New departures / New arrivers

We have now left Norway but not without a hint of northern light. Driving back to Oslo on Thursday night after dinner at Kjell and Iva's house, the sky was green. And not some weird bluish green, proper grassy green. It didn't move, so it wasn't as spectacular as you'd expect from the Northern Lights, but to see them this far south is unusual enough for me.
So, moose and northern lights on one tour: it can't get more Norwegian...

When we left, Anna gave me this for the van:

A small guard dog.
So if you have anything you think would look cool in the cabin of our new van, please bring it along to wherever you will find us. I want to turn the van in a mini museum of our travels.

Today is the start of a new project in Peterborough. The New Arrivers have arrived there last night and I have asked Elisabet to keep us updated. I'm not there myself, as I have some extra travelling to do in order to get to Graz on time with all of our possessions - in our new van.
(Is it clear how excited I am about our new van?)

A great day in total darkness

Iva phoned me yesterday to discuss some future things, and while we were talking she said that the culture contact for the school we were going to today said we could have as much darkness as we wanted.
I said I'd have all of it.

For those of you who are not familiar with the kind of touring we are doing right now: we play in schools. Usually in gyms. And gyms usually have a strip of windows just below the ceiling. They are usually impossible to reach and sometimes there are no blinds.
Since it's harder to create the magic and illusion of theatre in broad daylight, we always ask schools to come up with something. Sometimes they stick black binliners along the windows, sometimes they attach an enormous tarpaulin to the roof.
But Norwegian sunlight is very bright, and it is never easy to make it pitchblack.

But some schools have gyms without windows. That's where we were today. The main thing the darkness does is make it easier for the children to focus. And to imagine they're not in their gym.


In the meanwhile Kjell is looking for a new van. If all goes well, I'll be driving a new van to Germany on Saturday, and from there I will take it to Graz in February. We will be bringing a lot of stuff to Graz, and all that stuff doesn't fit in our current van (which died a few months ago anyway, so that was no option).

The other recurring issue is the chairs for Everything Falls Apart. Due to lack of van-space, we've been buying them all over Europe.
Until....
Ikea stopped producing them. Iva then sourced a different type of chair for the shows we did in Czech Republic. They were quite similar, but not the same.
Today I found out that our trusted Oddvars are back in stock. So I'll pick up a few extra on the way to Graz.

The sweet smell of paper

This weekend we went to the top of the mountain overlooking Oslo's fjord. It was absolutely stunning.

Anna and Lenka went sledging. I passed, as I didn't have waterproof trousers and I had images of getting soaking wet from the snow and then freezing to death (it was still -20°).

This week we are playing in 5 different schools in Moss. Moss stinks.
You might think this is a very offensive thing to say, but it's true. Moss has a big paper factory, and it smells of... something like sulfur mixed with something else.
I love books and paper, but that smell sort of puts me off a bit. I had no idea producing paper caused this type of sensory assault.

It is getting warmer now. Today it was only -4°. The snow is melting and turning into black slush.
But we don't let that get to us. It's still great fun playing to smaller kids.

Norwegian wildlife

This morning we saw a herd of...

I say reindeer, Anna says moose.
There is no evidence. No pictures.

I was driving, that's my excuse.

Koede boernie

This morning it was -20°(C), we went to our favourite school but we didn't play.

This is the school:

This is why we didn't play:

Bergenhus Skole is the only school I've been to so far that has a very nice black box theatre. Unfortunately, that's not so ideal for this performance. We had some discussions about it yesterday (before going there), but based on our combined memories, we couldn't remember enough to really know whether it would be possible to play or not. So we decided to go there and find out.

My memory had no records of the seating steps not all being wide enough to put a tripod on.
With wider steps, we could have played half on the steps.
However, as you can see, only the middle step was wide enough, which would mean the tripods (with the projection screen draped over them) would be too far away from the floor cloth the kids sit on, and the projection itself would have been reduced to the size of a tv screen.

Some of the option we went through were: cutting the projections, cutting the slide projections, cutting the double bass, playing for only 20 kids instead of 100. None of them were acceptable.

If it wouldn't have been so damn cold, we could have played in the gym, but the heating in the gym didn't work (frozen pipes or something), so we couldn't move there.

The school then suggested the hall:

The problem there was that it was also the main entrance to the school, and the different parts of the school connect through this space. Additionally there are some enormous windows at both sides, and a lot of light-spill from the adjoining class rooms. So again, not an option.

