The boat; onsite; pre-show
Once the excitement about being selected for Street-Feats had died away, it all came down to one word really – logistics. It's a pretty long ride from Melbourne to Brisbane, and the passenger trains refused to carry our cargo, so we ended up in a crowded airport lounge negotiating endless queues with the entire set condensed into 2 bike-boxes and 2 suitcases. Arriving into a balmy Brizvegas where even the festival organisers were admirably relaxed.
The boat bolted back together as planned – until it came to rigging the sail onto the newly jointed bamboo mast. So rehearsals had to make room for last-minute repairs. Exhausted by the effort of
getting the whole show on the road, it wasn't just the bamboo threatening to give way in the heat and unseasonal rain. With hours to go the laden boat-set was hitched up to the folding bike and towed over the appropriately named Highgate Hill, and on into a gusty city centre. We might have been arriving at the site of an utter humiliation had it not been for the invaluable assistance of an ace tech support crew who supplied sand-bags, mike-stands, electrical tape and a bunch of good-natured enthusiasm. The scheduled performance time arrived with a miraculous calm as the sun slipped behind the horizon. All the sweat and tears that got us there were missed by an appreciative audience as the show itself went off surprisingly smoothly.
getting the whole show on the road, it wasn't just the bamboo threatening to give way in the heat and unseasonal rain. With hours to go the laden boat-set was hitched up to the folding bike and towed over the appropriately named Highgate Hill, and on into a gusty city centre. We might have been arriving at the site of an utter humiliation had it not been for the invaluable assistance of an ace tech support crew who supplied sand-bags, mike-stands, electrical tape and a bunch of good-natured enthusiasm. The scheduled performance time arrived with a miraculous calm as the sun slipped behind the horizon. All the sweat and tears that got us there were missed by an appreciative audience as the show itself went off surprisingly smoothly.
Excerpt from the animation
A risky and ambitious concept, our street-theatre model of mobile shadow-puppetry certainly wasn't without its hitches and shortcomings. But by the 4th night the whole adventure was running pretty smoothly. Now that we've tackled most of the technical hitches of exporting animation files, building collapsible sets and setting up in unforgiving weather, it's time to revisit the show itself. Which, as a somewhat experimental work-in-progress, inevitably needs some reworking. We look forward to returning to Queensland in a couple of months to present a more resolved version of Howard Grey's Unsame Day at the Woodford Folk Festival. By which time we'll be ready to take the show pretty much anywhere, not least back our beloved adopted hometown, Melbourne
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