Creepy Crawly in British Theaters

One British theater has come up with a way to scare the bejesus out of you in the name of theater etiquette. The Prince Charles cinema in London has volunteers dressed in black body suits like Spider Man in full mourning, sneaking stealthily around the theater to tap you if you are being "naughty" during the performance.  The number one naughty rule is speaking on your mobile phone, but speaking with the person you are with, is just as liable to get you touched by an demon clad creepy crawler. There are other infractions that can incur a dark ghostly tap, so monitor your behavior carefully.

I can just imagine someone like this sneaking up on a person while viewing a horror movie. Where is the responsibility placed for sudden heart attacks?

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Rainy Days and Mondays Really Get Me Down

There is something about cold wet weather that just sucks the enthusiasm right out of my sense of adventure. Wandering around in weather that is just a few degrees shy of producing snow sends me to cafés to ponder what I am missing while I am toasty warm. One thing that Prague has going for it is that it is cheaper than Budapest. You can get a heaping platter of food, just like here, but with better beer and for half the cost. We were a pleasantly shocked at the cost of food, entrance fees, and other traveling expenses. Of course, we did the mandatory walk over the Charles Bridge, but half of it is under construction. Yet, the vendors are still there hawking their heavy plastic covered wares to protect them from the rain. We did go to the Museum of International Art. One of the exhibits was a functional glass elevator that only transports between the ground and fifth floors. The layout was spacious and extremely well coordinated. Ron wanted to visit the Cubist Museum, but I was holding back. I am a real square when it comes to that type of art work. I am a well rounded type of guy. At the last minute, he decided not to go in either. Walking through Old Town, there were gazillions of street markets set up ready to trap the unsuspecting tourist that wants some cheap piece of tourist crap that is bound to be tossed as soon as the romance of the city has worn off. Most likely it will happen minutes after unpacking at home. Of course, we had to see the astrological clock, but were too impatient to wait the fifteen minutes for it to do its thing. We bought tickets to another theater performance tonight. Don Giovanni performed by marionettes. Mozart composed the opera especially for Prague where he personally conducted the first performance in 1787. Prefacing this with "I hate opera", this was a spectacular performance. Marionettes mesmerize me. I could never really understand how they could train them in the first place. Seriously, this was a show to remember. Though you could see the puppeteers hands from above, their hand work was like an orchestra. The settings and costumes were superb. This is one show I would highly recommend, but get there early. It is open seating.

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Frigid Prague

Freezing, windy, torrents of rain. This is some welcome back to Prague. It is more like déjà vu from our last trip here. The wind was so bad it was blowing those oversized metal V stand signs with the patio umbrellas that the tour operators use across the squares. If you are aiming at attracting tourists, hitting them with your sign is not the best approach.

Prague has a similar set up to Budapest. A river runs through it, though not the Danube. Most of the city is on one side, the major castle area is on the other. Prague seems much larger than Budapest, yet both have three metro lines, a number of trams and bus lines.

Thinking we were overdressing by carting along coats, we were not only grateful, but just as pleased we had sweatshirts to wear over our shirts. Waders would have been helpful. This was no weather for Crocs, not the style I was wearing with the little portholes under the upper part. These were little breaks in the dam for water to flood my socks.

The major castle area, I would guess is about the size of the whole castle district in Budapest. That Czech royalty really liked to spread out. While we were waiting for some famous library to reopen after lunch, we escaped the cold by running into the Miniature Museum. The caretaker was not at all friendly until we spilled the money for entry on the counter. If it were not so damn cold, I would have walked out, but hey, someone has to pay his heating bill and defrost our bones. Where else can you see a horseshoe and a golden lock on a flea’s leg? Most of the exhibits had to be viewed through a microscope; others were viewable with a high powered magnifying glass.

The library was interesting, run at one time by monks. It reminded me of the Pannonhalma Library in Hungary, but not as large or elegant.

