Time Off

Well, the touring is finally over. It`s been good, the response has
been terrific (which reminds me, there`s one more review, this one
from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/22/edinburghfestival.festivals1)
and the shows generally went really well. But living together with 10
other people for 2 1/2 months gets a bit stressful. Especially when
cultural differences remain a factor. And I`ve had about enough of
flyering. While it is almost nice to be forced to go outside, smile,
and be friendly, it just feels so useless. Of questionable value at
best. And it`s really frustrating having lots of people who would
probably like the show if they saw it just walk by and ignore you.

Besides that stuff, things have pretty much gone well. A few friends
from years past and a couple (American) friends from Korea were
actually at the festival as well, so it was nice to have people to go
out and do things with. Of course, I also I got to see a number of
good things in Edinburgh, including several really good dance pieces
in the Zoo (the same venue where we performed), a bunch of good
concerts in the International Festival, and also a number of good
theater pieces in the International Festival. And a few other things
as well, although those were the best things I saw.

If Jidariyya, by the Palestinian National Theatre, comes to a theater
near you see it. It was possibly my favorite of what I saw, certainly
the most moving. I think it was an adaptation of a poem written by an
aging Palestinian poet while he was in the hospital. No at all
political, or at least not directly. Just really beautiful language
about living and dying and stuff. Despite a few typos I think it
actually helped to have subtitles, so we could hold on to and digest
the words for a little longer.

One of the downsides to Edinburgh this year was the weather. I don`t
suppose it`s ever really good, but this year it seemed particularly
unpleasant. There was at least a light rain at some point almost
every day, and plenty of days that were truly wet. One night, after
watching a weather forecast that said things would be clearing the
next day, I went out to see a show. Left the house, it was very
lightly sprinkling, didn`t worry about it. By the time I got to the
theater though, 25 minutes later, I was soaked. The next day was NOT
clear or dry. Only had a couple days with really good, honest,
full-blown sunniness. So all that wasn`t great.

And our flat was kind of far away, 25 minutes at a brisk walk for me,
quite a bit more for most of the rest of the company. I ended up
spending most of my time away from home, since it was just too
time-consuming to go back for a meal and then have to walk back to
town to flyer or for a show.

This was very different from Avignon. We were about 10 minutes walk
from the theater, and very close to the center of town. We were
staying in the house of people we knew, and who also owned the theater
where we were performing. I hope I have enough photos of them all.
The weather there was hot and dry, pretty much the opposite of
Scotland. I didn`t see very many shows there, but a few. That went
well, I should have written more about it earlier. Well, I`ll be
putting photos out soon, and they`ll have captions and information and
stuff.

Now I`m in London, staying at Lucinda`s house. It`s been really nice
here. Finally I have a couple days without work to do. I`ve managed
to see a few friends living here over the past couple days, and today
I just spent in the garden, reading and enjoying the sunshine.
Extremely pleasant.

Tomorrow I head down to Devon, where I`ll visit/stay with some friends
for a couple weeks. With the end of the festival I`ve officially
changed roles from being a permanent, full-time member of the company
to being a free-lance theater designer/technician. So I will probably
continue to do work for Cho-In, especially when it comes to touring,
but have much more freedom. This also means there`s no work to do
immediately on going back to Korea, and I`m not feeling in any rush,
so I thought it would be worthwhile to take some time away and really
get out of what I`ve been doing for a bit. I`m looking forward to it.