canned lunacy
When I was lurking about at Rio airport desperately trying to spend my last few reals, I bought what I assumed was a Brazilian alcopop; a can branded with the local premiere brand of cachaca. It was only a couple of real, and so I shoved it in my bag and forgot about it. Tonight the Nottingham correspondent expressed an interest, so we found an appropriately frivolous glass and I opened the can. To our slight horror, it turned out to be neat spirit, just the thing for a lunchbox. Fortunately we had limes, sugar and ice, so I was able to make the nottingham caiparinha, not bad even if I say so myself.
This put me in mind of a similar experience I had when on tour in Russia, we were staying in Volgograd (aka Stalingrad) in a hotel of monumental greyness, said hotel didn't have a restaurant and we were bussed out for breakfast each morning. They would, for a fee equivalent to a pound, provide a packed lunch; this consisted, without variation, of two sandwiches, one of pink on grey bread and one of yellow on grey bread. This was accompanied by an apple and for some inexplicable reason a Wagon Wheel (bizarre halucinogenic chocolate biscuit laden with e-numbers). The latter were curiously ubiquitous in Russia, as the Russian railways also fed you them as a part of your dining experience. To help wash down the your hotel packed lunch you were given the choice of half a litre of vodka, or the same quantity of Russian brandy.
We didn't actually see that many chronically drunk people when we were out there, although I did see at least one corpse, but it was never a good idea to get into competive drinking. One of our turns (all of five foot four in height) when we were making the return 23 hour train journey to Moscow, was foolish enough to get into a drinking session with a load of cossacks (average height six foot four), these guys were drinking brandy in half pints, and our poor little dancer never stood a chance, at around 2.00 am, when he had run the length of the train screaming 'I need a woman' for the fifth or sixth time, the train guard locked the connecting doors and he spent the night with a load of snoring babushkas in third class. He didn't look so good the next day, despite having been force fed sweet tea by the aforementioned babushkas, with whom you do not mess. One would have hoped that he'd learned his lesson, but of course he hadn't.
hyperbole?
When I'm away from London, as I have been quite extensively this year, I like to pop in to the local website to see what is going on. Generally it features useful information about burst water mains and bus diversions. Recently, however, it featured an article which gets rather carried away with itself, comparing Acton, which is not the most charismatic of places, with the 9th Arrondissement.
I rather enjoy the way that the article starts with a fairly sound premise, and then the author gets carried away with the conceit and it all degenerates into mad gibberish. Judge for yourselves at:
http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&link=http://nnet-server.com/server/common/conhistory02.htmIncidentally, I strongly suspect that the author, one Louise La Teinturiere, is using a nom de plume.
The leaving of Rio
Now it’s all over, I am strangely loathe to depart, I feel as though I have barely scratched a tiny pimple on this huge and compelling country. Culturally the Brazilians are not proactive, preferring to wait for a problem to arrive and then do a lot of shouting. This of course is directly contradictory to our preferred way of working, add to this their propensity to lie charmingly when they think the truth might upset you, and we had a massive cultural clash. No matter, all is well, they loved the show, and we could have done it for another two nights at least, if we didn’t have a show in Sheffield on Friday, of course.
There are bonuses, I get to see the Nottingham correspondent for a couple of nights, conversations via Instant Messenger(tm) are all well and good, but no substitute for the real thing. Ah well, back to blighty, cold wet and miserable, no more foreign jaunts for me until Berlin in December. The good news is that, now they’ve revived one of their most popular shows, the foreign festivals are clamouring for it (especially as the current show has had a muted reception). So next spring; Hungary, Holland and France for starters, and nothing in England.
Rio stories, fit the fourth
Well, we managed to open, and all things considered it was a pretty good show. The theatre crew are very nice, but I would rate them as among the very worst technicians I have had to deal with. Even the specialist lighting crew hired in for the festival (presumably because the organisers realised how useless the locals were), were barely able to undertake one task at a time. My worst nightmare of a UK techie would shine like a rather drunk and sweaty star in their company. My favourite moment, among many, was the point, about 12 hours into the fit-up day, when, in order to make the last dozen or so lights functional, they started dismantling the ones that were already rigged and flashed out. When I protested, their response was; you’ve done these ones what’s the problem? As though a working lantern has its own extra-corporeal identity, and its physical reality is therefore fair game.
The Rio audience is also a strange thing, for starters, we had an altogether different slant on starting the show. Don’t wait for the audience, we were urged, they won’t come in until they hear the show has started. This particular show has about fifteen minutes of silent action at the beginning, so we might have had a long wait. Once we had the audience in, they were the most restless and fidgety I have seen in a long time, ebbing and flowing in and out of the auditorium, changing seats, opening sweets and so on. There is a long section, towards the middle of the show, where two performers, naked but for the three foot tinfoil and cardboard stars that they hold, stand centre stage and discuss the various types of silence. This is a very meditative (and actually quite funny) part of the show, and a Brazilian woman in front of us chose that moment to start opening wrapped sweeties, when shushed by the surrounding patrons, she chose to pick a fight, not very sotto voce, with those around her. As for mobile phones, the opening ten minutes or so, were a positive cacophony of ring-tones, once we’d got past the ‘I can’t speak now, I’m in the theatre, yes, the theatre…’ moment, it all calmed down, with only the occasional call being received.
