Howie - voiced by Sean Garratt

Oil on chips...

Clarisse (Zweite Dame) in the first act quintet "oh die zauberflote..."- Note Papageno bottom right hand corner

MF opens - puppets good, some rain

Opening night in Bregenz - the town is overrun with people in fancy frocks and straw sun hats. Blind Summit come to visit. The show goes well.The lipsynching of the puppets to the singing is beguiling and makes me wish they were in the show more. A round of applause for Pamina and Tamino disappearing into the lake holding the flute over their head. Very grand after show party, skinny dipping in the lake at dawn, then bed for a couple of hours before setting off to Zurich and back to London.


Things I heard this week: Acting is problem solving. In acting discomfort is the comfort. If you don't trust your director you might as well not work with a director (Robert DeNiro). Everything is political (Me).

Magic Flute dress rehearsal tonight

Go for a swim in the lake before breakfast. Stop at the Turkish shop on the way home to pick up milk, coffee, croissants. My job here is nearly done: tonight is the "generalprobe" on the Lake Stage. Our second audience. At Saturday's Orchestra and Piano we had 6000 teenagers as part of something called "Cross Culture Day". Audiences this size are strange. They don't really respond as one. They do Mexican waves. They come and go to the toilet. They film on their iphones. They laugh patchily. They did go quiet together at the beginning but then the coffin-lid which is supposed to close to start the opera, didn't. 

Shun-kin is on in New York in the Lincoln Festival. People seem to be enjoying it. They have sent me emails. 

And now I have to read some scripts for our "Puppet Monologues" project.

Bregenz Sunday - Day off

Breakfast on my balcony listening to "This American Life". Grey morning, just stopped raining, birds tweeting merrily and I'm looking at facebook.

THE PROBLEM OF TWO HEADS
We've spent the week wondering about the thought processes of a character that is being "ridden". Our puppets are combination of a lady riding on the back of a bird. So each puppet has two heads and one tail. The problem for the puppeteer working the head of the bird (apart from never knowing which head is being referred to when the director says "turn the head...") is how to be alive, involved in the scene, adding to the scene and yet not draw attention from the "rider" who is actually singing the libretto. What is in the minds of three giant birds carrying three opera singers who are singing about magic flutes, lusty young men and mysterious trials? It's not an everyday problem.

Bregenz - All three puppets out of action with breakages today. At first very frustrating. Then we make mock up parts - bird head, rider head, and tail on bamboos, paint them quickly in purple, blue and green, and we end up having a really productive day working on performance skills using this disconnected bird. The stage is a dome entirely covered in steps and the challenge to work on it is to separate the footwork from the puppeting. So that the puppet can move quickly in the air while the puppeteer can move safely and slowly on the hazardous stage. In the evening a storm appeared suddenly - a wind blew over one of the stunt men who was strapped into a giant "totem" - and we quickly evacuated the Seebuhne (see-stage) to continue inside. Bizarrely this evening was scheduled to rehearse the evacuation procedure so about half an hour later we all went back out into the storm to practise evacuating the stage again - doing it properly this time!