First show in Shanghai

This is a daylight version of the nightshot I posted a few days ago. It was early afternoon - the time of day is sometimes very confusing because the pollution filters the sunlight which makes it look like early evening.


Iva was released from hospital today and is feeling a lot better, so we performed tonight.

These are some pictures from our get-in yesterday.

The boys putting the wardrobe together

Working on the subtitles with Sky, our subtitle man. We had an interesting discussion about the differences between English humour and Chinese humour.

After getting in, we went to a fantastic tepanyaki restaurant next door to the hotel.

This was our chef for the night, who cooked what we ordered at our table.

Bara's very interesting soup. DYI.

Our table and the table behind us.

Today David and I went to the Science Museum (which was quite disappointing). The view was almost futuristic because of the smog and all the buildings that have been built in the last 10 years.



Some things we've learnt in China:

• chopstick skills - we were rubbish on the first day and now we're a lot better. I wouldn't say masters, but still - there has been a clear improvement.
• haggling - again, in the beginning we were quite soft, but now we're all quite tough at bartering. We probably still pay too much, but we are definitely very close to Chinese prices (I think).
• crossing roads. In Beijing the issue was the very wide boulevards, in Shanghai the challenge is that traffic lights don't seem to matter at all and there are thousands of scooters and bikes in addition to millions of cars.
  

Getting in in Shanghai

The get-in in Shanghai was quite unusual. I was introduced first to the technical manager, then to the stage manager, and then to the lighting designer of the theatre, a very trendy looking man whose English name I forgot. But he was the one who'd be doing lights with me. He went through the lighting plan with me and then said he would get the workers to move some lights.

So three little old men appeared with a talloscope and a ladder and they moved some lights.

Then I wanted to get on with focusing lights, but apparently first the projector had to be installed by the three men. They rigged it (one on the talloscope, two moving it around at the bottom). Then another man focused it and wired it up.

Finally it was time for lights. The trendy man was nowhere to be seen, but the stage manager and a woman sat behind the lighting desk. The woman was also the translator.
I was one stage, asking for various lighting channels, the light would come on and the three little men moved the ladder and focused. They didn't speak English, though, so whatever I wanted went through the woman, who translated it to the stage manager, who told the three men what to do. And they carried on telling each other.

So there were constantly 5 people talking to each other in Chinese, and I would talk through them, into the darkness of the auditorium, hoping the woman could hear me. More often than not she did, and what I asked for happened, almost miraculously. Sometimes she didn't, and then I would just wait until I knew for sure that she hadn't heard me, and try again.

It might not seem like it, but it did actually go quite fast. And only once did I ask for something again when they had heard me, but where discussing what it was I asked for.

After a while I thought I'd understood what 'smaller' was in Chinese, so I tried it out, but it didn't work. It's clearly not as easy as that.

Today Iva got very ill and we had to cancel the show. She's in hospital with a stomach infection and we all hope she'll be better soon. The rest of us are fine, so we can't work out what it was she ate.
They offered the audience tickets for another night, so we hope everyone can still see the show later this week.

He's in Denmark, we're in Shanghai

Today we flew from Beijing to Shanghai. Shanghai is warmer than Beijing, and totally different. It almost feels like being in a different country.
It all started at 9am this morning, when they came to pick up our set, and the set of TNT, who also played in Beijing and were on the same plane to Shanghai.



Luckily, this was not how they transported the set to the airport. There was a bus at the end of the road to transport set and people.


At the airport, we had just enough people to push the trolleys we needed to get all of our stuff to the check-in desk.



In Shanghai, we were picked up by Ray and Tracy. (I should probably tell you that most of the Chinese people we've been meeting have English names as well as Chinese names - I think they do it to help us out - so Ray and Tracy are Chinese, and work for the Dramatic Arts Centre in Beijing). The space looks great and has a very nice bar on the 6th floor overlooking Shanghai.



After we checked in at the hotel, we went for a meal and afterwards Bob and I went for a walk to see Shanghai by night.



Shanghai has tree-lined streets and is a mix of old and new, but in a different way from Beijing. The new is very new, very American, and probably tacky and cheap. But very lively. Beijing is more serious, has incredibly wide avenues and feels more like a city you really need to know in order to know where to go. Shanghai seems easier. It's been compared to NY and Vegas, but I think that's not entirely right. It's much more a mix of the most unlikely combination of Europe, Asia and America. NY is a more likely mix. If that makes any sense at all.