A Day with Frog and Toad

Sunday dawned bright and crisp, with the promise of a lot of Frog and Toad work!  Arthur's Seat appeared with the sunrise as if on cue, to welcome us to this important day of show prep!

Arthur's Seat says good morning

Eating was crammed in early in the day, as we had breakfast and lunch provided today.  The food here is really quite good, with much variety, even at breakfast.

Aman, Sarah and Aysia seem like morning people

Our first morning activity was the long-anticipated BABY WANTS CANDY workshop.  Baby Wants Candy is a musical theatre improv company from Chicago that specializes in on-the-spot creation of hilarious musical improvisation.  The session was absolutely terrific and our actors had a tremendous time  working with the teaching artists - one teacher/clinician and a pianist who could play any style.  The workshop began with some simple word rhyme  games and then led to rhyming  challenges in rhythm - we may never forget the instant hilarity of the "In my butt" chant (hey, crude is funny!) and the superb rapping about Frog and Toad in "Boom Chacka-Lacka"!  After showing the company how to set up a great musical theatre song title in three lines (Cheezits might be good but goldfish are better!), before too long Titans like David and Stina were making up teerrific, hook-laden tunes on the spot!  We can't wait to see this group perform on Thursday!

After a quick lunch (didn't we just eat?), it was time to head over to the Royal Mile for our Street performance!  The bus system in Edinburgh is terrific - just hop on the 30 or 33 and 10 minutes later you are in the city center.

Jordan is happy riding the bus...well, he is always happy

I include this one for the clear slice of Edinburgh life out the window! And the smiling faces of Aman, Hannah and Daniela!

The Mile was teeming with people today - maybe the combination of the weekend and the relatively mild weather (showers and sun off and on, sometimes within minutes of each other.  Doing the performance was a challenge because we could barely hear the CD - but the performers radiated energy and we successfully attracted a crowd - including some wee ones - so hopefully we will see them at the show!

Ready to Tackle the Mile

We are on the schedule!

Aysia and Vidya are persuasive salespeople

Shalaine enjoys the performance with the others

Ms. B knits mole hats while the show goes on

As the crowd watches, Mr. Schneider looks for folks to give cards to

Rakes in midsummer?

Kyle and Noah head down the hill as Noah looks on.

After the performance there was a little time to cruise the mile and hand out postcards.  There are amazing sights all up and down the mile - check out some of the interesting oddities I encountered in the space of about 10 minutes -

We had about an hour of down time between the Mile performance and the departure of the bus for our tech rehearsal.  We experienced the challenge of having access to the theatre for only two hours - but our team made them count, and now we have a good sense of the space and adjustments we will have to make- including an adjustment of the drop frames - we got here without one set of poles and will have to improvise something new tomorrow - but that's theatre - anything can (and will) happen!

Top of the marquee!  Nice!

The Smeallies are ready for rehearsal

The platforms DO work just like ours - way to go, Mr. Strand and builders!

Sarah and Julia are the rocks of the production crew.  Doesn't the platform set look familiar?

After the tech rehearsal we had practice space reserved at the dorms, and we used that time to do a full run without props.  It was just as the doctor ordered - I called it controlled chaos - a high energy and very funny run that got everyone pumped up for the possibilities of our opening performance tomorrow!

Chaperones took care of getting pizza so the starving artists wouldn't wither away.  All in all it was a terrici day - and we are ready  for an audience (at least we will be by tomorrow!  So tomorrow night I'll give you a rundown on our opening show!  Wish us many broken legs!