Our first week of tours!

Hello Hello!

Monday
We all show up at 9:30am, get into costume, and head out for our first day of tours! The groups are small, but all runs smoothly, and it's great fun! The tour is written and constructed in a way that makes it seems as though the actors are just folks in town who happen to be walking by and get swept into the tour- the audience seems to dig it, and it allows for some spontaneous play. The whole tour takes about an hour, and it goes by quickly for all involved. We give two tours per day, usually switching roles within the tour to mix things up. After each of the tours, we rehearse additional scenes that we will eventually launch into as if they are part of our daily lives here in town, and finales, which will close out each day- three different ones- one that is a women's suffrage rally (in which I, as the pompous misogynistic doctor, play a major idiot), a town debate about the pros and cons of becoming confederated into the rest of Canada (again, I make a huge fool of myself), and a "rehearsal" of a production of PIRATES OF PENZANCE, as presented by the Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association (our favorite finale, as we get to play a bunch of horrendous actors, and I get to wear my eyepatch as a moustache [see photo, and also note my facial hair growth]). There's a "Day before your birthday party" at one of the local houses, with all of the usual drunken antics expected of a bunch of actors...

Tuesday
An early morning hailstorm starts the day (see photo), but the weather quickly clears, and we have another great day of tours & rehearsal. As the pompous windbag doctor, I am quickly becoming the butt of all jokes, which is fine by me, as it means that I can get away with saying truly outrageous and preposterous things, and the audience just eats it up- it definitely bodes well for the months ahead! Tuesday night is the official Birthday party for our director, Matthew. We eat, drink, be merry, and play a terrific game of Celebrity- a charades-type game where you have to gues the names of famous people- I am occasionally stumped by references to Canadian Politicians, but otherwise hold my own against a bunch of rowdy Canadians.
Wednesday
More touring and rehearsing- we have our first school group- a group of twenty-five 10th grades (or as they call them here in Canada, grade-tens). They're very receptive and well-behaved, and we have a great time together. Rehearsals are going well- the long speeches full of obscure Victorian words are a bit tricky to memorize, but I have been given full license to huff and puff, stutter, and bellow to my heart's content. The evening is one spent working on various Dell'Arte projects and correspondence, as well as watching episodes of FIREFLY- a western/sci-fi adventure series that aired for about 4 months on FOX- a fun little show.
Thursday
In the morning I get my official Dr. Watt costume (photo coming soon), and we have another great day of tours. We start the morning with a group of seniors who are all really into the information and presentation, and then halfway through the tour we are joined by a group of 5th graders, which makes for a very interesting group. It's a pretty ace group of actors I'm working with, and aside from a couple of bellows by yours truly to keep the kids quiet, we handle the odd mix with aplomb, and everyone (ourselves included) enjoys themselves. In the evening I meet with the swordfighting group led by Todd, one of the local actors, and have an absolute blast! We get about a 20 minute primer, and then suit up and have at each other for a good hour- 5 of us in the middle of the street, going after each other with bamboo training swords- awesome! We part ways, exhilarated and exhausted, with more than a few welts to show off... The rest of the night is spent at home, working on odds and ends, and finishing up the FIREFLY series. We have the day off Friday, so I'm up way past my normal bedtime...
Friday
A day off! I sleep in a bit, and then head into Quesnel with Jacqueline & Matthew for some errand running. On our way in we see an adolescent Black Bear eating along the side of the road, and about a minute later see a Grizzly Cub- bright gold and gorgeous! Too cool. We get into town, hit thrift stores (I find some excellent spice jars and some AWESOME Medical trays- perfect for some Grand Guignol shows down the road) and grocery shop, and
head back into Wells. Weather all this week has been spectacular- bright, warm, and sunny days- the snow won't last long! Tomorrow we're back to touring...

Hope all are well- feel free to post comments or email me with questions!

From the middle of nowhere-
Tyler

End of Week 1

Hello all!

Well golly, I've already been here a week! Here's a little recap of my past week...

SUNDAY:
Got up, spent the majority of my day settling in- unpacking, moving furniture, amassing household essentials from the landlady, Norma, who is very friendly and accommodating. As funky as my apartment is, it does get GREAT light in the morning and the evening, and being as I won't really spend all that much time during the day, that suits me just fine. I borrowed the bike of my boss, Jen, and pedaled out to check out Barkerville, which was under a great deal of snow. That night, we had a "meet & greet" of all the actors, or "interpreters," as they call us, and crashed early.

MONDAY:
Biked in to Barkerville, and dove into the first day of rehearsal- great bunch of folks- Lynette, who grew up in Wells/Barkerville and is playing Bella Irving, a local hurdy-gurdy dancer turned washerwoman; Jacqueline, from Alberta, who is playing Madame Bendixon, a French woman who fled from a life in the French underworld to the Wilderness of BC, where she opened up a number of saloons; and Todd, who is playing Mr. Church, the local handiman. The town is well taken care of and well managed, and other people working in town are glad to see us rehearsing, which is always nice. Basically, 4 of us lead scheduled tours twice a day. The tour, in addition to being chock full of history, is a pretty entertaining one. I play Dr. Hugh Watt, who is the town physician, and is a major blowhard and the closest thing there is to a "villain" in the town. He's loud, obnoxious, against Women's rights, and just an overall annoyance to the other characters. Needless to say, it's going to be great fun. We got through all of the tour blocking, and planned to start working through the rest of our scenes and daily finales later on in the week.


TUESDAY:
More rehearsals, fine tuning and tweaking, but mostly just running the thing, as it's about 35 pages of text split amongst four of us, with alternating roles and different combinations of lines to keep the tour moving in a cohesive and understandable way!

WEDNESDAY:
We meet in the morning, and are told that we are going to start doing the tour on Monday- a week ahead of schedule! See, the park is already open, and there's only one of us, Todd (who's worked out here for a few years), that is really able to lead tours. As this puts a huge work load on Todd, it's decided to focus all of our energies on getting the tour up and running. We spend the day diving into character, which is great fun. I bellow and huff and puff and stomp around (for those of you who have seen Golden State, imagine Cubby as a Victorian doctor and not gay) and have great time doing so... We get through the tour twice, the second time I do basically off book- woo hoo! We also meet with Heather (the costumer) to try on our semi-finished costumes- I have a dapper maroon & gold-checked vest and brown coat- very swanky! The bigger news of the day is also that one of the male actors who hadn't arrived yet had to back out, so the hunt is on for a replacement!

THURSDAY:
Jacqueline and I start the day with a trip to the Barkerville archives, where we get to look over letters, newspaper articles, and other materials on the people we're playing- pretty wild! It turns out that Dr. Watt was even more of a jerk than I'd thought, which is just fine by me- it basically gives me just that much more license to bellow and insult people. After that, it's more and more of the same- just drilling the lines and sequences into our heads. We're beginning to really play with stuff- lots of ad-libbing, covering for each other, and just running with it. The Pub in Wells opens for the first time tonight, so a lot of folks get pretty drunk. I have some great talks with Matthew, our director, and Tim Sutherland, who plays one of the Judges at the courthouse and will perform his 1,000th speech as the judge this summer (for those of you who follow the puppet scene, he's also the director of OLD TROUT's "Famous Puppet Death Scenes"). After a Gunslinger and a Mark Dawson (a famous local non-alcoholic drink), I hit the hay after a phone call with someone I may have in mind as a replacement actor, and my daily phone date with Kate (who doesn't get up here until June 20!).

FRIDAY:
Since we've got a pretty good handle on the tour, we change gears and start working on one of the scenes, which we sort of play at random during the day... We also work one of our "Finales" which are the shows that we do at the end of the day. We also get a chance to see one of the town shows, which is a discourse on the British Columbia Gold Rush- very funny and informative (and performed by Mark Dawson, Dell'Arte alum!) We're all a bit wiped out from a full week of rehearsal, so we end about half an hour early. I come home to an apartment with high speed internet- yee haw! I spend most of the night setting up an internet phone line, the blog, and just cruising around online. I also start sealing the deal for the replacement actor- who shall remain nameless for the time being- give my brother Jordan a birthday call (he's 26!), hang out with my bosses, Jen & Faith, and the director.

SATURDAY:
A day off! I hitch a ride into the nearest big town (Quesnel, pop. 25,000) with Stewart, who runs the Chinatown tour in Barkerville, and Matthew. It's pretty amazing just how remote we are here in Wells- Quesnel is an hour away through mountains, forests, and along lakes and rivers. Once in town, we have some lunch (a delicious buffalo burger for me) and do some grocery shopping. So far, there's been very little culture shock for me- all of the packaging is in English and French, they've got $1 and $2 coins (loonies and toonies, respectively), I was served gravy with my French Fries, and they really do say "aboot," but otherwise, I could be just about anywhere in the states! Tonight I head to the Wells curling rink (oh yes, there is a curling rink in town) for a local woman's birthday party... Tomorrow is our last day before we do it for real- Yowza!

That's it for now, more to come!
Tyler

The First Blog!

This is for all the folks who missed my first mass email...

Hey all!

Tyler here, reporting from the great wilds of British Columbia, Canada! I made it up here safe and sound, and just wanted to a little check-in to let you know how things are!

For those of you who don't know, I'm up here for the summer (and Kate will be joining me in June after she's done with school), acting in a historic gold mining town called Barkerville, which is a national historic heritage site here in Canada. It's a sort of "living history" gig, very much like the MN Rennaissance festival, except it takes place in the Mid- to Late-1800s, and there are no turkey legs (yet). I play Dr. Watt, the pompous and overblown town physician who seems to get more people angry at him than any other character. As street actors/tour guides, Kate and I, along with 4 other "interpreters" (as they call them), lead a couple of tours each day, act in a couple of additional scenes, and then spend the rest of our time simply being people of the town- interacting with people, lounging around, and doing historically accurate things- I'm trying to get them to let me stage a few amputations and medical procedures- we'll see if they bite.

I arrived here on Saturday evening, after flying from Arcata to San Francisco to Portland to Vancouver to Prince George, BC, taking the Greyhound from Prince George to Quesnel [the nearest big town] and getting picked up in Quesnel by a couple of the folks who run the place, and then driving an hour into the wilderness of British Columbia (we saw 2 deer, 2 moose, and one RCMP on the way in) to the TINY town of Wells, BC, where all of the actors in Barkerville (there are about 30 of us total) are staying. Kate and I have a funky little apartment- 3 types of carpeting, 2 of which are shag, and a bathroom that looks like it was painted by a third-grader, but the whole town has that sort of just-barely-held-together charm. The total population of the town is about 150, but they have more businesses than Blue Lake- 3 restaurants, a gas station pub, hotel, and a general store. It takes a maximum of ten minutes to walk anywhere, and everyone knows each other, and is glad to see all of us actors in town... I've included some pictures of downtown Wells and the lower part of the city. There are still lots of piles of snow here, but it's melting quickly.

The town of Barkerville is about 6km away- a 5 minute car ride, or 20 minute bike ride, through a pretty spectacular marshland with the backdrop of Mountains. (see photo) I haven't taken any photos of the actual town of Barkerville- watch for the next installment...

So far, my days have been chock-full of rehearsals for the hour-long town tour, with nights spent going over lines. The rest of the actors here are great folks and include the typical cast of characters for a gig like this- the new people who are scrambling to get up to speed, the disillusioned managers, the high-maintenance but very nice actress whose done the gig a long time, and the local guy with dragon tattoos all over his body and knows EVERY piece of history about the town and runs a Monday night swordfighting club . From the sounds of it, the nightlife here in Wells is time for carousing and whooping it at up at the local pub, once it opens. In the meantime, I'll enjoy relatively quiet nights.

I have yet to figure out my phone/internet, and it may be a couple of weeks before I can do so, but the general store has internet, so I download all new mail in the mornign, and respond to it the next day. Once that's figured out, I'll be more active, and will probably start up a blog. I'll also get a mailing address sometime soon (I'm going to get a PO Box in Barkerville from Mrs. Murphy at the Post Office) and will send out that info as soon as I know it!

Hope you are all well- more to come!
Tyler