It's Over

Everything is packed up in the van ready to go to... Belgium? Germany? Anywhere on the continent that's on the way East will do. But it will probably end up at my family's house in Ghent (Belgium) for a while. We'll go and get it some time in June.

I'm glad to report that our monster meeting went well and we cracked some hard nuts. The result is that I will pretty much fly from South-Africa (which is a holiday, not a tour) to the UK to pick up a van and drive it to Denmark. Before that we'll have three vans circulating in Europe, with different sets in them. In June everything we own (set-wise) will be in transit.

When we arrived at BAC after our meeting yesterday, we found a present. Vado, our Brazilian friend, had left us 6 CDs full of photographs he made of our show, and then some of his own work as a little extra. I'll ask him if I can post some of those as well.

Below are some of his photographs. (There are close to a thousand pictures, so I'll post a few in a few posts, but I won't post them all).

This is how our space looks before the show starts:



This is the state of the space at the end of the show:



This is snow falling in slow-motion.



In the meanwhile the last arrangements are being made with the people in NY, and we'll all travel on Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm hoping for some journey reports of the entire cast.

Elke

Police Magnum

Yesterday I finally managed to track down our delivery that had been lost in the maze of BAC. It's a police magnum, and the plan was that David would use that in the show. Alex wanted louder shots. So I found the gun, had a look at it and then Kjell couldn't wait to try it out.
It's definitely louder. In fact, it's so much louder that we can't actually use it in a space as small as the studio. We'd get complaints. Kjell shot it three times and after half an hour the smoke and smell of buskruit (you might have to look that up, I can't think of the English word for it now) was still hanging in the space.
Then after the show Alex wanted to try it out but I didn't let him because there were still audience members having a drink. So he'll try it today before the show. So if you happen to be around BAC just before 8pm, don't call the police, it's just us trying out our new toy.

This afternoon we have a monster meeting about logistics. Where and how will things be transported around Europe between now and the end of the autumn. Which car is going where and who will take it there. We have three cars, each with their specific purpose (one carries 10 people but not so much luggage, on only has two seats but a lot of luggage space, and one's in between). And we have 6 shows on the road (one of which is still in the making but already has set), which will all have to be somewhere in Europe at some stage between now and December. We have storage space in Asker, Prague, Berlin and Cambridge.

So over the last few days you would have heard me and Kjell have conversations like: if the trilogy needs to be in Ireland in October, it should go along with the rest of the Helsinki stuff and then on to Germany or maybe Czech Republic in June, so that at least it's on the mainland.

After the monster meeting we will be playing our last show at BAC. And Vado will bring in the pictures he took. I will post some tomorrow.

Chaos for beginners

Last night things went a little bit wrong. Half an hour before the show we realised that our last Polish beer had gone missing. So I ran down to Asda and got some more. About 10 minutes into the show Iva broke her vodka bottle and left the stage covered in glass and water. Which Alex cleaned up while we carried on with the show. Another 5 minutes later Iva tried to get some sweets out of the little bag she has taped to her lamp, couldn't quite reach them and everything started falling out, leaving her make up powder (I'm sure there's a name for this but I don't have any make-up vocabulary, even in Dutch) all over the floor.
15 minutes later David got tangled up in the string for the key and ended up having to snap it, making the key fall down before its cue. Again, Alex solved that problem and pulled it back up.
Seeing David's funny walk while he was trying to work out what was stuck to his legs made me laugh. I guess real actors keep a straight face. But I'm not a real actor. Or: I'm not really an actor. Or: I'm a production manager who ended up on a stage by accident. So I laughed a little bit. But I'm at the back in a darkish corner, so I think nobody saw me laugh.

Anyway, I think yesterday was our clumsy day. Despite all of that, it was a good show.
And afterwards we had a Q&A with the audience, and someone suggested we make a show with a Bollywood actor who would randomly break into song and dance...

Three more nights. It still feels like this is week two, not week three. I hope NY doesn't fly by as fast as London has.