We wandered the Jewish district deciding not to return to any of the synagogues or remembrances. Did it the last time.

At our host, Jan’s suggestion, we booked tickets to see the theater production “Aspects of Alice” at the Black Light Theater. Described as being based on Alice in Wonderland taking up where Carroll left off, Alice floats through the air through historic sites in Prague. Lewis Carroll must be doing back flips in his grave. This was among the worst shows ever, so much so that Ron suggested we walk out. Ron who can tolerate anything had had enough ten minutes after the second act started, when we realized it was no better than the first.

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Last Day

As usual, time flies when you are having a relaxing time away. In some ways, I went into re-entry mode itching to get home again. In other ways, I would like to stay longer. However, it is SO expensive here and with the pound = $2.03, it is outrageously expensive.

We were not going to see any more shows, but with a day on our hands, Ron wanted to see "Truth in Translation" about South Africa. 17.50 and 9.50 pounds for the tickets, but hey, we are on vacation. Ron loved it. I thought it was too disjointed with too many interrupted stories going on at one time with too many multi-media things happening to make sense to me. Obviously, others loved it too, they received a standing ovation from half the audience.

By the end of the day, we were getting antsy about leaving, but having an evening with nothing to do. We decided to go to "Stef's Sidesplitting Hypnosis". Actually, we bought tickets for it when we bought the tickets for the Truth show. Stef was walking around in a Speedo swimsuit talking up his show to people standing in line. Everyone else was wearing layers of clothes and he is in a swimsuit.

Well his show was not sidesplitting, but he had a crappy group to work with. Some young guys who volunteered did everything in their power to resist being hypnotized, so they weren't. Part of the show was good.

We got back to the hotel at midnight and have to be up at 3:00 am to get a taxi to the bus to get to the airport for a 6:00 am flight.

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Fringe With the Nieces

We had a dance performance today called "Danceforms: The 37th International Choreographers' Showcase". We paid 9 pounds each on a 2 for 1, but went last year and loved it. The show was 2 hours. There were about 12 different performers, solos and small groups. There were a couple of excellent pieces, one in particular was the Black Eagle, a solo woman in tons of black chiffon or netting.

Ron and I went down to the 1/2 price ticket office to see what was offered. I spotted a guy giving away free tickets and sent Ron over. He returned with four, but we needed to buy another. I strolled around and then honed in on the guy and requested a ticket. He said "Aren't you with that guy over there?" Without looking at where he pointed, I said "No, I am with someone else." He was so confused, he gave me a free ticket.

When we went to round up the girls, like herding cats, Nicole was not feeling well and begged off. I lied for a free ticket for nothing, but I would have been really upset if we have paid for it. The show was "Just So!" based on Kipling's book of the same name. I was a little concerned that these college graduates would think it was lame, but they loved it and told Nicole what a good show she missed out on.

We went to grab something to eat and then decided we all wanted to see "Puppetry of the Penis". It is amazing that these guys have been doing this show for seven years and are still packing them in. They are earning money for things that most boys experiment with during their youthful years. Wow!

The show ended after 11:30 pm, so we headed home to catch the last bus. They stayed for another show.

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Fringe Day 5

Monday, August 6, 2007

1:00 pm The Man Who Planted Trees – Paid 3.75 each on a 2 for 1 sale. This was a puppet show, but excellent. The puppetry was superb and the story was heartwarming. The adults loved it as much as the children, or more so.

2:30 pm Faith Brown and Her Boys in the Buff – Paid 5.50 each for these as we heard so many good reviews. Faith Brown is a well know comic in England. The show was a comedy musical and hysterical. YES, boys were all in the buff by the end. Worth seeing and paying for.

7:00 pm Flamenco con Fusion – 4.50 each on a 2 for 1 sale. We arrived late having gone to the wrong place. Flamenco dancing, music and interesting costumes. Good memories of Argentina.

