onsite….except for their hot dogs. They buy their hot dog wieners. True story – the cook (and owner? The truck seemed to be a family-run business) hated cooking them. Meghan ordered a hot dog and when the cashier yelled out the order, we could hear the cook whining about cooking it. Turns out the cook hates cooking hot dogs because they took too long and the wieners weren’t fresh like their burgers. We all laughed, fell in love with the cook and the cashier, and Meghan changed her order to a poutine. The food? Outstanding! Huge servings and filling…so filling that none of us really needed to eat dinner because we were still full from lunch. There isn’t much in Kaladar, but you should definitely make a stop for lunch at The Spud Box. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Melania Radelicki (aka ‘stage manager extraordinaire’)

Ottawa itself was fantastic. There was the obligatory stop on Parliament Hill and the replenishing of maple syrup supplies (in liquid and butter form – yes! You read right! Maple butter! Deliciousness in a jar!) at Byward Market. The next morning, we performed our first out of town show at a high school in Richmond, Ontario. The high school was welcoming, helpful, and a great audience. A pretty awesome way to begin the out of town portion of our school tour.

Next stop? Thunder Bay! Confession: I’ve never been to Northern Ontario. I’m pretty excited.

(Stephanie Jung plays Bijou in Roseneath Theatre’s production of ‘In This World’, currently on tour in Northern Ontario)