Jere-Rigged

Remember Me?

I'm here.

I've been running non-stop since I got back into town last week and have had no time to sit and blog about anything.

But I got the news today that the current temp gig(that was supposed to run through the end of the year) is ending on Friday instead. Yikes! Nothing to do with me, of course, but the project I was working on is ending earlier than expected and my services are no longer needed.

Anyone need a temp starting next week?

I'm really fine with it, except that the timing could be better what with the bills coming in from the London trip and all. Another week or two in this gig would have been better for me. Eh, what can you do, right?

All my rushing around hasn't been all bad. I've managed to get to New York City Opera's current production of Carmen last Friday and the Roundabout's revival of Pygmalion on Broadway last night. I'll write about them, I swear.

Also to be written about...London. Remember that? Oh, yes. Silly me.

As I said, I didn't see as many shows in London this time out because I just didn't have the money, but I did manage to catch the new production of Rent, Parade at the Donmar Warehouse, the revival of The Country Wife, Lord of the Rings, The Sound of Music, and Throughly Modern Millie in a production at one of the schools at which I'm looking.

And I'll write about them, I swear.

Ooh, and I have pictures. I'll see about posting them. Well, some of them. A few of them. We'll see.

Back In New York

Well, I'm back in the Big Apple in one piece. Coming back was a bit stressful (more on that later) and I didn't get back to the apartment last night until almost 10.30pm, about 3 hours later than planned. And I'm immediately back into the nonstop rush of my life here. I should really have built in at least a day or two to take a breather and re-organize before plunging back into my New York life, but I'll survive.

So I have questions for you, my valued readers. As my blog time will probably be limited over the next few day, what are you most interested in hearing about with regard to the trip?

1) the shows I saw...not as many as last time, due to my limited budget, but there were a few

2) Other touristy things I did, including the trip to Scotland

3) acting schools and drama programs

And are you interested in seeing pictures?

Comments are still not working, but you can email me by clicking on the link on my name at the bottom of this post.

As I'd Thought

Hey, Folks, I'm alive. Still in the UK. As I'd thought, I've just gotten so busy here that blogging has fallen by the wayside. Just a quick rundown: investigated drama programs, spent a few days in Scotland, and seen some very interesting stuff in the West End and elsewhere. Today, Tim and I are headed off to Brighton for the day. I feel just like Lydia Bennett! Where are the officers?!

More later.

Oh, I'm back in New York on Wednesday night.

Jere

Random Pictures...Toronto to London

This is the "regional jet" I was talking about before that flew me on the hour long flight from LaGuardia to Toronto.

This is a piece of public art in the Toronto airport. It's a big sort of aquarium with floating cubes in it that are blown around in an arty way.

This is another piece of public art in the Toronto airport. You walk through in on the way to the gates in this section. If you take one of the side sections, there's quite an interesting echo.

A view of the airport from my gate. It's really quite nice.

This is two shots of the 767 that took me from Toronto to London.

Assassins In Suburban Philadelphia

Hey, Folks!

If anyone's reading this in the Philadelphia area, my best friend is currently playing John Wilkes Booth in the Forge Theatre production of the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Assassins in Phoenixville, PA.

He says it's a really good local production that is simply not selling tickets as well as it should. If you go, stop afterward and tell him that I sent you. :)

Information may be found here.

Googled Out!

We didn't make it out of Kent in time to visit Hever Castle, but we did get back to London in time to head over to the Etcetera Theatre, above the Oxford Arms pub on the Camden High Street to see a play called Googled Out! that had transferred to town from the Brighton Fringe Festival.

This would be the London equivalent of off-off-Broadway. It was actually a cute little space, probably seating for 50 or so on 5 or 6 benches facing a small stage. Definitely as nice or nicer than a lot of equivalent venues back home in New York.

Sadly, the play was rather awful and pointless. It had to do with a website that, at the behest of their families, lured unsuspecting internet addicts with the idea of convincing them to shut of the computers, go outside, and sustain some actual human contact. How and why? Not sure.

This play felt like an idea someone had late one night whilst getting high that probably shouldn't have survived the light of day. It's difficult for me (though Tim's didn't feel so constrained) to fault the actors here because it's really difficult to know what they could have made of the piece if they'd be given anything to actually play. Direction was courtesy of the playwright, which, you will know if you read this blog on a regular basis, I think is generally a mistake. It certainly was here, as the writer could definitely have benefited from having another set of eyes and another brain in the room during this piece's development.

