Tour to France

After a brief stop on the East Coast to dump most of my belongings, repack into a smaller suitcase, and pick up plenty of props and show equipment, it was off to France with the show from Edinburgh last year.

A week in St. Etienne, down by Lyon, would be followed by three weeks in Paris. It's a highly ambitious show to load in, but we had a great team, and we knew what we were doing, after Edinburgh. The show had also gone to the London Mime Festival in January, while I was on ships.


So off to St. Etienne, to work exclusively in French, loading in a full convenience store into some kind of performance space. We weren't sure exactly where we were performing. We knew it was the Palais des spectacles, but exactly where in the 6-acre building, we didn't know.


The team we met there was a little overfaced by what we proposed to do. We needed to install a full ceiling, floor and walls. Plus very specific lighting and sound plots, and intricate rigging for all of the tricks of the play. Like our ducks that need to fly through the ceiling. I think they thought our french was just very bad...




But the magic of theater prevailed, and despite constant doubts on our part, we opened on time. The actors did the entire show in French, changing the script over into a different language. We performed in a wildly different space from anything the show had seen before. And we performed despite deafeningly loud rain beating on the roof of our venue, drowning out the subtle and silent sound design, and breaking the actors' voices as they tried to yell over the chaos.

We played to sold out houses, and were well received. And three days later, we struck it and headed to Paris.

Through the open door of a windowless van...

On the day of strike in St. Etienne, we had the morning off. Which meant time to explore the town. The company that was transporting the set from London down to St. Etienne was also taking the set up to Paris, which meant they were sticking around town with us for the week it took to install and perform our show. Which meant we had a van at our disposal.


This van had three seats, though, and we were seven people. So most of us packed into the back of the van, sitting on spare tires, leaning against bikes bungeed to the side walls. We left the van door opened, and proceeded to try to claw our way out of the city for a brief breath of fresh air.


After 10 minutes of driving and about 300 left turns (and not a single right turn), we saw greenery. Then it was into the magnificent foothills of the Alps, through forest and valley, overlooking fields of cattle and forested hills.


We stopped at a park with a nice trail system, winding around a small stream in a forested valley. It was a beautiful day for hiking, and we enjoyed ourselves wandering through the woods. We stopped for a picnic lunch on some logs.


All of a sudden, a group of people drove up the logging road, stopped in the glade next to us, and unloaded a large picnic. A couple women in stripped shirts sauntered over. Apparently, it was a hen party, or a pre-marital tradition, or their own bridal shower prank. The bride-to-be, in drag and named Robert, was to greet and kiss as many men as possible, then have them sign her shirt for good luck.


Always an adventure...

I've slept in 29 states

My family is relatively well-traveled, so when we were all gathered together in the same city last month, we started talking about who had been to more states. We weren't exactly sure, but my dad ranked pretty high from his bike trip across the country in college. I hands down have lived in more states (7 or 8). But an area of contention came in who has slept in the most states. Visiting is always so vague, with airport stops or driving through. My dad had slept in every state he passed through while biking, so his total was very high. I decided to tally my states:

I have slept in these states because I:

Lived there
1. California
2. Delaware
3. Virginia
4. Pennsylvania
5. Illinois
6. New Hampshire
7. Arkansas

Went to horse shows there:
8. Kentucky
9. Maryland
10. North Carolina
11. Tennessee

Worked there:
12. New York
++ Washington DC
13. Massachusetts
14. Texas

Visited friends there:
15. Maine
16. Connecticut
17. Missouri

Went on family vacation there:
18. South Carolina
19. Florida
20. Alaska
21. Hawaii
22. Colorado
++ Puerto Rico

Drove through (and spent the night):
23. Michigan
24. Ohio
25. Indiana
26. Utah
27. Nevada
28. Kansas

Other reasons:
29. Wyoming (EMT course)
30?. Washington (I worked on a cruise ship sailing out of Seattle: I would wake up having arrived in Seattle, spend the day there, then depart before going to sleep. I don't know if this counts)

Which makes the states that I've been to but haven't slept in:
New Jersey
West Virginia
Rhode Island
Arizona
New Mexico
Vermont
And Washington?

Looks like I've got a lot of sleeping to do. And 14 more states to visit.

Bears, a mountain goat, lizards, butterflies...

...and SNOW! In June.


First stop of my road trip was Yosemite National Park. My plans to hike in the Tuolomne Meadows area were immediately dashed when the ranger said it was snowbound, with feet of snow still on the ground (makes trail finding a bit difficult, and setting up camp nearly impossible). So I went with plan B, which was a quick hike around the Hetch Hetchy area. The snow line was at around 8,000', so I only went up to about 7,500'.


The hike was gorgeous, as Hetch Hetchy is known to be. I started the trail late in the day, at 5pm, but made it up the side of the reservoir valley to the meadows beyond. I camped beside a small lake in the crest between two hills.


There was a perfect campsite already established, with a sandy spot for tent pitching, logs to sit around a fire, and a small established fire ring. Someone had also left firewood stacked by the ring, which was helpful when I arrived right after sunset, as darkness was setting in.


I had a perfect fire, completely alone in the middle of perfect scenery, with perfect weather, and the perfect amount of gear and clothes. It was quite an amazing trip. It made me want to go camping every weekend. There's something about a campfire that is so alien to regular life.


The next day, at Beehive Meadow, I happened upon large sheets of white. At first, I thought they were large slabs of granite, peeking through the ground. Then I got closer and realized they were snowdrifts. In June. Awesome.


The weather didn't feel cold at all, but I was hiking rather quickly, so I kept myself warm. It was pretty neat to see snow. That further threw off my concept of seasons, and now I have no idea what 'regular' weather would be like, in whatever part of the world I'm supposed to use as reference. I couldn't even pick a hemisphere to start...

Besides snow, I saw plenty of lizards (at lower elevations), a startled mule deer just coming to drink, the horns and head of a fleeing mountain goat, butterflies and dragonflies and a mother bear and her cub.


In total, it was 15 miles of hiking with about 3,000 feet of elevation gain, and I was back at the car by noon. It was a great itinerary, and a great start to an across-the-country odyssey.

Across the country

It's my first complete cross-country adventure. I've only driving across the eastern half of the country before, from the East Coast to the Mississippi. Now I'm crossing the entire country. So I'll make a trip out of it. Here's to Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, and friends in Colorado and Missouri.

See you in Philadelphia.

Time lapse strike

Here's what happens when we strike a show. This is three hours of work condensed to just over three minutes of footage, from a picture every 5 seconds.

One week on land and one show opened

A week after my epic flight across the globe, it was opening night in San Francisco.

A few days after touching down, I started loading in a show at a theater in town. I appreciated having no down time, taking a day to get on the time zone, then hitting the ground running. It kept me busy, and launched me into land life. Granted, 14-hour days working inside a theater aren't exactly regular life, but for me, they're as normal as it gets.

After three days of loading in, we were ready to open. It was an incredibly smooth load in and tech rehearsal process. We're getting good at this show. It was Chekhov Lizardbrain, most recently from Poland, then Pennsylvania. I had last worked on it in New York City, on that ill-fated tour stop where we had to build a theater inside of a theater, and I broke my wrist while loading the truck. But no hard feelings about the show, we are turning pro.