What an amazing opportunity!

I can't even begin to express what an amazing experience I have had during this past month.  From the work with Booking Dance, and now the whirlwind that has been Green Room Presents.  For GRP I have already seen 4 shows, and have 2 more to see tomorrow.  For each show we see we have to write up a ful review about it for Cal and Stuart to use when looking for acts for the coming years festivals etc.  That in itself has been an amazing experience, but it doesn't end there.  We have also written press releases for the happenings of their shows, made publicity reports with info of all industry people that came to each show, the number of tickets sold, and AL press about the show.  Of course, with all of this came more flyering, but I am fine with that sicne we have had such an amazing experience with everything else!  While it was much more intense, and busy, and crazy- it was so much more like the "Fringe" that I had been expecting.  LONG hours, running from place to place, everything.  Speaking about running- yesterday I found out I had to see a show in I think it was like 35 minutes or something, but I had to get to the OTHER side of town to get the pass, and then back to the side of town I was on in time.... Not to mention the path to and from included the CRAZY High Street, where it is like a stand still.  I RAN through the city in the bike lane in the streets, became part of a street performers act when he chased after me, but all in all made it to the show- AMAZING by the way.  And Cal said I broke the land speed record for getting from one side of Edinburgh to the other and back again!! :)

Anyways, I have LOTS and LOTS of amazing pictures that I will add tomorrow probably after I get out of work (I have the early shift tomorrow. YAY!) because the internet is being SUPER slow right now for some reason. 

But to give you a preview of what you will see...Hollyrood palace, pictures from the top of Arthurs seat, me in my new kilt!, and others as well!!!! GET READY!  Last full day in Edinburgh tomorrow (at least for now, but I know I will be back SOON!)

See you all tomorrow- pictures coming! :)

Booking Dance Festival- CHECK, two days off and Green Room Presents- HERE WE COME!

Well, just as quickly as it came, so too came the end of the first internship yesterday.  After 24 shows in 14 days we closed our four showcase shows.  I will miss this venue.  It was the coolest design.  In the picture of the back of the theatre the round wooden sections on both sides actually were on turn tables.  The theatre as is seats 600 but those two separate conference halls can actually turn to double the seating in the biggest theatre! OMG!

Main theatre from the stage!

One of the two smaller rooms that rotates

My view from the booth!

I had an amazing experience with this festival.  I met so many great people (a lot of connections in NY!!!) and got more experience in dance to add to my skills! YAY!  It was a bit crazy at times and expectations were very high, but in the end I am glad they were- it kept us on our toes!  I look forward to trying something new, but I will also miss this.

Now I have two days to see the city, see shows, and relax before we start bright and early Wednesday morning!  I plan to go out and see as much as I can today (hopefully the rain stops soon!)  and then tomorrow we are going on the Highland tour as well as having a chili cook off with our other interns at Green Room Presents!

Ok, some more random pictures etc.
First of all- the cigarette containers here really don't hold anything back!!

nasty mouth and open heart surgery!!!! WOW!

Here is a picture of us on our way to work the other day! I am going to miss this SOOOO MUCH! :)

Look at their crazy modern parliament building!!

And lastly...for now anyways, a picture of the really nice Friends of the Fringe party!

More to come about my days off!!!

More of beautiful Edinburgh!

Chalk drawings of Monet and Mary Queen of Scots!! OMG!

Just part of my backyard.  AKA where I like to run in the morning!

Gin and Tonic IN A CAN HERE!!!! AHHHH!!!

One of HUNDREDS of tiny cars here!

oh...hey castle

A clock made of flowers! WHAT!?!

 And now these last pictures are Harry Potter inspired! First is the Elephant House, which is where J.K Rowling came to write the Harry Potter books.  From the back room she had a view of the castle (with the Tattoo stands that remind me SO much of Quidditch stands), the Cemetery, and the private school that is pictured that is believed was to be the inspiration for the four houses.  ALSO, pictured are the first two of many gravestones that we plan to find in the cemetery that have Harry Potter names.  First- TOM RIDDEL, and second McGonagall!!! AHHHH

Week Two of Booking Dance Festival!