10:30 Amsterdam Comedy Collective – Paid 4.25 each on a 2 for 1 sale. These Dutch guys are funny, but they are learning the cultural differences of humor. What works at home doesn’t always work abroad just because you translate it. A couple commented "This would have gotten more laughs in Holland." No, these are not the guys that were actually in the show. They had a multitude of different and outrageous flyers.

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Fringe Day 3

What we saw today -

12:00pm Forgotten Voices – Free tickets – The stories of survivors of WWI. The characters were all Brits except one American. The lone female had an accent so cockney, we could not understand her. It was touching, but difficult to comprehend some of the accents.

5:25pm Sweet UFO – Free tickets- Thankfully, we did not pay for these. The premise is that this young girl has denied that her father has killed her mother and then disappeared. She believes he was abducted by aliens. Her two friends support this belief by pretending to do night watches with her and they develop a whole world for her fantasy until if all falls apart at the end.

11:00 pm Butch: A Queen’s Struggle to Become a King – One free ticket from the star of the show, but we had to buy one. It was a one man show about butching up his feminine side. Very funny and worth buying a ticket.

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Fringe Day 2

Friday- Our events today

12:15 pm Sting for Nolte – Free tickets - An aspiring Professor of Philosophy ditches everything after his finance gives him tickets to a Sting concert. She did not know he hates Sting and he becomes obsessed with getting Sting to remake all of Nick Nolte’s films. Two person play, excellent performance.

2:45 pm As The Mother of a Brown Boy – Paid 4 pounds each. Based on a true story about a mixed race young man who was bright, top of his class, but mixed with the wrong crowd, got chased by the police and died in a car accident. Dance, multimedia, song. Excellent performance.

5:00 pm Break-Out – 5 pounds each on a 2 for 1 deal – A group of Korean comedy actors’ play about prisoners breaking out of a prison and the guards who try to catch them. Excellent dancing, action, and comedy.

8:30 pm Druthers Precarious – The young girls hawking this show made it sound great. It was 2 for 1 and only four pounds each, so we decided to chance it. This was really existential and otherwise weird. We would not have paid for knowing what we know now. It is about a guy in a dusty attic with suitcases who have never gone anywhere and neither has he. Different characters use overused quotes from philosophy to show him his options. Some good body work, but other wise thumbs down.

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First Full Day in Edinburgh

Our first order of business today was to get our pre-paid tickets for the Fringe Festival. We know that many events are free the first days too, so we scored some freebies and bought others. Here is what we have seen today.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

1:00 pm Potted Potter – 5 pounds each as a 2-1 – Excellent comedy act about the first six of the Harry Potter books all in one hour. Two young men had the adults laughing harder than the children. Well worth the money, even at full price.

3:15 pm Touch – We were approached by the writer and director of this play while hanging out. He convinced us to pony up 5 pound each on a 2 for 1 deal for tickets. It was a great play about a woman who is presumably going to commit suicide and the man who saved her. The savior finds out what life is really about through the rescue. Two person play, great theater.

5:20 pm Extropia – Free tickets - I enjoyed it but Ron did not. Very Orwellian about a time in the future where there was no music. Workers are programmed. The sound effects were fantastic, but we had to leave the show before the end because we had another to go to and this one started late. They had technical difficulty.

6:40 pm God’s Pottery Saves the World – We paid 5 pounds each for this online before we left home. It sounded interesting, but it was a comedy act by two young men that was silly, a bit racist where it did not need to be and objectionable in other areas. We were not impressed.

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Edinburgh, Scotland

We arrived in Edinburgh late tonight. The airport bus is a real bargain at 5 pounds with an open return. We took it to the train station, the end of the line, then a taxi to our B and B, Alva House. We have stayed here three times now, and really like the location and the owners.

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Ropes to the Sky

We again had the pleasure of seeing the performance Frenák Pál Társulat: FIÚK - Les hommes cachés at the Trafo Theater. This theater is all about experimental dance. We went to this show last year when they performed for the Spring Festival and were in awe at the dexterity and strength these young men displayed.