You would have thought we'd be in and out of there in no time, but as we all like it there so much, we stayed there for an hour and a half, and talked to the teacher who was in charge of us. She was a very nice lady who told us her husband is a pig farmer, and these temperatures are quite tricky to keep the water flowing for the pigs to drink.
She also said he can't go away. Not even for a day, let alone a holiday somewhere warmer. Pigs need to eat twice a day. Every day.
It sounds like a hard life to me, but I guess that if he really hated it, he wouldn't be doing it.

After having coffee and cake (the school supplied the coffee, Nils had made the cake), we drove back to Oslo. In total, we drove for three hours and visited a school for an hour and a half. Not your standard working day. Not ours either.

Back in Oslo, I thought I should test myself under these weather conditions. So Anna and I walked to the harbour. It was cold, but not unpleasant.


And now my skin feels a bit sunburnt, even though I'd pulled my hat down to just above my eyes, and pulled my woolly collar up to just under my eyes.
I can deal with -20°.
The weather forecast says it's going to get colder.
I'll test my resistance if it does. But I'm glad I decided to put the International Haircuts on hold until after winter.

A good day

Today we had a much gentler start. No angry men waiting for us by the car, a smooth ride to the school, very friendly teachers, a gym with a half-decent blackout and very nice kids.

This was the view from the school:

I no longer need gas to start with a bang

Happy New Year.



Like a lot of kids this morning, we got up early to start work again.

The car has been fixed now, so I can leave the startgas in the car door and just turn the key and go.

This morning however, things weren't quite that easy.
Anna and I are staying in a short term rental flat which comes with a car park. Anna had been staying there before with Honza, but I'd never been there. When I arrived, she met me downstairs to show me the garage.
The space Honza used before was taken, so I parked next to it. There was plenty of empty space in the car park, so I assumed it would be fine. (Assumption...)

So this morning, at 6.45, we saw a Landrover parked right behind our van. And a man walking around the cars parked either side of the van.
As we approached he said to me in Norwegian: 'Is this your van? Why did you park there?' Even though I had understood, my Norwegian is not good enough for an elaborate apology and/or explanation, so I told him I didn't understand Norwegian. Technically I don't. If it suits me, I do. A bit.
The man was angry. Or rather, he was fuming. I tried to explain I was unaware of the numbered parking spaces, and that I only just arrived the night before. He told me that if we had been two minutes later, he'd have left and his car would be there until Friday. (And if my uncle had breasts he'd be my aunt, but anyway.)
I apologised a bit more, but it only made him angrier. It seemed incredibly hard to steer the conversation to an end, despite the fact that we clearly both had somewhere to go.

He concluded with: 'Anyway, this car is from Fredrikstad, it's not even supposed to be here. Is this even your car?' I promised him I'd call our landlord as soon as it was a more respectable hour to call people and find out where I should park. I apologised again and got into the van.
That's when I saw him remove notes from under the windscreens of the cars either side of the van.
They were printed. Not handwritten.
Which explained how much time the man had had to work up this seemingly exaggerated rage. If he'd already gone back into his flat to trace the licence plate of our van and write and print out notes on his computer, he'd definitely had enough time to reach the boiling point.


Having said all of that, my experience of Norwegians couldn't be further removed from this morning's incident. I know Norwegians as patient, friendly and welcoming.
But for all I know I may have caused this man to miss his train that would take him to work outside Oslo, or even miss his flight towards a holiday somewhere warm. Whatever it was, I'm sure there was enough reason to be furious with me.

Again, Mr. Landrover, please accept my apologies. It won't happen again.


This is what we can see from our balcony. It's 15.43 and the sun is setting.

Everything Kept Falling Apart

We have been immensely busy this week, hence no blog posts. I'll try and catch up with this post.

So this is what happened since Horn:

Friday night: a wild night for some
Saturday morning: a rough morning for some, combined with driving from Horn to Prague.
Saturday afternoon: some more NIE people arrive in Prague. Kjell, Iva, Alex, Cat and I had a meeting about the meeting.
Sunday afternoon: NIE meeting in cafe Montmartre in Prague about making a new Montmartre agreement and working out how our mental touring could stay as mental as it is without killing anyone.

This is the meeting.

This is NIE at Montmartre.

