Diary of a flying pig: Danish Tour 11/1

Haderslev!

Waking to a crisp autumn morning here in Haderslev, Andrew, Neils and I enjoyed the pleasures of a good Danish hotel breakfast (Thanksgiving dinner, compared ot USA hotel breakfasts) with 50 kinds of bread, cereal, fruit, cheese, eggs, sausage and even bacon! I felt kind of guilty getting both the Bacon and having a trouser press in my room, but Andrew said not to worry about it. After eating, we walked down the the theatre for a 9am load in!

Møllen (Mill) Teater is an ancient Mill, that a group of people took over and turned into a theater. It's a pretty spectacular building, with headers the size of platters, cool old stonework, and great staicases and corridors. The only downside to the place is that it is pretty small, and the theatre is on the third floor. What that means is that you pull the truck up, load small loads into the cage/cart contraption they have attahced to a winch on the 3rd floor, they hoist it up, and pile EVERYTHING on top of itself into the the theatre, and only once everything is in can you actually start setting up! Just getting the stuff in took 2 hours (after which we had a break for tea and coffee- remember, this is Denmark!), and then it was a matter of arranging and rearranging everything constantly so you had space to put everything up. Thankfully, the improvement that the Danes made cut load-in time by about half, and eliminated most of the major problems, but still, the set is pretty finicky and high maintenance, so we weren't totally done with load-in & focus until about half hour before show-whew! The actors got in about 4pm, and we did a work run, as there was only one backstage entrance, the stage was 1 meter more shallow than we were used to, and some traffic patterns had to be reworked.

The show was a pretty weird one- we were working our butts off, but the audience was very tentative with laughter and reaction. I think it was simply a matter of lanugage, as we're kind of out of the bigger city and English probably isn't as prevalent as it is in Aalborg... We made it through the show without any major catastrophes, (although we did have both a watch alarm during the funeral and a cell phone go off in the final "pieta" image, and there was one woman who was very loudly translating the show for her husband), and then headed into town. This little piggy went back to the hotel, but everyone else went to a local bar until 2am for some late night carousing, and by coincidence met up with an ex-student of Pia's who bought beers and shots for everyone, and then invited everyone back to his place for a party. Only Oliver went, and I still haven't seen him.

I hope he remembers there's a show tonight.

LESSONS FOR THE DAY
In Denmark, coffee takes precedence over everything.
One key to working with a shallower stage- little steps.
Always remember to check and see if Joan has her "leafy lady lump" on before she enters the stage.

4 legs good, 2 legs bad-
PIG