The show also has at least three false endings, during each one, about half the stalls (and presumably the balconies too), got up and ran for the exits, only to creep back in, rather sheepishly, when they realised it was still going on. In the minibus on the way back afterwards (we all but one eschewed the inevitable party), I proposed that they do a show consisting entirely of endings, and that the only way the show could actually finish would be when there was no audience left. This proposal was not received with massive enthusiasm for some reason.
Nature notes; The theatre (and to a certain extent, this hotel also) is overrun with tiny fire ants, these are about a tenth of the size of a British ant, but much nastier, they climb up your trouser legs and bite your ankles, not venturing any higher than your knees, thankfully. The bite they leave itches madly for several hours. While we were onstage the other day, I was entranced to spot a tiny yellow and black lizard, about an inch and a half long, pop up out of a crack in the stage. Plainly not in a lizard friendly environment, I chased it upstage until it was tired enough for me to pick it up and have a look at it, then deposited it outside the back of the theatre, where it stood a better chance of finding prey.
Rio stories part tries.
Too many phones, not enough people. Every one of the festival people we have encountered has two phones, not only that but they ring constantly. Raphael, our minder/official time user, is called by his manager every 15 minutes without fail, and every day has to give a report on our activities. Not surprisingly the turns are beginning to rebel, and are refusing to be taken to lunch/dinner, nor do they want to be whisked past interesting places in a minibus with blacked out windows. Our hosts are very charming and generous, but they have obviously decided that we aren’t safe out and have to be kept occupied at all times.
Tonight my production manager and I eschewed the common herd and decided to go eat in the locality, we had previously stopped for a beer at a bar/charcoal pit diner, and were rather taken by the staffs’ obvious liking for their own food, when we were sitting there they were forever cooking bits and pieces for themselves, always a good sign in my opinion. Our food was very good, I had a spit roasted mini-chicken and my colleague a skewer with about a pound of beef on it, the bill for both meals, with beers and salad, came to about £10.00. On our way back we stopped at a beach front kiosk for a caiparinha, the local speciality drink: crush limes and sugar together, add about a pint of the local spirit, shake vigorously with some ice and stand well back. I think I’ll sleep through any traffic events tonight.
Friday: At last we are allowed into the theatre, and very rapidly it becomes clear that whilst there have been a lot of e-mails flowing, and a lot of information sent, none of it has percolated down to the right people. Extra lighting equipment has been hired in to supplement the frankly suicidal lanterns that the venue owns, but nobody has a list. We shouted and screamed to get a 9.00 am get-in, which was fine, our transport was late because Raphael had to drop his report off at the office, but it didn’t matter because the crew were later, and the hired lights weren’t due to arrive until 11.00 (eventually turning up about 12.00). My situation is relatively straightforward, despite the best efforts of the local crew to make it seem otherwise, it is a small, fairly uncomplicated design, meant to look shabby. I would expect to be able to deal with it in a couple of hours without having to stress, twelve hours later we are still not done, and the house electricians desire to be helpful, from a point of total misunderstanding, has made things even slower. The festival technical manager has spent the whole day sitting in the front row of the stalls, shouting into her two telephones, not very productively it has to be said.
The poor sound bloke (my production manager), has had an even worse day; his brief is very uncomplicated, two cd players, three microphones and a reverb operated from a desk onstage (and feeding a pair of speakers onstage, about which more anon), with a feed going to the front of house sound desk. A large part of the show revolves around these two crap, clichéd roadies (actors, obviously), who generally torment the other performers (I don’t know where they got this from, we’re lovely, mostly). Suffice it to say, there are endless microphone checks, insensitive use of smoke etc, etc.
The point is that someone from the theatre saw the technical requirements and said; ‘they don’t need all this stuff, the house system is fabulous, we can do it all without having to put a desk onstage’, so we were a little put out to find that the sound hires weren’t turning up until 2.00, and more put out to discover that they had cut almost all of it. This afternoon has seen a procession of noise boys bringing stuff to us, only to be told it won’t do. The classic is the two onstage speakers, these are moved about by the roadie actors, but they are also stood on, and at one point a woman in a gorilla costume climbs on one and pours beer and water all over herself (The show is non-ironically titled ‘Bloody Mess’). The sound company produced a pair of powered speakers (ie, they have an amplifier built in), the idea of adding beer and water to this equation was not attractive. The current impasse is two non-identical speakers, one grey, one black, but apparently all that is available in the whole of Brazil. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and more importantly, the opening night, whatever happens we’ll have a show, a few hours tomorrow morning should fettle it.
