A Brief London Encounter

Left to Right: Terel (Seaweed US & ensemble), Ros (ASM, I've been shadowing her mostly) and me, 

at Tracy (Velma)'s birthday after the show at a club last week.

So I haven't written since Tuesday!  To update, on Wednesday, I went to see A Brief Encounter with Ros, Tom, and Tinky and it was a really interesting show!  It was basically like watching an old movie live onstage.  Very romantic, occasional dramatic things like people hanging from chandeliers and being blown by the wind.  The technical aspects were very cool, since it was based on the film, which I have not seen, unfortunately, there were a lot of projections, and similar to Into the Hoods, the actors would occasionally merge into the projection screens onto videos by literally climbing into the screen slots.  There was trains and the story was captivating and funny although I was confused at points since I have not seen the film.  After that we got food and all  headed to work. 

Thursday was a two show day so I headed out of the house kind of early again in search of a new mag lite, since Sarah gets back on Monday and I need to return her mag lite to her and have my own.  I finally found some and got a good deal on a pink one!  And then I sat at Cafe Nero and wrote some postcards and had a light brunch and coffee there.  I really liked it in there, it was better than most of the Starbucks, actually, as far as service and friendliness...more like the Starbucks in State College in customer service which I really liked.  :)  It's an Italian coffee chain here.  So then I went to work and did Stage Right first show and Stage left second show, following Ros the first show and Tom the second.  After the show, I went out for one drinks worth of time at the pub we go to called the White Hart.  It has pictures on the wall of the cast and crew of Hairspray and shows previous that have played at the Shaftesbury, and at least two tables are always reserved for Hairspray starting at 10:15pm.  I talked with one of the ensemble members most of the time and I really enjoyed talking with him and learning about him more so that was fun.  And I managed to make the tube home before it closes so that was also convenient.

On Friday I went to the Ascot Races!!!!  (Horse races, for those of you who don't know).  I wore my white dress and bought a big flower for my hair at the train station.  All the ladies who go wear these fabulous hats and stuff ...it's fantastic.  You have never seen such a well dressed event.  Men wear tuxes and or vests and ties and tailcoats.  We met a 23 year old boy on the train who owns 60 racehorses and told me which horses I should bet on.  And then of course, I bet on racehorses!  I am a sucker for gambling so of course that was the most fun part for me even though I didn't do that well, but I figured since the ticket was rather cheap and I had brought picnic food to save money, it was all part of the experience.  And I did gain some money and didn't end up losing too much at all--20 quid or so.  After the second to last race, I basically ran to the train station to try to make it to work on time although Hesky knew I might be late.  I was mad I had to wait a whole half hour for the train, which took a little under an hour, and then was about 20 minutes late to work, but I had texted Ros so Hesky would know for sure and it was all good.  They're not strict with me at all, in fact I could probably take more time off than I am if I wanted, I just don't want to!  I just really like it and want to be there as much as I can.  So Friday's show went well and afterwards, Ros wasn't feeling well so she didn't go out and nothing was really happening with people at work, so I went home and went out with Seth, Jamie, Madeleine, and a bunch of other girls who live at the house.  We first went to the ATM at the Texaco, intending to go to this place/club called Zoo Bar in Leichester Square, which had a cover, but I figured since I don't really hang out with them much anymore or really pay at bars and clubs much at all I might as well go and have fun.  So at the ATM we met this couple (probably about 23 or so), and the guy who obviously had some drinks asked us where we were going and when I told him Leichester Square-didn't want to say exactly where, although they seemed nice- he was insistant that we should not go there in general.  He and his girlfriend were both British and they told us that if we went there we would go back to America and say that London clubs sucked because Leichester square was so expensive and touristy.  When we asked him where we SHOULD go, he told us Shoreditch, which is an area with lots of places within walking distance of Old Street.  Since Seth and some other people had heard that that was a good locals place as well, we decided to walk there after saying goodbye to our new friends.  We found this place called Bar Music Hall, which had no cover and no cue!  We went inside to find techno music, lights, and even a few people dressed in drag!  It was not wall to wall people, and had a bar and tables as well as a dance floor and stage.  We danced for awhile and had a good time!  After an hour or two, we decided to move on, but after looking for somewhere with little or no cover that looked good and not being successful, about half of our group decided to head home since it was kind of late and I had been up and about since 8am for the races.

Yesterday was something called West End Live, from 11am-6pm.  Although I had work at 1pm (another 2 show day, Saturdays), Jamie and Seth and I wanted to go to it and I would stay just for a bit, since the shows I liked were mostly at the beginning.  Basically it was a big showcase of West End shows on a concert stage with trusts, etc and shopping tents around of sponsors and some free swag in a bag when you left.  There were big screens and wayyy too many people, standing room.  A little frustrating because of all the crowds, but I'm glad I went.  I wouldn't say it was the best showcase of all the shows because many of them were in minimal costumes and doing things out of context, but it was fun nonetheless.  I saw Jersey Boys, Lord of the Rings, Dirty Dancing, Wicked, and some weird regional theatre perform called Players Theatre.  Then I headed off to work.  I spent the first show with George, one of the elecs guys.  He is as old as me but has worked at the Shaftesbury through high school.  His job is basically to make sure all the battery and electrical special effects of the show run right.  There are rockets at the end that shoot out streamers so of course we make sure that the air tanks for those are working and hooked all of that up.  Also the televisions that have realistic light coming out of them as if it were a screen--we checked those too, as well as the impressive gismo I've talked about setting up before that is on the Hardee Har Hut.  We had more down time though, so I worked on some props maintanence: filing down some barbers scissors with a metal file so that they could be painted and would not be sharp anymore.  The second show, I sat in the top balcony with the spotlight operators and followed along in a script with lighting and spot cues in it, which was interesting.  What a hot day!  It was 32 degrees celcius where I was!  Which is about 90 fahrenheit, I think.  So it was actually pretty chill.  Also on some of my breaks during the first show that I was on the floor for, I helped Ros on stage right and went and visited her.  The elecs stuff is mostly on stage left though.  After work last night, again no one was doing anything collectively, so I went home and got un-sweaty (haha) and then met seth and some of the girls up on Angel at a bar called O'Neill's after getting very unnecessarily lost and making Seth spend about 30p trying to find me calling me.  It was a lot of fun there, though!  I realized that I like DJs that are not techno better because singing along to the songs and knowing the songs and songs that have words are much more fun to dance to.  We only stayed there till about half 1 since everyone was tired and long story short for various reasons I figured out I had climbed over 300 stairs that day and my calves were feelin it.  So we stopped at the Texaco and got snacks (little strawberry cheesecake dish mmm) and went home.

This morning we went back to Petticoat market and then to Spitafields market, nearby.  I got a cute little stretchy black dress with pockets...kind of a casual little dress for three pounds (!) and some gifts for people there as well.  We walked back home which was a nice walk and not too too far!  So now I'm just chilling and I might go play basketball with some of the boys in a little while which should be fun!  It's a beautiful day today!  This coming week I will unfortunately not be working on High School Musical...they had some management problems and were not able to sort out getting me to work there...it didn't have to do with me or anything but they are a bit stressed because one week is not much for a West End show that big to go up.  However, I will likely get to work on Dirty Dancing on some scenery automation sometime soon.  I can't work at the automation desk on Hairspray because it is only accessible by a very large ladder which is against insurance and all that for me to climb.  But it should be a fun week, Sarah comes back this week so all the ASMs will be here and Hesky will be filling in for the Company Manager.  So it should be a good week.  I'll be working on my class project a lot as well this week.  Cheers!

~Sam~