west uptowner

a very brief clip of the performance - I think we did well to just get through the show, though we had a glitch or two. For the 7pm showing we actually lost power for a second right after we got the house, and had to wait for a projector to cycle through a recovery for a minute to start the show. I thought we would be sitting for ten minutes - but no, we got lucky.
Can't say enough about the value of a good team of dedicated people. The kind who solve a problem when they see it, instead of asking for answers to every question they bump into.

This is a shot of the street we are living on - la Tercera - and every afternoon around 2pm we get vicious rain. We flew within spitting distance of the Equator for Vancouver weather. Actually , the rains have caused numerous landslides this year, and the city is quite chaotic because of it.
so. It's the day of our show. I arrive with a some help from Heather Braaten, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, and Chris Stanton - we had a couple of hours in the room last night to rig our projection screen, run some cables, and set up a camera or two.
This morning we start getting out a few other items: I pull out our projector and our playback gear, while Heather and the boys prep the space. We rip a big mirror off the wall by the mens' washroom to give our rear projector enough throw distance. This will force us to re-block about four scenes, but we have no choice at this point.
By 9am we are in pretty good shape to set up wings, sound, and lights, but Jaime, our house tech / the man who fixes everything in the building, doesn't arrive until 10:30am and then has to solve some electricity issues in the theatre - namely, that there is none in most parts of it. No problem - it gives me time to hang our front projector, and the cast trickles in to begin warming up.
We were hoping to start tech-ing the show around noon, but Jaime is in and out of the booth because every 20 minutes someone yells into the room "Jaime!!" and he gives his stock response, "Dime!" ('talk to me'), and then gets sucked back out that thing that happens outside of the theatre - life.
We do manage to stumble through the show, tweaking - that's a kind word - completely reblocking chunks of the show as needed. When there is no choice but to launch in and make brave choices, that's what you do.
And I believe it paid off. But that's another story.

It's two days before our first presentation of a very technical show. We waited for a few hours the day before, to get a chance to enter the theatre and play in the space, but recent rains had flooded the room so some work had to be done to fix the floor. It is the rainy season in Bogota, and it's also our first day acclimatizing to the altitude. We decide, after a few hours of waiting and dithering, to relax and get ready for a good workout on the next day.

It's the day before our presentation of Nohayquiensepa. We were told to show up from 11am to 3pm. I knew we would be asked to leave early - after all, another show is being presented in that room at 5pm - but I didn't anticipate that on our arrival we would be told to wait an hour because the fresh paint on the floor and walls had not dried.

So we worked for 2 hours, walking through the show, performers getting black feet from occasionally finding the tacky spots on the floor.

But we are all here to make this work happen, so you do what you have to.

Our new piece-in-the-works, Nohayquiensepa, flies (well - the ten of us involved in the making of it fly) to Colombia to present at the "Women on Stage" (Mujeres En Escena) festival this week.

I am exhausted - I was accused of directing this thing a year and a half ago, and now I suppose that's what I'm doing. It's daunting but refreshing as well - aspecially when I have a brilliant group of performers willing to launch into things with me.

more on our trip in the next week or so..