Pinocchio & Wooden Heart at Polruan today, as part of the Sunnyside Festival. Its our last Cornish date of WH...after almost 18 months of touring the two shows throughout the UK. Its going to be a hectic day- looking forward to it!
10.30am Trailer is hitched up to the landrover, and we're on our way! A rather exciting ferry trip across the river from Fowey...Pinocchio enjoyed meeting a rather friendly mallard on the boat.
12.15pm Arrive, meet the promoter and scope out the venue. Small hiccup! The rather beautiful but slightly impractical narrow streets of Polruan weren't built for our 34 ft trailer, we can't get to the venue with the vehicle! Benj makes the impossible possible...and manages to reverse the trailer down a windy street, with about a thumb-sized gap on either side. Still about 150m away though! Now for a bit of a monster get-in.... we're going to use the venue's staging, but we still have a lot of heavy kit to manoeuvre. Steel toe-caps and rigging-gloves on!
3.15pm Thanks to some additional help from lovely techicians Matt & David, we have finished the get in! And now for a welcome 45 minute lunch at the village pub. Couldn't resist filming our hilly struggle from the trailer to the hall... listen out for some comedy chuntering!
4.30pm Pinocchio performance. Just under a 100 audience in the hall, it was a good one! Here's a jolly Lottie in the dressing room with minutes to go before the show.
6.00pm Now for the changeover...time is tight before the next performance, so the lovely promoter Tony lends us his car so we can ferry the many suitcases that make up our Pinocchio set back up to the trailer, allowing us to do the build for Wooden Heart in record time. We run through a tech-heavy scene (we always like to work at least one extract on stage after we've had a gap between gigs...to refresh actor's memories, as much as checking the sounds levels!) and suddenly its 7pm. Just time for getting into costume, do a quick warm up, and have a cup of tea whilst the audience are coming in.
7.30pm Wooden Heart performance. Its an emotional journey- the story really hits home for us, and we're still finding new and interesting things in the text 18 months after our first show. Its a great response from the audience- and we're really pleased to have such a warm reaction for the last gig in our home county. No rest for the wicked though...time for the Get Out!
10.00pm Lots of cable coiling, heavy lifting and slightly hysterical laughing later...we're packed up, and ready to go! Its been a tough day physically, and we're all ready for some quality sleep. And after losing our way, a brief fuel crisis, and a satisfying late night sandwich for dinner....we finally arrive back in Truro at 1.15am!
Another cube day on the road done & dusted...hard but rewarding, and we've once again met some lovely people along the way. Thanks to Polruan, and also to CarntoCove for supporting the event.
No comments:
Post a Comment