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.

Everything Falls Apart in The Waldviertel

We just went to Szene Bunte Wähne, which is one of my favourite festivals. It's in a place called Horn, a small town in the Waldviertel of Austria. One of the great things about it is the place we perform in: an old barn that comes with a voluntary fireman who has the most amazing white beard. He's there every year and looks after the space and the bar.

The other great thing about it is that international delegates from across the world travel down to this small town to see international theatre, so you find yourself at the festival centre talking to people from Canada, Korea, Scotland, Liechtenstein and so on.
I always wonder what the people of Horn make of this sudden foreign invasion.

I did some time lapse photography in the barn.
This is our get-in.

This is the 10am show we played on Friday.

There was something very bizarre about our accommodation: every night when I got back, my bed hadn't been made. The others said theirs had been made. But I could see from the folded edge of the toilet paper that someone had been in the room. Every day they folded the toilet paper edge into a nice triangle, but for some reason unknown to me they would not make my bed. Why would that be?

At the moment we are in Prague for a company meeting - most of the NIE members are here so we can sit together and discuss our future plans of roaming the world.

Tomorrow we will play in La Fabrika, and then we move on to Jindrichuv Hradec. It's a very full week, but it's great to have the chance to play our newest show.