Wankers and Skanks

Back again I am of course still loving London...it felt like I came back "home" when I got back from Dublin.  So great to go back to work as well.  I never expected so many people to remember that I went to Dublin...when I got back a surprising number of both cast and crew asked me how it was and it made me smile that they all cared to ask let alone remembered where I was going and in general was gone the whole weekend!  I guess I didn't realize how many people knew I had gone to Dublin!  Never could I have expected or imagined such a great group of people to work with who are all so incredibly kind and welcoming to me.  Sunday I stayed in, as you probably noticed, updated the blog, did some facebook picture uploading, and just relaxed.  On Monday morning, I finished up some of my catching up on things, then headed out in search of a new mag lite, after looking online and writing down several places that might have them (they are not easy to find!)  Mine broke the other day...apparently commonly happens to mag lites and mine is 4 or 5 years old by now but that's okay because I wanted a pink or purple one anyway :)  I am using Sarah's for the moment while she is in Egypt but need to get one before she returns next week, when hopefully I will be off to High School Musical.  It is not 100%, as apparently the office/management there may be having some sort of problems and have not returned Hesky's calls yet.  So we will see.  I am content on Hairspray though, and although it would have been a good opportunity, I am trying not to get my hopes up for it in case it doesn't work out.  Dirty Dancing might work out though, to shadow for a few days, so that would be fun.  Anyway.  Back to my mag lite search...unsuccessful.  I went to about half the stores I wrote down (only to one area, didn't take the tube elsewhere) and THEN almost walked by the greatest store that ever happened to me.  I turned around and went inside.  When I stepped in I literally got the wind knocked out of me.  Three large floors of art supplies, scrapbooking, cards, markers, stickers, books, notebooks, and more art stuff....THREE FLOORS!!!!  I almost died.  And then.  I proceeded to spend the next TWO HOURS in Paperchase.  What a feast.  Not only did they have the biggest card section I'd seen in my life, but they had scrapbooking papers, different large papers for artwork, paints, markers, pens, albums, notebooks, assignment books, travel gear, furniture, design books, watches, wallets, handbags, canvases, random funny gifts, awesome gifts, and art supplies in any brand, size, color, or shape you could imagine, plus a whole cafe on the second floor!  I was in art geek heaven.  Don't worry mom, I didn't spend too much money there (the only thing that stopped me was they don't ship and I didn't want to overflow my return flight luggage quite yet hahaha), but I got some great unique stuff!  So, after spending a ridiculous amount of time there, I headed out (it is quite near to the Shaftesbury) to the Bagel Nash to pick up dinner, then to work.  I helped Ros on stage right again which was fun!  Ros, another crew member Emma and I really have a great time during the down times (there is less to do than on Stage Left).  Yesterday, they spent our longest gap teaching me all the insults and slang in British for different things, which you see some examples of on the list and on the title of my blog today.  We had a lot of good laughs especially at the ones like 'cow,' when they saw my reactions and faces to what they meant in Britain versus America.  After work I came home and enjoyed visiting with my friend Seth upstairs for about an hour since I hadn't seen him in a good while since before Dublin!  

Today I went to Regent's Park to meet with my Academic Project Supervisor.  I'm doing my project/paper comparing They're Playing Our Song to Hairspray in a variety of ways.  I won't bore you with the details, but it will include slash be more focused into chapters than it sounds now but: the idea of rewriting the past versus contemporary scripts, comparison between 60s and early 70s design and fashion, renderings for They're Playing Our Song (original designs, by me) and renderings of a scene from the current Hairspray at the Shaftesbury, and one of my own based on my personal research.  So basically, just met with him about that since he agreed for me to miss this week and last week's class to work in exchange (yay!).  So that went well and then I met Ros to shop later than we'd planned so I took a walk around the gorgeous Regent's Park and Rose Gardens and lake there, then headed to Oxford Circus, where we would shop!  I went about an hour early to do some window shopping warm up of my own  :)  Yes I am a hardcore shopper like that, as most of you know.  So around 15:00 Ros and I met up.  We went to Miss Selfridges, and mainly Top Shop.  It was huge and SO awesome.  We had a lot of fun and I ended up getting two really cute tops and a discount for being a student (but even though Ros and I combined our money to pay for everything so that the discount could be for both of us, the bitchy -excuse my french- lady at the register only gave it to us for the items she knew were mine!  Rude!).  We went to another department store after that.  It's funny, department stores are different here.  They are stores composed of several famous and good name brand sections and are just more of a 'revue' so to speak -haha sorry if you don't get the metaphor, it's what came to mind- of various designers and companies, and are organized that way.  After that we went to Boots, basically the biggest drug store with groceries around here, to pick up some dinner and I took Ros to Starbucks for her first Vanilla Latte (she'd never tried one and we both needed coffee) before we headed off to work, fairly nearby.  

Tonight was actually quite fun I did the preset with Ros and still ate my dinner and hung out in the usual DSM lounge, but I was up in the elecs booth as they call it, with Pete, the same guy I interviewed with, who is the light board operator.  So.  This is where it gets fun because even though we didn't tell over head set because it could cause some debate within the production team,  (so shhhh) I ran the whole show!  There was basically only one button to press, it was just a matter of getting the cues right and listening to Tinky, the DSM who called the show give me LX cues.  It was great fun and I was proud of myself for running the light board the whole time for a West End show!  I only made two very minor mistakes too...very fixable and not a big deal or noticeable.  Good for the first time seeing the board and the second time seeing the show from the audience!  Pete said I did brilliantly :)  good word haha and he said I was doing well with fitting the cues to the music timing, an important part of Hairspray, even though I get 'go' cues on every lighting cue.  Also, since I had been hearing all the cues in my ear (cans...translation: headset) for the past two weeks, I often knew when they were coming, although they are very often and breaks without cues for more than 10 - 30-ish seconds were pretty rare since Hairspray is a very flashy and colorfully lit show.  So that was more fun than I expected since I do not usually 'do' lights or electrics stuff...I'm just better at the artistic and management side and don't choose it and am usually not asked or required to do so unless for a class.  

So that was my past two days...the rest of the week I will probably just follow Ros, I think I'm doing stage right one or two more times, some props maintanence this week, and then some stage left and even maybe up with Ros who will be calling the show one day I think--as I've said, they all (DSMs) rotate around depending on the staff situation, and to keep their skills up in the different positions and locations.  Tomorrow I'm going with Tinky, Ros, and Tom, the three DSMs not including Hesky who are in town (Sarah on holiday) to see A Brief Encounter, a play that someone who once worked on Fame with Ros and Tom is working wardrobe on.  So that should be fun, a matinee.  Cheers!

~Sam~