So, we are now in the third day of our Booking Dance Festival Week Two.  This week our shows are Rock it! and Athletic.  Rock it! Opened last night and we are currently in tech for Athletic and then we have two shows of Rock it! this afternoon! CRAZY DAY!  We are really getting a great experience here at the Fringe...learning lots from both the good and bad qualities of our bosses! :)  In any case, we are making TONS of great connections, having a great time...and OH YEAH- I AM IN SCOTLAND! IT IS AMAZING!  Last night we went on the haunted tour of both the Edinburgh graveyard as well as the underground city under the Royal Mile!  THEN, we went to see Sub Rosa (one of the 20 "Pick of the Fringe" shows! AMAZING!) It seriously was one of the most amazing theatrical experiences EVER.  It was in a Masonic Lodge where we moved from room to room with different actors in each!!!  It was the first time public had ever been allowed in many of the rooms in the lodge! It was VERY gory and gruesome, but it was an absolutely amazing show!!!!  I already have emailed the director and producer to get more information about the show!  Amazing!

Also, lesson learned... I was trying to cross the road yesterday morning to get to the venue, and the traffic was stopped, so  thought I would weave through the stopped car to get to the middle.  Around the bus and I am walking, all the sudden Talina pulls me back by my backpack and saved me! I would have been hit straight on by the second line of cars...haha.  Woops!  Luckily I walked away from it with just my toes run over and a skinned knee from the bumper hitting me......HOW STUPID AM I! haha  But I told everyone I was happy it happened, now I have a story to tell! YAY!

I am very excited to find out that one of my favorite monuments that we have walked by many times is called the Scott Monument!!!!! I cant wait to have time enough to go up into it! 

Isn't my monument beautiful!!!

Today the split bill opens!  Such exciting times, I dont want to leave. I just want time to see the city!  I love it here!

Some more random pictures...

Such happy plugs here

I mean...the architechture here is...ok

Such a nice walk to work every day!

Another nice street to walk on my way in the morning

Darn Seagull in the way!

Again...GOSH I want to see nice architecture here...is that too much to ask

Seeing shows at the Fringe

So last night we had another performance to another 130 or so people which was yet another good crowd for the Fringe.  After the performance we were invited to a gallery exhibition opening of a woman's prints.  There were eight really cool pieces, each dealing with another form of dance, and then there was one main word that embodied the dance form.  Each of these words was created from a bunch of smaller typed words, again all relating to the dance form in some sort or another.  It was a really cool exhibit.

After that I went and met mom and dad and we went to a comedy venue in which we watched Tricity Vouge's Ukulele Cabaret.  There were well over 50 people at this performance, and I would say about 20-30% of them all had their ukuleles with them as well!  Tricity, who was wearing a Ukulele tied to the top of her head mind you, picked audience members to be the UK's got talent judges and then there was audience members that had offered to perform in the Cabaret! SO FUNNY!  Only in Scotland at the Fringe would you see the sort of stuff we saw and heard. haha

Then after that we had tickets to see Showstoppers the Musical in which the audience picks the premise of the show, four musical theatre composers and other details of the show and they have to on the spot make up an entire hour long musical about this topic, using costumes and props, and incorporating the composers style into various songs throughout! It was REALLY amazing how well it all worked out.  Our musical was called Mafia-Mia, about the mafia and had to incorporate Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Bob Fosse, a mime sequence, and ABBA.  It was really really well done, FUNNY, and just a great time.

Today I am currently in tech for another one of our shows opening on Thursday, then we have a show this afternoon and then hopefully seeing Last Five Years this evening.  More to come soon!

OPENING!