Rio stories part dois
Sods law plays a large part in theatre, yesterday, which was theoretically a day off, although the supervised meal-breaks made this more of a concept than a reality, the weather was humid and overcast, today, when we are supposed to be in a dark theatre, the morning is clear and bright, the Atlantic sparkles appealingly, and even the traffic seems benign. We were told last night that the crew at the Theatre Carlos Gomes didn’t want to work today, they couldn’t see why we couldn’t put the show in tomorrow. This kind of thing is common outside the UK, people make assumptions about your show based on the most tenuous knowledge, in many ways it is better than the attitude of stolid indifference that you encounter in most UK venues; at least it is safe to assume that they have looked at the technical information they have been sent. In this case we need to get-in early because the show hasn’t been performed for nine months, and is quite technologically specific (not complicated), not to mention that I haven’t actually seen it. What paperwork I have has conflicting information on it, and so on. On the other hand, it won’t be a disaster if we can’t get-in today, just an inconvenience.
Nature notes; As I haven’t yet strayed far from Copacabana beach, there isn’t much to report, the beach front is lined with palm trees of various sorts. The coconut palm is common, and coconut sellers are ubiquitous. Further away from the sea the streets are planted with mango trees and a form of chestnut. Apparently, in season, which isn’t now unfortunately, one can just pick a mango from the tree as you walk down the street. I haven’t seen much in the way of birdlife, there are some magnificent birds that fly very high, large, with swept back wings and a long straight tail, our minder assures me that they are the Brazilian condor and feed off carrion. I’ll take this with a pinch of salt, because he has a tendency to tell you what he thinks you want to hear, charming but infuriating. I’ve also seen a very tiny pink pigeon, about the size of a starling, and in the distance some very large hawks patrolling the mountains that rise about a couple of miles out of town.
Update: my researches inform me that the seabirds are in fact the 'Magnificent Frigate Bird'.
If you were to read a little further back in this blog you will find several references to Monkey Puzzle trees (Araucaria Araucana), well I am delighted to report that in the better class of Rio greengrocer they have little nets of Monkey Puzzle seeds for sale, evidently a seasonal delicacy. When I bought some fresh seed earlier this year the Nottingham correspondent and I did actually eat one, by way of an experiment, not unlike a fresh hazelnut in taste and texture.
Late news, we’ve actually seen the theatre, although they have a show in tonight and were never going to give us access. All of which begs the question, why were we sent out three days before the get-in? I’m not objecting to being sent out here, far from it, but the office does seem to have been very slack with this one.
Rio stories
The flight was fairly awful, I found myself sandwiched between an enormous and combative Frenchman, and a Brazilian complete with infant, who had already staked her claim to my seat by means of competitive luggage. To add to the general misery there was already a used and soggy nappy in the magazine holder. Eventually, Mrs Brazilian was persuaded to move her encampment to two seats elsewhere, and I had a little more room. My companion was fairly mute, his English wasn’t good, my French wasn’t any better and we had little to say, he did snore quite melodically though.
No matter, despite not having a visa (an oversight by our administrator) I was allowed into the country without having to play my joker (a letter from the British council). Now I am sitting in my Copacabana beach front hotel, watching the Atlantic waves crash on the beach, ignoring the six-lane highway, beach volleyball players and the diggers making an enormous hole in the sand just outside my window. It’s 9.00 am local time (1.00 pm UK time), my plane landed at 5.30 am and outside the temperature is climbing past 26 degrees. I breakfasted on papaya and fresh pineapple, a bit of a contrast to the tub of tinned fruit salad that Air France offered at about 3.00 am. Not a lot else to report, I had a bit of a wander before breakfast, but as everything was closed cannot report great success. We have our own liaison person, whose name sounded like a sneeze when he introduced himself at the airport, but subsequent deduction suggests is probably Raphael, we are being taken to lunch apparently, I know that touring revolves around meals, but this is getting serious.
One of our cast decided to see if he could eke out his meagre per diems (daily food allowance) in Newcastle, by eating everything on the breakfast menu at least twice. As he is stick thin, you could actually see his breakfast gradually reducing. I’m not sure that it worked that well as a theory, as he still went to the pub and went for meals with the rest of the company. There has been a general theory about going to a football match tonight, apparently there is some sort of local derby, and Brazilian football matches are supposedly unlike any other. For a brief minute I had a flicker of interest, maybe I would finally get the point… When I was doing a show at Southampton FC for some petrol company earlier this year I briefly wandered into the auditorium, and was quite taken with the atmosphere, even when it was empty. The absolute clincher for me was the size of the stadium here, it seats about 200.000 apparently, as I don’t like crowds that makes it a definite no-no as far as I am concerned.
Rather boringly, it is 6.30 local time (10.30 UK), quite dark outside, although this doesn’t seem to bother the beach volleyball players, who have floodlights. I have walked most of the way up and down Copacabana beach today, and whilst it is much nicer, say, than Cannes, I’m not entirely sure what all the fuss is about. Oh, and I went to Ipanema for lunch, and there was no-one long and tall and lean and lovely there at all, I feel a little cheated. Oh well, for sure tomorrow will bring its own excitements, when we attempt to put the show into the venue, all the arrangements have been done by e-mail with a great deal of mystification on both side, wish me luck.
