| Current mood: | cheerful |
| Current music: | Jef Neve Trio |
Hello and apologies for lack of updates over the past three weeks - I have been hoofing my way through Germany, Belgium and London pursuing the mysterious shaggy beast known only as "improvisation" - and what an adventure it was...
MELBOURNE - SINGAPORE - HAMBURG
I had a good flight over - spent 8 hours trying to sleep in Singapore and just missed seeing Elaine Paige strut her stuff downstairs in the transit lounge while I buggered around looking for my gate....After 12 hours of leg crushing fun I emerged blinking and stinking into the sunshine at Frankfurt airport and caught a train to Hamburg where I was met by the jazz loving Marcus. He plays the piano for Steife Brise (Stiff Breeze to you and me) and has a huge tattoo down his arm which he got in Vienna when he was twelve. He is the nicesest man ever (and probably has a baby now - congratulations). I had been invited to perfom in a show called Improslam - so, with a small amount of jet lag but with open arms I went along to the pre show meeting. Here I met up with Patti Stiles and Sarah Kinsella from Impro Melbourne and I also met the people I was going to perform with that night. Everyone was sexy and friendly I played with Ralf, Thorsten and Wiebke. The show went well and is based on Whose Line (ahhh who am I kidding - it is "whose line" but in German) and...my first encore ever. Later I met up with Kirsten Sprick (a guest at our Melbourne Festival and a lovely lady) and we all went to funky bar called appropriately Le Fonque. Hamburg was fantastic, beautiful, sad and otherworldly. After a great tour of Hamburg and a meal aboard a fireboat/restaurant - it was off to Belgium on one of the worst train rides ever...we ended up getting a taxi from Germany to Leuven - at the railway companies’ expense - it was an hour and a half ride. Wheeeeee....
BELGIUM
The 4th International Belgium Improvisation Theatre Festival was a huge shindig put on by the good folks at Inspinazie - a great company full of wonderful performers and Johnstone inspired improv. The first night saw a gigantic 24 cast Micetro with members from all the surrounding Belgium companies. Some were wonderful and some were struggling but the winner of the night was a talented guy called Stephen who had some great physical prowess (but who didn't make eye contact with any other performers all night, huh...) It's interesting to watch impro in another language because you can still see the same mistakes being made, the same set up for jokes and the same missed offers. It was fun none the less.
The other companies invited were:
SWEDEN - Improvisation & Co - these guys rocked, hilarious impro and really lovely people. Nicklas, Camilla, Karin, Joel and Robert presented a long form called "Crime Noir" - an ambitious long form that attempted to sustain a film noir genre for an hour, in English, in costumes and without a plot. Looked great but it all got a bit confused. We also played against them in a Theatresports match that was a highlight of the trip. You can read all about it (in Flemish) here.
&
GERMANY: Die Gorillas - Three ladies of cool, Billa, Beatra (I will check spelling on this) and Kirsten. They took impro to new lands with thier long form 1 +1 = 3 as well as helping us out in our own format Mortal Coil. In one show I had to perform a scene with them speaking entirely in German - apparently I suggested we all do a little late night naked music performance...unbeknownst to me.
There were also performers from France and Colombia but they didn't really come until later so I didn't get to know them as well as the others.
I stepped out of comfort zone and booked into a couple of singing workshops - One with Niklas and the other with Manuel Wolff who was one of the musicians during the festival. Lovely guy and all round improv hunter like myself. He has a website here.
The Belgian beers nearly killed me but I carried on and flew the party flag most night for Australians everywhere...some photos here & here
Travel blog part two coming soon....
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