Nearing the end of the day

Cousin Moey here....thinking about sunsets, the end of the day and the nearing end of our time with Fringe 2007. (the pic above is from the sunset at Glenelg on Saturday)

We've got three days left of performing....Five shows and then a day of more "installation" art at Marion. The fringe has come and gone by fast....so fast that we haven't had much of a chance to even see other shows.

We taught a workshop today (a 6 hour class followed by performances! WHEW!) We had a FABULOUS class of 9 students who jumped in with both feet this morning. And by the end of the day the stuff that they had created together was so good, it looked like they had been working together for a month. I always find it refreshing to be fed in that way...teaching takes a lot of energy, but what you expend is (usually) replenished immediately when you see others get inspired and excited about what also inspires and excites you. We hope to remain in contact with most if not all of our new 'simpletons'.

As we end yet another day, all three of us are sitting here at a little street cafe doing our internet'y things and trying to remember all the things that have happened in the last 24 hours, as well as plan for the up and coming 24.

Tomorrow? We have another outing for Park Bench at the Adelaide Museum, followed by two performances of Caravan Chronicles. What we won't know until tomorrow is what wonderful variety of people we'll get to invite up on the park bench, or who in our extended 'family' will show up to share their stories....but I'm sure whatever tomorrow brings will be different and possibly more than we could ever expect.

Biography in motion

Today we had the opportunity to see the final piece of our Adelaide artistic plan in action. Park Bench, the mobile story-sharing vantage point, conceived by Llysa and beautifully realized by Monique (and her Aussie posse, Graham and Andy), hit the streets. With Llysa perched atop, and Mo' and Drew bringing her willing participants, some dozen stories were told and recorded. As a slice of verdant visual art, the piece is a great success; catching the eye and slowing the stride of most passersby. As a performance platform, Park Bench is taking the us all to new, very community-driven places. With Llysa skillfully coaxing memories and opinions, people are actually able to perch four feet above their surroundings and truly ponder their environment. How did they get here? Where are they going? What made them who they are? Art and life intersecting on a small, grassy knoll-on-wheels. Perfect.

Come Rain or Shine!

Hello all!

Monique here. (Or Cousin Moey as I've come to be known in OZ this time round)

We 've had quite another week of performances, with two Very Wet shows last Friday (the sky just OPENED UP and let loose for a good four or five hours---very welcome after such a long dry hot summer!) We got a couple phone calls from the Fringe asking if we were going to still do our shows that day. Of course, being from Seattle...why wouldn't we?

We got out as many umbrellas as we could find. But when we realized that even those were not going to be enough to keep the audience from getting soaked, we changed the show so that we would keep the audience inside the caravan the entire time, and we would pop in and out to do our pieces. Andrew even got the grill going and between us and the student cousins we toasted enough PEEPS to go around and then he brought into the caravan a plate for all the audience to share!

After we performed our second show that night we packed everything up as best we could so that Saturday morning would be at least a little bit easier. (as we needed to head on down the road to Glenelg to set up for our long weekend of shows down by the beach!)

We had 6 shows over the weekend, and all were very well attended! The students working with us did a great job trying to 'herd the cats' around to the different stations and we got some really great plates (haikus as well as memories).

The only downside of the weekend was finding one of our windows in the caravan broken Sunday morning. (someone got the idea that we might have actually put something of value in there!) But thanks to the great care that Rod (Glenelg city council extraordinaire!) he had a man out to fix the window before our first show even started! Thanks Rod!!!!

Yesterday was a beautiful day with a nice beach walk with Graham, and then Andrew and Llysa moved over to stay with me at Graham and Bernadette's (which meant GREAT food cooked by Bern, GREAT wine, from our trip out to the wineries, and some much needed rest!)

Now we are prepping for more park bench outings, teaching our last class with our student cousins and getting ready for our day long workshop as well as our VIP show and the last week of performances for the Fringe!