get this show on the road

Example: “Everyone's in the car; let's get this show on the road.”

Origin: American show-business slang from around 1910, when touring theater, vaudeville, and circus companies routinely packed up their sets, props, and costumes to travel from town to town performing the same production in a new location each time. Once everything was loaded onto the wagons or trucks used to move a company between engagements, the director or stage manager would give the literal signal to depart with exactly this phrase — the show, quite physically, about to go on the road. By around 1940 the expression had broadened well past actual theater, used generally for starting any activity or event that had been sitting ready but not yet in motion.