So today we opened our first show!  We had 128 people in the audience, which while not seeming alot because our venue holds 600 and is capable of 1200 it is alot for the Fringe festival!  The Fringe Society actually says that the average number of people in the audiences is 2-5 people, with MANY shows that perform to no one at all... because there are over 1200 shows performing a day, and over 43,000 shows in total over the month, so there are only so many audience members, so 128 on our first show is not too bad!!  :)  After the show, my parents got here! Despite their tvs not working on the plane they made it just great!  We were all able to go to the opening night party for dinner and to talk to them in person which was really cool and then tonight we went to a VIP bar on the top floor of one of the venues!  We had a great time just talking to the Stage Manager and the International Festivals and Events Planner for the company.  Then as we were sitting by talking all the sudden in walks Caroline Rhea from Sabrina the Teenage Witch!!  She is performing here as one of the MANY MANY stand up comedians.  Anyways,  a good day all around, nothing crazy exciting to report besides the normal amazement of the European city.  As Leslie the Festival Planner told us today, the seed is planted you are going to want to travel everywhere now!  Ugh oh.... I think she is right! I LOVE IT HERE!

More to come soon!

The start of our internship!

So now we have officially met with both of our companies we will be interning with and I could not be more excited! We will be working for Booking Dance Company first who is a producing agency with 12 of the top US dance companies from all over America.  We have a daily showcase show which will show each of the companies for about 10 minutes as well as a splitbill four days a week which only has either 3 or 4 companies doing an expanded performance of a longer segment of a dance or a few dances.  Jodi, the exec. director was at this festival last year and since has expanded their own festival within a festival to two weeks this year, so we will have a completely different group of 7 companies next week. They have split it up and the two shows performing this week are entitled Lyrical and Beautiful and then next weeks two shows are entitled Athletic and Rock it!  This is such a great opportunity and after going out and flyering on the Royal mile as well as many of the other big dance venues I am really excited to meet the companies tomorrow for tech and to open the show on Sunday!! :) 

After the Booking Dance Companies festival is done we are working with Green Room Presents from New York for the remainder of the festival.  Cal and Stewart the business partners who own Green Room have been at this festival for several years now and Stewart has been coming since he was little.  In addition to producing shows at this festival they have done many of the other Fringe festivals throughout the world this past year, they own two off Broadway theatres in New York, have produced for several TV shows and movies, and one of the current things that is big in the press is that a really big performance at the Fringe this year is co produced by Green Room and the producer currently also producing Spiderman the Musical scheduled to open on Broadway within the next year.  Spiderman is the largest budgeted show on Broadway EVER, whoes budget is OVER $50 mil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AH!

Such amazing opportunities here at the Fringe and I am SO excited for it to continue to unravel as the festival continues after just officially starting today!  Let the party get started! :)

Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Like I said in my last post about Edinburgh castle, as if the day wasn't spectacular enough, now we had the Tattoo to go to that night!!  This was one of the most amazing things.  We filled in in the "cue" (line) that were just as long as can be and walking up to the castle from the royal mile with over a thousand other people surrounding you is an experience like no other.  And not only did we get the best section in the stadium because it was half price preview night, but it turns out that the ROYAL BOX which holds that nights special dignitary was maybe five feet from us! It was so great.  Seeing different military bands and bagpipers as well as special groups like the Royal Scottish bikers that did things like riding backwards standing on their handlebars while fireworks shot out of the back of their bikes, and the Royal Military Acrobatic group were just like nothing I had ever seen before.  In addition to the great music and performances many of the groups had really cool projections up on the castle itself, and most has some sort of remember the troops theme to them which were all very well received and very moving!  At one point the Royal English Pipers were playing I think Amazing Grace and there was a scrolling collage of videos of soldiers, their families, children, etc, and then all of the sudden military soldiers dressed in full camo and helmets and guns came out and reenacted a scene as if at war....  It was really an amazing experience.  Unfortunately, as you will see in the photos because it was preview night the press were allowed to be on the field with the groups, so in some of them they may look a bit out of line, but those are just the press that were all there...getting in the way! haha  But WOW what a great show!

The Citadel from South Carolina!

The start of the very moving projections

Combined tribute to the troops

The Royal Box!

The nights dignitary.

On our way out of the Tattoo...

Truly, such a GREAT performance.  It really is sort of like a little Opening Cermonies!