Oh, hey...there's a promotional clip on-line here. See what you think.

Weekend at the Royal Spa

At the moment, I'm spending a couple of days in the town of Tunbridge Wells, in the county of Kent, visiting with friends of Tim's. Having a lovely time and I'm going to try to post some pictures when we get back to London.

This place is one of two town designated a "Royal Spa," due to its one-time popularity with the aristocracy.

Now, it's what I supposed we'd call a "bedroom community" for people who commute into London each day.

Anyway, it's always interesting to see new places. Also, very nearby is Hever Castle, the ancient seat of the Boleyn family. I'm hoping that we can stop there.

Anyway, more later.

Flying The Maple Leaf

I am writing this from seat 24K on Air Canada Flight 862, high above the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Toronto and London. It’s a window seat, which I prefer because I really do enjoy taking in the view when there’s something to see…which there’s not at the moment. The plane is a Boeing 767-200, a twin-engine widebody, but there are relatively few passengers on the flight. When we boarded, the gate personnel decided to simply forgo the usual boarding procedures and just let everyone on at once.

Can I even convey how happy I am that the crying baby in the middle section of the row behind me has finally fallen asleep? It’s the simple pleasures in life, you know?

This plane has obviously seen better days. The interior is a bit shabby. My tray table is broken and only stays up if you jiggle it in just the right way. There’s no nifty personal entertainment screen in the seatbacks. I don’t really care so much about that since I am more than capable of entertaining myself; in fact, I’ve just started what is promising to be a terrific novel, Full Circle by Michael Thomas Ford. It’s just a little disappointing considering that the much smaller Embarer 175 that took me on the one hour flight from New York to Toronto was absolutely state of the art, including touch screens on the seatbacks. Regional jets aren’t so dinky anymore, apparently.

By the way, have you been to Terminal A at LaGuardia? What a dump! (That’s for you, Steve Hickson.) While people complain about the state of this airport in general, this wing appears to be a relic of the 1950’s to which little has been done since. In the section in which I was waiting, there were not even WINDOWS.

Clearing security today was a breeze, both at LaGuardia and at Pearson, which is the name of the airport in Toronto. I was unclear about what I’d need to do once I landed in Toronto, because I’d never flown internationally with a stopover before. When you live in New York, there’s very little need to do this.

Here’s what happened. After deplaning, I headed toward customs, which was necessary, even though I was only going to be in the country for a few hours. An employee I asked for directions sent me to the wrong place when she didn’t pay any attention to what I had asked her…the place I was sent was for transferring passengers going TO the US, not coming from the US. Argh. This is a huge pet peeve of mine…if you’re going to put yourself in a position where you’re going to need to be answering questions, please listen to what people are saying to you. Well, that was cleared up quickly enough and I got to the right place, cleared customs in minutes and went down to collect the small bag I’d checked.

There was some slight confusion with the bags, which I still don’t understand, and if there’s anyone with any information on this, I’d love to hear. I was told at LaGuardia that my bag would be checked through to Heathrow and I was reminded that I wouldn’t be seeing it again until I arrived there. Fine. However, en route to Toronto, we were instructed to pick up our bags at the baggage carousel, and then give them back to Air Canada once we’d cleared customs. Okay, that’s fine too. I don’t care a bit. When my bag never showed up at the carousel, I went to ask about this at the customer service counter and was again told that my bag had been checked through to Heathrow. No idea why I’m special that way. Maybe they do it for people traveling internationally? Who knows?

So I make my way through the gorgeous Toronto airport (seriously…prettiest airport ever…ranks up there with Detroit) and make my way to the gate, where I get to cool my heels for about 3 hours. Nice.

By the way, important safety tip #612…if you’re in Canada, it’s important to specify that the place you are going is London, ENGLAND, because, apparently, there’s a London, ONTARIO as well. Who knew? I just started saying “Heathrow” instead and everyone automatically knew what I meant.

Being as how Canada is officially a bilingual country, every announcement in the airport and on the planes has been in both English and French and any printed matter also carries both languages. I asked a flight attendant if they all spoke both languages, and she told me that they, in fact, do not. There have to be French speakers on all flights, but no everyone must. Interesting.

And here I am. It’s now 10.17pm in New York and I’m not the least bit sleepy, even though I only got a few hours sleep last night. We should be landing at about 1.00am New York time, which is 7.00am in London. Yeah, the first day is always dicey. I have a feeling that I’ll be okay running on adrenaline, as I was last time.

