Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

It's one of those things that happens to me I guess; on Wednesday I found myself sitting in Vienna Airport waiting for a connecting flight to Skopje, just for a change I was going to a strange theatre (as it turned out very strange), in a strange country, to relight a show I hadn't seen, and designed by a lighting designer I've never met.

We were playing at the Macedonian state opera and ballet house, a monstrous white concrete structure, all brutal angles and angular asymetric windows, built in the 1980's to replace an earlier theatre that fell down in an earthquake. The stage was conventional enough, although entirely designed around the concept of rather traditional opera and ballet productions, and not entirely suitable for the more austere requirements of contemporary dance, which, by the way was what I was being paid to do. The auditorium, however, revealed clear signs of substance abuse by the architects, the seating was banked up in a quite steep asymetric 'v' shape, with more than half of the seats at an angle to the stage. The seats themselves were not antiraked, so large chunks of the audience was sitting on a slant; walking from the stage, which was entirely conventional and free from gimmicks, and up to the lighting control room was a slightly queasy experience. The control room was entered through a parallelogram shaped door, hidden behind a vast concrete slab.

The joint artistic directors, my new employers, who chose to interview me by telephone, rather than pay for me to travel down to see them, have just conspired together to produce a baby, and this seems to have have had a fairly catastrophic effect on their ability to concentrate. Said infant, who is entirely placid and well-behaved, was, nonetheless a somewhat distracting travelling companion.

We were hit by, what for me was a new experience; Puccini politics, our production schedule had been determined and agreed weeks before we went out, however, this was an Opera house (with resident Opera and ballet companies), and the Director was not entirely happy at having his theatre used for something as peculiar as contemporary dance (especially as we use electronic instruments). Consequently, he decided that they should do La Boheme, and decided to call full orchestra and chorus rehearsal during our supposed fit-up period, the fact that he had no actual performances scheduled was a bit of a giveaway. He also cancelled the calls for the technical staff, so even when we did get the stage, there were no electricians in the building. Normally a theatre would use some form of access tower, ladder or tallescope to get to the lighting over the stage, not in Skopje, the only way they had to focus the stage was to fly each lighting bar in in turn, point the lights, fly it out, note where each adjustment needed to be made, fly it in again, adjust, fly it out and continue in this fashion until the production electrician (me), is ready to slit his wrists. This method is known in the UK industry as 'bounce focussing' and is only used as a last resort, as the level of precision required to focus a show properly is almost unattainable.

This was probably the last arts venture for the British Council in Macedonia, as they would appear to have appointed a new head with the specific mandate of closing down all cultural links with the UK that don't make money. Although he did attend the performance, and lasted the whole hour, he wasn't sufficiently cultured to come and say hello, unlike the ambassador. It is customary on these occasions, however horrendous the experience, for the sponsor to show his face, and for us to thank him (it is nearly always a man in a suit). Apparently, if you are wanting BC money to take British culture abroad, then you should look to the middle east, or to africa, the Balkans, now that they are no longer chewing bloody lumps out of each other, are no longer of interest. I can't help feeling that it is very short-sighted to turn our backs on these nations, English is the most popular foreign language, and football keeps this country firmly in the picture. Maybe they think if we don't send them any more contemporary dance companies then this will slow down the flow of migrants from Eastern Europe, thinking about it, this may actually be the reason.

I learned three words of Macedonian, which seemed to be enough (even the stall holders in the market could manage a few words of English), these were; beer, peanuts and motherf*cker,
Most of the venue technicians got by with just the last one. Despite what could have been seen as quite a negative experience, I liked Macedonia, I don't think I'd choose to go there for my holidays, but the people were nice and mostly pretty laid back and friendly