Hirsch's Log
Based on the problems I Sebastiani had with flights, I thought I’d check American
Airlines to see what was up, but you can’t check flights more than three days
ahead, so we can’t see about our Sunday flights. Oh well ...
(Later) We decided not to go to the mime
workshop. When we showed up, it was still going on, and frankly I think most of
us are glad we didn’t get into it. At least from the outside, it wasn’t interesting
to watch the exercise, and it was rather disturbing. However, the Olly Crick
workshop was fascinating. He made a comment about our performance from the previous
evening which was helpful to us, about entrances and exits ... (most of the
suggestions and ideas we’ve gotten from workshops are more general than what Olly
told us, and would take more work to incorporate into the performance – we do
intend to take some of that and work with it, but not for the current run of shows).
After that was over, Commedia dell’Carte performed
with their cart (we didn’t see them at other venues with the cart – the first
performance of theirs was in a small place and getting the cart into it would
have been problematic). It was pretty interesting to see what they did with the
cart. I don’t think it’s something we will be doing, but it was fun.
We went out to dinner at Chuy’s (local Tex-Mex),
and met up with the gentleman (Stefan) who runs the Florilegium website for the SCA
who Rose has been in contact with, he and his wife came to dinner, and then came
to the two shows this evening.
The audience wasn’t huge, but they were appreciative,
and it was fun following Olly Crick, since he puts the audience in a great mood,
so when we went on, they were already in a good place (as it were). Our
performance was the best we’ve done all week – it’s almost a shame we’re not
going on again until January back home.
We brought back five of the members of I Sebastiani to
spend the night (later: they spent Friday night at hotels closer to the airport,
as their flight is scheduled for very early) ... We’re still planning on flying out
on Sunday, but we’ll also be checking on that shortly (later: couldn’t get
flight info from American Airlines from their website ... we’ll try again ...).
Aaron Johnson (the person running the festival)
has decided to do tshirts, and so we ran around while folk were putting the
flats in Eric’s truck getting shirt sizes. Someone made a comment about the shirts
being done “Post-humorously” (i.e., after the Festival was over) ... He’s
only going to be charging somewhere around cost ($10 or so) which is cool.
The flats got into the truck, and people came back to the condos. Had a
small pool party, Wulfric brought some champagne specifically for tonight. We
did a small toast, and then relaxed. Since this was our last obligation for the
festival, I think everyone really needed the chance to party a bit.
Juan's Log
Went in for Olly Crick's class. It was excellent. I think I got more things out
of it then I did the one prior but I’m not sure how I could put them into words.
Lots of ideas about timing and rhythm. Lots of
ideas about character movement and gesture. Gian Giacomo did a lot of this
as well, so it’s really starting to gel for me.
I am particularly happy about the issue of tightening
entrances and exits. Everyone seemed to pick up on the idea as well, so the
performance tonight was much tighter as a result. I’ve always tried to do
this personally, but I’ve never payed attention to anyone else doing it or
not and I’ve never thought about bringing the issue up during any of our
rehearsals. My bad I guess.
I made a point of showing our masks to Olly and
Gian and getting their impressions. They thought we did a good job on them,
but neither of them knows a lot more about mask making then we do. They
did point us in the direction of some good resources however. Olly did give
me the benefit of what extra knowledge he had though.
Olly also performed tonight. He performed before but
I didn't see him until tonight. It was a very good show about the evolution of
comedy. I enjoyed him a lot. His performance using the generic Magnifico mask is
really sticking with me in particular.
Our performance went off very well and both Olly and
Gian had excellent things to say. Of course they had criticisms, but very worth
while ones and they pointed out many things they liked. Hearing such glowing
comments from people who are considered “experts” in the field makes us all
feel great about what we have done.
Iricus and Dawn are planning on starting the drive
back tomorrow so we loaded everything into his truck that needed to go.
Personally I think we owe him big time for doing the driving. I’m not going
to feel to sorry for them on the drive back though.
They’re going to Disneyland.
See photos of Olly Crick's Workshops
See John's photos of GSP prep for performance