Making A Winter's Tale

It's been a good long while since I did a blog post so I thought that I would try to document my experiences doing some community theatre this summer. If your interested in community theatre, Shakespeare, theatre in general or me, then follow along and see the pain and joy that this project will bring.

The following was written on Saturday 16th June

So it begins. Another project with Parrabola, probably the craziest theatre company I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Previous escapades have had me hosed down by the Polish fire brigade and hanging from a broken rope ladder over a canal loch.

Parrabola does community theatre. They go into a community, see who wants to be in a play and then write a play based on that communities history or adapt a play such as Shakespeare's Pericles or this years offering of The Winters tale.

This year I find myself in the Czech Republic but we will be in Poland again in a months time.

First off don't trust Ryan Air. You probably knew this already. But today I discovered that if you try to check in online the day you travel - they won't allow it. What they will do for you is print you a boarding card at the airport for the poultry sum of £60. I asked the guy at the desk if there was any logical reason for this policy and he couldn't meet my eyes. In fact here's a song that says it all - 

 

 Ah well, you live and learn


We then flew to Brno in the Czech republic, got a bus to the train station and then a 2 1/2 hour train journey to Ostrava. The accommodation is a big blue building called a Pension. It isn't bad and I have to share a room with Ionut from Romainia who is playing my best friend. Here he is asleep.

Our first port of call was a really nice pub with a huge outdoor area ( oh did I mention how hot it is here, the temperatures is about 29 degrees and this is after the sun has gone down). I'm drinking a beer with the delightful name of Radagast ( Who I'm sure is a wizard from mentioned in Lord of the Rings - Radagast the Brown if memory serves me right) and it is wonderfully crisp and light yet flavourful. It goes down very nicely. As no one was having a 2nd drink and I wanted one, I got to exercise my first bit of understandable Czech -

"malou pivo procim"

Which is essentially asking for a half. Check me out! Talk about getting your linguistic priorities sorted.

So tomorrow I meet the local cast, hopefully get a script and see what kind of games and exercise I have to play.

I'm back to London on Monday for a week so this is my chance to get a taste of the city and the cast.