(when I have time in the near future, I will do a photoshop job and put in all the people who couldn't make it last Sunday: Lenka, Henrik, Margit, Kieran, Tuan, Honza, Bara, Tarek and Hannah)

Monday morning: get-in at La Fabrika in Prague
Monday afternoon: play the first show at 5pm
Monday evening: play the second show at 8pm
Monday night: strike at La Fabrika

Monday was not such a good day. We were told that the company that would take us across the Atlantic in November is going bankrupt and cancelled our booking on the banana boat. Alex phoned Cat and asked if she could fix something.

Tuesday morning: drive to Jindrichuv Hradec.
Tuesday afternoon: get-in in Jindrichuv with the same brilliant technicians who helped us in Horn.
Tuesday evening: dinner and an early night in Jindrichuv.

Wednesday morning: 10am show to teenagers of Jindrichuv. It was great fun.






Wednesday lunchtime: get-out at Jindrichuv.
Wednesday afternoon: travel home (for me: five hundred and fifty four kilometres, nine hours and seven minutes, three idiot drivers).
And Cat found us a new cargo ship to sail across the Atlantic with. Top job! I've ordered myself a singing saw to celebrate. I will try to learn and play it on the boat, but I might try a little bit before we set sail, otherwise Alex might kill me (or saw my head off) before we see land.

Today I've been chasing a lighting desk for hours. It wasn't fun. I ended up letting go and getting a different one that didn't have to be chased.
Tomorrow I will go back on the ferry to Norway, to rehearse with the guys from the Song of Lost Treasures. On Sunday we're going to the UK with the Dogs.
Three different shows in four different countries in just over a week. You have to admit that's pretty good going.

Junges Ensemble Stuttgart celebrates its 5th birthday

And we were there to help celebrate. I drove from Oslo to Stuttgart, which is many kilometres and many hours and only one idiot driver, met up with the guys at Dave and Grete's barbecue, and got dragged around Stuttgart by Kjell, who had to show me his newly acquired local knowledge.
The next day we started the get-in at 10pm, knowing that if we'd forgotten or broken anything, there would be no shop to get a replacement, as the next day was May 1.

But the people from JES solved anything that came up, and we were ready to play at 8pm on May 1.

The family Zog was more than ready...

And so were the bare-chested ladies.

On Sunday I went from Stuttgart to Oslo, which was not as easy as it sounds and definitely not as cheap as it sounds.
But I got there in the end and brought Kjell back home to his family.

I've now taken over from Honza on the Song tour and am hoping to bypass the bad luck that's been on their heels last week. They had a very tough week where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Poor Honza said goodbye, saying he hoped the curse would leave him before he got on the plane back to Czech Republic.
The leftovers of their cursed week is that every morning I have to spray the car into action with some special gas that goes straight into the engine. So every morning I disconnect a tube, spray into the other end of it, and start the car with a bang. It's an unusual morning routine, but then again if all mornings were usual, life would be very very boring.


In the meanwhile we are very close to booking our transatlantic boat trip which will happen in the autumn. Isn't that exciting? I think it is.

Schäxpir Festival

Our first show in the Schäxpir Festival was in Wels, about 20 minutes from Linz. The theatre we played in was inside the hotel we were staying in, which was quite strange.
It was a huge old theatre inside a huge old hotel.



This was my room.



The show in Wels was our first performance in German. Here Nils is going through the German text with Iva and Florian (the man from Schäxpir who welcomed us and took care of us in Wels).



After the show we packed up and drove to Linz, where we had just enough time to check in and have lunch, and then we were off to the Landestheater where we had a half hour slot to rehearse the 10 minute excerpt from the show we would perform during the festival opening.
We had to think a little bit about how to do it in a standard theatre set-up (because in this show the audience normally sits on the stage), ran it, and went for a wander across the town square of Linz.
The opening was very nice, there were bits of a variety of shows, but because the festival runs until the end of next week, most of it was from shows that are on now.

After the opening there was dinner in the festival centre and a party. Linz is lovely.

Today we have a day off and tomorrow we play a public show at 3pm, and then it's off to Hradec Kralove for the last festival before our summer break.


PS: in the meanwhile, an other part of the company is in Peterborough, but as I'm not there myself, I don't know how they're doing up there.

Driving to Linz

On Wednesday I drove from Berlin to Linz. It was a 7 hour trip, and this time I took my FM transmitter to listen to music I chose, because in all honesty, German radio is just not suitable for long-distance driving.
There are a few things I've decided during all of the driving I've been doing over the last two weeks.
1. there should be a way to make a GPS more personal. When it tells me to turn in 476km, I'd rather it said 'Just drive'.
2. on driving from Recklinghausen to Berlin on the A2, a road I've travelled many times already, I noticed for the first time there is a statue marking the former border between the BRD and the DDR.
3. on leaving Berlin on the way to Linz, I drive past my favourite part of the Berlin ring road: it has a very old, quite big rusty seating rake alongside the motorway. I guess it was used many years ago for people to watch big parades into the city. Or maybe not.
4. I think I am slowly becoming the love-child of the Deutsche Autobahn and the Norsk Bomstasjon.

