Pictures Of France

For those of you who aren't on Facebook (maybe one of you?) here are some highlights of my pictures in France:

Karma?

This actually happened before I left town but I thought I'd mention it.
You may remember that a certain establishment kicked a certain theater troupe out on the street a week before their play opened.
Well, the day after the play closed this happened.
It sucks for the artists whose work was damaged, but otherwise I'm unmoved.

Je suis retourné!

It was a wonderful and exhausting trip to France. A lot of stuff happened so I won't write about it all here.
I will list the places we sang at: Institut Universitaire du Technologie (Cherbourg Manche) auditorium, Saint-Lo, the Normandy American Cemetery, Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Notre Dame Cathedral, as well as unscheduled impromptu performances throughout Mont Saint-Michel.
The Sainte-Mere-Eglise concert was the best by far. It's hard not to sound good with acoustics that perfect, but we were all especially keyed up that night for whatever reason.

Notre Dame was a surreal experience to say the least. The performance was slightly tarnished when our second song nearly fell apart entirely. This was due to the fact that the organ has a significant delay that none of us were prepared for. Fortunately the rest of our songs were a capella, and we performed them without incident. Afterwards, our director was swarmed by people from about a dozen different countries, all of them very gracious and pleased with the performance.

Our time at the Normandy American Cemetery was very moving. The people of Normandy have an incredible love for America. Everywhere you go in this area there are American flags flying side by side with the French flag. This only cemented my aggravation with the treatment France receives by mainstream America. The stereotype that the French are rude to American tourists is completely off from my experience. We were welcomed throughout Normandy with open arms. I'll talk more about our time at the cemetery some other time.

Singing at Mont Saint-Michel was fantastic. If you've never been there you need to put it near the top of your list. It's an incredible spectacle. Again, the rooms we sang in had amazing acoustics. We were also very popular with the Japanese tour group that followed us around.

That's just a few highlights from the trip.
You can go to these links for the pictures:

Premier
Seconde
Tiers
Quart
Cinquième
Sixième
Septième

The Rehearsal Process

Some of you have been in plays at some point. Those of you who haven't might be wondering just how something like that is put together. Here's a peek:















And that's how you make a play!

"Did Ever Raven Sing So Like A Lark..."

So, good news. The show continues as planned--same dates, same times, different venue. We were saved by some very gracious people, namely Chris Woodhull. We will now be performing in a community center on Magnolia, which turns out to be a much cooler space overall.
The place is called Tribe One.
The shows will still be (and I understand many of you are getting this information for the first time--sorry) this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
For specific details go here. I know the show dates probably won't be good for many of you (seeing as how they were scheduled for a venue that no longer wants us *sigh*), but I hope some of you will be able to come see how awesome I am what we've been working so hard on.

In The Grotto

This was going to be a post about when and where you could come and watch me in Titus Andronicus. Unfortunately as of tonight I don't know the answer to either of those questions.
I arrived at what was supposed to be our first dress rehearsal at 6:00, only to find out that we had been evicted from the World Grotto. The owner was trying to make last minute changes to our contract, double booking us with some band. Needless to say that wasn't going to work so she told us to get out and then called the cops.
So one week before opening night we have nowhere to open. Which also means a lot of pre-sold tickets have to be refunded, and we've wasted a lot of production money unless we can find another performance space. But that's going to be difficult to do since the next play goes into production in only a few weeks, and I'll be gone for an entire week before then.
So...yeah. What's new with you guys?