Edinburgh Castle

WOW! So I thought that Stirling Castle was amazing and the views were spectacular....then I went to Edinburgh castle! In the words of the Scots- "Brilliant."  Slowly I am picking up on the Scottish accents as that is one of my goals before I come home!!  Anyways, yeah, Edinburgh Castle.  Anything from the Royal Crown Jewels (unfortunately you can't take any pictures of those...) to the Prisoners quarters, to the great Cathedral and War Memorial, King and Queens Quarters, Great Hall, amazing views, and SUCH as secure castle! No one that was not suppose to be in that castle could have made it into that castle.  From its location atop a dormant volcano, to its MANY MANY canons- it all just embodies the classic Castle we all think of as we grow up, but instead of being far away in some distant county it is in the very heart of Edinburgh! AMAZING!  I have gone through and tried to pick the best of the best photos to put up, but you need to understand that between the castle and the Tattoo that night I took 368 pictures.... Woops...  I don't know how else to put this into words, it was yet another amazing experience, I told someone at one of the industries parties we were at between the castle and the tattoo that we are being spoiled.  From one castle to the next in two days, its almost to the point where I turn another direction and there is another breath taking view but to me it was like oh yeah look at that view, its great too when in reality it is not even a glimpse of ANYTHING you would see back home.  WOW.

Also a funny story from the castle.  We are walking up to the cathedral within the castle and on one side there is a steep drop off with rocks.  There were children who's parents had let them climb on the rocks, and just at that moment as we walk by there were two workers from the castle walking the other way and one says (now think of this as two older women with Scottish accents) "Why do these bloody people want their kids to climb on those rocks over there?"  Answer from the other one (very matter of factly) "Because they enjoy seeing their kids fall and die on the cobblestone."  "AHAHAHAHAHAHAH"  Such dry senses of humor here!! :)

Mind you that everything you see in this picture on the walls and in front of you is a weapon...  Each wall was FILLED with hanging swords and armor and all the fanned out things are spears....  And up on the front wall to the right you can see a small wooden box.  The lady working there told us that that was called the King's ear...  He could sneak away and go up a secret flight of stairs and listen in to everyone in the Great Hall through that opening and listen for anyone talking bad about him or the country!!

Other random thoughts about the city so far....

So you have heard of a bouncy house at parties and carnivals etc.... and you have seen gerbils run in their balls around your room????????  Well combine these two things and that is what the children of Edinburgh get to do.  Not sure exactly how it works, if I find out i will let you all know.

Also, their condiments packets here are much more interesting and diverse than our straight ketchup, mustard and sometimes mayo....

Mushy Peas!

The other day Vic told us that at many of the Fish and Chips places they have a thing called Mushy Peas.  He said it is sort of like Pea soup but thicker... I had my doubts about these.  Then we were talking to some of the locals and they said it is not very common in Edinburgh but more the outskirts and even in London etc.  BUT THEN Vic found a place and bought us all some Mushy Peas.  I no longer had my doubts.  Don't judge them by their looks, because they were delicious!  I loved them...Thought you all might want to see them.

Sterling Castle!

So today we took the train from Edinburgh to Stirling castle.  This was the site that Braveheart was filmed an it was beautiful. Unfortunately much of the castle is being renovated right now, but what we could see, as well as the views from all sides of the castle were absolutely amazing!  The trek to get up to the castle was quite long and VERY angular, but once there was it worth the walk!  There were so many amazing pictures that I could have added to this blog so I just uploaded one of the many buildings of the castle, one direction's stunning view and then a picture of all of us interns at the castle!

One of the most amazing things that unfortunately we couln't take any pictures of were the tapestry weavers.  In 2002 there was a fire which caused quite a bit of damage to the Great Hall.  In here were humungous tapestries that were either damaged, or the remains are currently in a museum in New York.  Since the fire, three world renound weavers have been hired who work seven days a week from 9-4 to recreate these tapestries!  They have been to New York numersous times to clor match, and then they just sit and weave- it is quite an amazing thing to watch.  They are currently working on a tapestry that I would say is probably about a 12-14 foot square VERY detailed tapestry and they are working across it and have probably two feet to go.  We asked the security guard standing by to make sure that people dont take pictures or talk to the weavers how long that would take them and he said that they project that one will not be done until next July!  They have projected they will be done by the end of 2013 to be put in the newly renovated Great Hall!!!! So amazing!  The picture I posted is two of the seven tapestries they have already completed!  It is amazing!