Shawks blog

Fringe Reminder

Tonight, July 8: Run through starts at 7 – Music at 8
July 9: OFF
July 10: OFF
July 11: Farmer’s Market AM to infiltrate – we’ll chat tonight
July 12: Choreography 4 pm – plan on 3 hours. When you aren’t being choreographed – will be running scenes in other part of building. Will be in appropriate costumes for the numbers being choreographed for this rehearsal. Songs being choreographed: SPERMALOT, Something New With You, C’mon Ova, Chlamydia.
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Went to a concert that was part of some degree requirement for a pair of instructors. The performance was quite good, though I don’t think I properly appreciated the white-Brit boy rappers. They seemed to have established the whole gesturing and strutting thing with the wardrobe but I think they need a bit more practice on the diction and synching. Otherwise for the other groups the instrumental work was good, lighting was passable, video playback was clever, vocals good (though couldn’t understand the rapper guest spots), overall audio for the setting was about right for the save of space and the clarity was pretty good. 
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March 6, 2009

Got up early after having fiddled around with packing until late including a trip to Walmart to buy an entirely new set of luggage.  Stared at suitcases quite a bit trying to decide if I had too much or not enough stuff in them. Mom came up and met me to haul me around. Realized I should have some better tags for the suitcase (things fell apart on landing) so picked those up on our way to lunch. We ate at my current favorite restaurant, Chinese Express on EP True / 50th in West Des Moines and chatted with the owner. Then we went over to the airport and had a coffee and waited for my flight. Being jumpy about the whole check in and security process since I hadn’t done it in nine years I said bye to mom and went through security and had about an hour to twiddle my thumbs. Ran into the first hiccup here, small plane with tiny overheads so they took one of my carry-ons and stowed it below. My laptop kit didn’t really fit below either so I had it between my feet all the way to Memphis.
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Well Friday was an interesting day. April talked me into running a workshop on a theatre piece I’d worked on in 2007 for the Des Moines Fringe Festival. It’s a bit, colorful, in language and appearance to which I wasn’t sure I wanted to expose to another country. The students however took to it with gusto and created their own versions of the title puppets and then performed scenes from the script. Between construction and performance they viewed the dvd of the show from the final night of the Fringe. Everyone had fun though some of that was from unintentional humor like the student trying to figure out how to turn the pages of the script with a puppet on each hand. Or interesting pronunciation of medical terms.
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Last night was interesting. One of the students in hospitality had contacted April to get some actors together to do a murder mystery dinner. This went down last night in the restaurant attached to the Grimsby Institute. One of the students had gotten tickets to the English football game and pulled out the night before so April got back into the show as one of the performers. It seemed to be recieved fairly well and they performed well considering the arrangements by the onsite staff changed right on into the show.

The meal was well presented in several courses, I am pretty sure that I’m going to be one of those blokes that never gets into the haute cuisine. I was pondering where the nearest burger joint might be as it didn’t seem completely filling. Also I knew they might do something to me during the show, and they did. One of the actresses dumped a glass of ice water in my lap about 2/3 of the way through. That was a bit unpleasant. Sat with Liz, Angie, and Franko. Not a bad night overall sans wet trousers. Watched the crew out back moving he excavator around to adjust the drainage of the field. Now I’m going to make something quick for lunch and see about posting some more blog posts covering the earlier part of the trip.