Week #4: In full swing!

Hey all!

This past week flew by with lots of tours and rehearsal, but we are now spending all day in costume, wandering the streets. I'm still amazed that this is actually a job- aside from having to memorize lines and be nice to people, it's basically days of wandering around, chatting with people, and enjoying the town! People so far have been great- from the huge groups of schoolkids racing around town on a "historical scavenger hunt" to the pair of Dutch tourists who probably weighed 150 pounds total but ate their weight in food at the Chinese restaurant, to the totally off-the-wall woman from California who tried to get me to marry her so she could finance her gold claim and grabbed my butt while we took a group photo- the quality of the days are definitely dependent on the patrons in town that day! Weather has been all over the place, some days of 90 degree heat, pouring rain, and huge winds. Wildlife has been out and about as well- just this morning there were a pair of grizzlies wandering through town (I've yet to see one while biking, which is at once disappointing and nice), moose, deer, Barkerville's resident rodents, the Columbian ground squirrel, or colloquially, whistlepigs, the gorgeous horses that operate the stage coach, mosquitos and no-see-ums, from which I have already received lots of itchy bites, and the most exciting, a local dog that wandered by with a mouthful of porcupine quills whcih we ended up having to wrestle to the ground and have 3 of us hold it down in the middle of the street in the pouring rain while a fourth pulled over 50 quills from its mouth.
Time not working has been spent writing an adaptation of BABES IN TOYLAND, working on Dell'Arte projects, swordfighting (which I am slowly becoming better at, which means that I am now eligible for receiving some sharper blows, but am not hesitant in doling them out, either!), hanging out with folks here in town, and working on a few side projects... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8_i731VD-8).

I had a couple of requests for photos of us in costume, so they're included! More shots of us in action to come...
Until next week!
Tyler