Oh, I almost forgot my little drama. A few minutes ago, I went to check something with my passport and realized that I couldn’t find it. Also missing was my boarding pass. Now, obviously, I had both of these things when I boarded the plane and when I double-checked the boarding pass for my seat number. But they weren’t anywhere and I had completely dismantled my bag and was on my hands and knees feeling about on the floor. I had visions of being turned away by customs in the UK and having to return to Canada on the next flight, only to have Canada reject me for being passport-less as well. I thought I might end up as Tom Hanks in that movie where he lived in the airport due to some kind of customs issue.

Anyway, I went to the empty row behind me with the idea of seeing if the passport could have fallen back behind the seat…and there it was with the boarding pass, sitting right on the aisle seat in the row behind me. I have no recollection of placing them there, but must have when I put my rolling suitcase in the overhead compartment. Whew!

And I’ve just remembered that I forgot to change the sheets and make the bed for the sublet this morning before I left. Ugh.

So that’s about it for now. Obviously, I won’t be able to post this until I actually get to London, but it still feels like live blogging from the plane. Anyway, I should probably try to doze a little so I can hit the ground running in a few hours.

More later…

Arrived Alive

Hey, Folks!

I'm here. Got here in one piece, even if an errant bottle managed to douse the entire contents of one of my bags with conditioner. Argh.

All in all, Air Canada is really not a bad way to go.

Crossing the Pond

One of the reasons I've been so busy lately and so strapped for cash is that on Wednesday I'm heading to the United Kingdom for the second time this year. I'm interested in drama programs there and I'm going to take some time to visit schools and talk to people and see if this is something that might be in my future.

This happened in a sort of whirlwind. I'd been talking to Tim, my friend in Camden Town, about this and he suggested I actually make a plan to come over and look at schools. I looked into airfares and, as it turns out, I found a spectacularly inexpensive roundtrip fare on Air Canada. Of course, this means flying to London via Toronto, but the price was at least a hundred dollars less than flying directly from New York.

The good part of the whole Air Canada thing is that I'll be able to fly in and out of LaGuardia, the most convenient airport in New York for me, and Heathrow, the most convenient airport in London for Tim.

Anyone have any suggestions for what to do with two or three hours to kill at the airport in Toronto?

Never having flown Air Canada, I'm also curious about what that experience will be like. Anyone ever flown the Maple Leaf before?

Being a US citizen, I'm assuming that I won't have to clear customs in Toronto en route to London, but will have to do so on the way back. If anyone has had any experience with this, I'd love to hear.

It was about a week after I'd made the reservations that I ran into the financial issues that dogged me at the beginning of September. I considered cancelling, but, as it turned out, the round-trip fare was so good that cancelling would have meant forfeiting about half the fare. Not so good. So I decided to carry on and make my way as best I could. Luckily, the current temp job came along at just that time and things have returned to a somewhat even keel financially.

There is also a personal element to the trip. When I was there in March, Tim and I found a sort of simpatico that we both thought was worth exploring further. I'm not sure what this might be or could be in future, but I am very much interested in exploring it. I have a pattern in my life of falling in "like" (and, in one special case, love) with guys who live far far away. In the past, the distance has usually proven to be a major issue, as you might expect. And so it might be here. But we're going to see. Don't expect to read continual updates on that part of my life in this space. As you may have noticed, I don't write much about my romantic and sexual life. Be assured, it's not that I don't have one...it's just that some things I'd rather keep private. As I tell my parents, when there's something to say, I'll say it.

I'm going to try to be better about updating the blog on this trip than I was last time. I tend to get caught up in actually living life, and don't have time to sit down and write about it.

Anyone have any suggestions for theatre? I'm already interested in seeing Much Ado About Nothing at the National, All About My Mother at the Old Vic, and Parade at the Donmar Warehouse. I've considered seeing the London production of Hairspray, because I've never seen Michael Ball in anything and the new West End production of Rent, because I'm curious to see how the material holds up in an entirely new staging. Patrick Stewart is also doing MacBeth in the West End and that's bound to be interesting. I might also be able to catch the tail end of the Globe season and be a groundling for whatever they happen to be doing. It's going to be more a matter of what can I get into for a price I can afford. If anyone is reading this in the UK and has connections, I'd love to hear from you.

Comments are still not working, but feel free to email me anytime.