Lynn and my student/guardian angel Balazs went with us.

Three ropes to the sky, 4 men. Beyond being a beautiful work about the masculine body and the use of spaces and falls as tools of a choreographic expression, “Fiúk” is an immersion in the unconsciousness of men and boys. A research into the very foundations of the common inheritance that feeds the construction of man as a social animal. By calling up alternately male chauvinist violence, stupid pretentiousness, the balance of power that structures our exchanges with others, both men and women, Pal Frenak, offers us a radical vision, somehow desperate, of human relationships. Once again, Pal Frenak presents a show whose theatrical dimensions, almost cinematographic in conception, is the expression of his intuitive knowledge of human functions, a kind of direct access to the unconscious as well as a social vision without concession.

http://www.ciefrenak.org

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Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut...

and sometimes you don't. If you remember that slogan, you are most likely American who saw the ads for Almond Joys and Mounds. I am paraphrasing it to sometimes you feel like a slug and sometimes you don't. I am not sure I can say I have been a slug lately, but certainly not interested in sitting at the computer for productive reasons. Non-productive reasons have drawn me to the keyboard, admittedly. My other excuse is that I have blogs for each of my Ethnicity, Critical Thinking, and Gender Issues in Film classes, which also keep me busy. We went to brunch with Chris and Mark at Eklectika, the favorite restaurant of all of us. They make great omelets and the service is usually the best in the city. Three topics dominated the conversation: Crocs, London, and their leaving. I had bought my first pair on Crocs while on vacation in Cape Town. It was an impulsive purchase, but they felt comfortable and I have problems with my feet bones. When I came home, I realized that they were the most comfortable shoes I have worn that are not Birkenstocks. Then the dilemma of how to get more. It was then that I had noticed Chris and Mark both had a pair that they bought here in Budapest. It turns out that Crocs are from Boulder, Colorado. They have them at the Overland stores here, so this was a highlight of conversation while eating. www.crocs.com Chris and Mark are leaving for a long weekend in London this next week. They are going to see Eqqus with "Harry Potter" Daniel Radcliffe. http://www.equustheplay.com/cc/daniel_radcliffe.php The boy wizard will be doing a nude scene, so this kept us chattering for a time also. I am a little green with envy they they are doing theater at all in a language we all understand. I remember, but did not see the original Broadway production of Equus with Anthony Perkins, many moons ago. The third topic of conversation was not as upbeat for Ron and I. Chris and Mark know they are leaving Hungary, most likely at the end of summer or the beginning of fall. They are not sure if it will be back to the States or somewhere else. The two of them have been a boon to our social life, but Mark especially has been a godsend for Ron. For the first time in a long time, he has a 'buddy' to pal around with. They discuss museum things and meet for coffees, giving Ron a social outlet he has long needed. Their leaving is going to be traumatic. We really need to make more friends. Well actually there was a fourth topic, but primarily between Chris and I. Chris is trying to donate through his company, ten computers to the American Studies department at our university. Sadly, our current campus with thousands of students only has a computer lab with twenty computers, but ten of them are now working at any given time. The English department has their own computer lab through some special grant, but will not let any other department use them. No one in my faculty seems to be motivated to look for grants, so Chris's offer is a dream come true. Now it is a matter of getting his people to speak to my people to make it all happen and happen before he leaves. I hate being in the middle of things like this. I would not like losing face on either side, but it would be worse if I lost it with the university not following through. My contract is up for renewal in August; this may be a boost, though I do not think I need one.

