PuSh Around the World-UPDATE

August 05, 2010

By PuSh Festival Associate Producer and Best Before Tour Manager Dani Fecko.

Click here to view Dani’s first ‘PuSh Around the World’ entry

I feel like it is next to impossible to properly relay the amazing experiences I had while on the road with Best Before. So, instead of trying to sum it all up or doing a really long play by play, here are 3 things that I learned/observed/realized in each city while on tour.

Seattle

• Having a human sized basket that slides underneath your grid ontracking makes for a much faster (and way more fun) focus.
• Ellen Schultz has mad percussion instrument skills.
• Theatre admin offices in Seattle are as much fun as the PuSh office.

Berlin

• Hearing our driver talk about giraff- eys (emphasis on the E here) on our 4^th (or something, I lost countafter a while) drive to the airport made James and I way happier than it should have.
• Surprisingly, I ate more Italian food in Berlin than anything else.
• Being allowed to lower the “Iron Curtain” or “Fire Curtain” in the theatre with 70 year old lead housetechnician Wolfgang supervising was one of the happiest moments of my trip.

Brighton

• There are places where the rocks meet the water that are considered beaches everywhere.
• Working next to a University cafeteria helps keep food costs down considerably.
• Staying at a hotel near a Jamie Oliver Restaurant helps keep food costs up considerably.

Toronto

• Discovering dark chocolate with Sea Salt in the lighting booth almost made climbing up three ladders and scaffolding to get to it worth it. Almost.
• Having a spiral staircase that led to my booth (different from lighting) made me feel like a princess.
• Sharing a dressing room with another show meant once when I went to get a bottle of water, I ran into a man in nothing but tighty whiteys, a blue neckerchief and a sailor hat. And gold body glitter. Lots and lots of gold body glitter.

Cork

• Sharing a dorm like apartment with 4 of your tour-mates makes everything more fun. Especially watching Wimbledon and really bad T.V. movies of the week. (Seriously, do the ball girls and boys at tennis games go to special bootcamp? I’ve never seen someone throw a tennis ball with that much intensity)
• The best bars in town are where all of the middle aged locals go. And where they play meatloaf. And where said locals sing meatloaf.
• You can use pipe straight from a construction site to hang projectors.
• BONUS – Some theatres have resident head technicians. Others are in Music schools with 60 Steinways, so they have resident piano tuners.

London

• Opening a show on the West End (or at least really close to it) was as exciting as I always thought it would be.
• Walking outside the theatre and looking left and seeing Buckingham Palace and then walking to the right for 2 minutes and being at Trafalgar square was also as exciting as I always thought it would be.
• I WAS IN LONDON! (way more exciting than I thought it would be)

Pachuca

• If James Foy is considered tall by Canadian Standards he is pretty much a giant in Mexico
• Realizing that James had been asking the crew to lower the crazy pipes instead of the lighting pipes was a golden moment.
• Construction works a bit differently there. I would often walk right by jackhammers and through massive dust clouds on my way to work.

Mexico City

• When you are working in a theatre that has a metal roof and then a torrential downpour starts, when you go to the booth (which is close to the roof) and try to start a show it is very hard to hear your performers.
• Street food makes me happy.
• I will never complain about traffic in Vancouver ever again in my life. Ever.