Leaving Hanko

Today we rehearsed Nils Petter into EEE (The End of Everything Ever). He will take over from Kjell in Recklinghausen - which is where we're going next.



At 3pm we had to pack up because I had to go to Helsinki to start my journey back to Germany. I am writing this from the ferry.



All I can see is water and the sunset, which certainly has something.


I'm still trying to decide whether it's calming or slightly scary. I'll be on this boat for 24 hours (but they call it superfast, so I guess it must be quite a fast way to get from Helsinki to Rostock). I'm in the bar and a guy is playing the guitar to a mainly Russian audience. In the other bar a mainly drunk Russian audience has just finished watching the football on a far too small tv screen. Ferries are a bit like a different microcosm. It's very unique and if you've ever been on one, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tomorrow night I will arrive in Rostock and drive home to sleep in my own bed. On Monday morning I will get new tires for the car. It deserves them.

Being in Hanko

From Helsinki, I drove to Hanko, which was about two hours away. This is what it looked like on the GPS: the edge of the world...


I'd be the first one to arrive, as the others were all flying in the afternoon. When I got there, our technician Jan (Honza) was waiting for me. He said that everyone had been waiting for me to arrive, and they all wanted to make sure I'd had a good trip, had everything I needed, got a chance to look at the space, and so on and so forth. It was a very warm welcome. Two people were there to look after us specifically, and they were both Czech: Honza and Jitka.

While we waited for a rehearsal to finish, Jitka took me to the hotel, and I had a chance to look at Hanko. It's a tiny town, but it's very very beautiful. By the sea, with big wooden houses all along the beach. You could see the sea from the theatre. And the weather was still fantastic. What more could one want?

Checked in, back at the theatre they were ready for us. I talked Honza through everything we needed and then it was time for lunch. This was my view:




Everyone else arrived in the evening, and they all came over to unpack and I did some more technical work before we ended the evening with a drink.

The next day was a big one: two different shows with a few hours in between. Iva managed to find a beautiful new pisspot (the old one broke because the wardrobe with everyone inside it fell on top of it) and I sprayed over the new metal bits that have been used to reinforce the wardrobe. This is our old friend sunbathing:



The shows went very well and we had an incredibly warm audience for both of them. It made it even nicer to be in Hanko.

Going to Hanko

There have been no posts for a while due to us being in places where there is no world wide internet. Which can be a good thing sometimes.

So. In order to fill you in, this is what we did this week:

On Monday, me and Anna S flew to Norway to rehearse SOLT in German. Auf Deutsch.
When we arrived at Kjell and Iva's house, there was fish soup, and a lovely evening of catching up under the everlasting Norwegian summer light. And then we packed.




On Tuesday we spent all day (and it was a beautiful one) inside Asker Kulturhus and spoke German. On Wednesday Nils, Anna and Lenka rehearsed some more while I set off at the crack of dawn (not literally because the nights are white so there isn't really a dawn or dusk) to drive to Stockholm.
After about 7 hours I reached Stockholm harbour.



And this is my boat, the Mariella. It took me to Helsinki.


There was a great man who was in charge of getting the cars onto the boat, and he did it in an almost choreographed way. I had a little chat with him, in a mix of languages neither of us really spoke all that well, but it kind of functioned. You often meet very nice people while travelling. Some of them you meet again somewhere else, some of them you never meet again. But I wouldn't prefer one over the other.

We're on the road again

I'm off to Schönefeld airport to catch a flight to Oslo, where we will rehearse The Song of Lost Treasures (SOLT) before taking it to Finland. We haven't played this show in a while, and it is relatively new, so we will refresh it a bit before we take it on tour.
In the meanwhile, Anna S (not Anna H who was in NY with us) is on her way from Prague (i think), and we will meet up with Kjell, Nils Petter and Lenka (who all live in or near Oslo).

I will only spend one day with them, as I'm driving/ferrying some sets to Finland so I need to leave earlier.
We will also play The End of Everything Ever in Finland (EEE), and you'll all be happy to now we had our wardrobe reinforced after it crashed to the floor on our last tour.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch this: