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