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Mystery Night

We had tickets to the theater with a group of others. One of my students tried corralling a group of twenty into going to get a 500 Huf discount, but it did not happen. Still, 2,000 Huf for just over $10.00 is not bad for a play. The venue was the Merlin Theater, which used to have a number of plays in English and is the 'international' theater in the city. When their long time acting troupe of three Brits abandoned them due to conflicts in artistic rights, their quality and quantity of English theater went into the pit. This play was performed quite brilliantly by two Brits. The play was "The Murder of Irma Vep". One stage set, multiple costume changes in the audience view, these two young actors portrayed eight different characters. On a scale of high school play zero to total professional 10, these two ranged about a six. Their performance was intriguing, but they projection left much to be desired in this small theater with limited seating. Being in the third row, we had difficulty hearing; those in the back rows must have had to read lips. As we all agreed upon leaving, it was an entertaining evening out, but it ended there.

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Bad Blogger Man

Okay, I admit it, I am a bad blogger person, not having posted for a over two weeks. Lack of things to blog about is not the issue, but just the opposite. There has been so much activity, getting time and mental energy to coincide to blog has been the problem. The university started yet again on September 5th. This year, we do not have any freshmen due the the new Bologna Plan that is changing university systems in forty-four countries. Yet, even without new students, the beginning of school entails creating lists of students, getting e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers for communication, pairing them off into teams for oral presentations, regrouping them into a second pairing to lead class discussions, and finally a group of four for a CARE team, to teach them responsibility for each other. Many of these are concepts they only encounter in my classes. In addition, I am teaching two new courses this semester: Critical Thinking and Ethnic Issues in the US. Each class only meets for 1 1/2 hours a week, so to further their thinking skills and sharing with each other, I created a blog for each class. I post a question each week after class based on our discussion of the reading and they have to respond to it. This is an entirely new concept for them, so it took over a week getting all of them prepped for becoming a blog member and how to post to the respective blog. Creating a pictorial Over the last two weeks, we have had a second plumber come to inspect our bathroom. The downstairs neighbor had been complaining for some time now that there is a leak in his ceiling. This started last year, we had a plumber look at our bathroom, but he could not find any problems. He advised the neighbor who was intending to have remodeling done, to have it checked from their ceiling upward when the ceiling was ripped out. The next thing we heard, the neighbor had his ceiling replaced and complained about leakage again. We have yet to become aware of the result of their workers investigation. They are putting the pressure on us to do something. Logic demands that if you have the ceiling ripped out, you correct any and all problems and concerns before you proceed with putting in a new ceiling, but no, this did not happen. We had a second plumber who came and suggested the grout around the tub was leaking. He ripped the grout out and re-grouted the tub. The problem continues. Then there is the issue of responsibility. If the problem is in a main pipe, it is the building's financial concern, but if it is own of our pipes, it is ours. Our insurance will pay for the neighbor's ceiling, but not for the repairs of the pipes. The joys of home ownership continue from country to country. We have an appointment with our attorney on Friday to discuss the matter and to try to find a qualified professional that will finally make a recommendation that everyone has to live with. The neighbor is great at complaining, but not working with us. Though he speaks English, he will only SMS us or send his wife up to speak with us. Amongst all of this chaos, I had a crown done over a root canal. God, I love my dentist. The cost for a crown was 24,000 Huf or $113.00. This is what I paid for a teeth cleaning in California. Hungary is known for its quality dentistry and people come from all over Europe for dental care due to the cost. On the positive side, Ron found that the Traf0 theater was issuing season tickets for 5,500 Huf ($26.00) for five performances. This is the experimental dance theater, so language is not an issue. We went to the first performance on Saturday, the 16th with friends. It was a troupe from Belgium who presented a play/dance combo with amazing body movements. All of us were mesmerized and could not stop discussing it over coffee afterward. This is the crux of happenings in a nutshell. The museum quest has been put off for the last fifteen I have yet to visit, but it will happen. It is strenuous to try to commit to them when there are so many other things happening around us. tutorial helped enormously in making them independent. The first two classes were excellent and beyond my expectations. If they continue in this vein, I will be one happy instructor.

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