3 for the price of 1

View from FOH at The Interchange

This week I am braving the wilds of North wales, visiting various towns along the north coast as part of the three separate but related tours. The first tour is my current stint the The Tentmaker, the second date of which we performed in Colwyn Bay on monday.
The second tour is to promote the album of Cath Woolridge. I'm not technically (excuse the pun) involved with this tour, but as one of her dates is in the same place as a tentmaker date two days later so I've been roped in with that as a moral supporter.
The third tour isn't really a tour but involved visiting two schools in Llandudno today and doing a short play and a workshop on the effects of alcohol abuse. This is a brand new show being presented by Going Public and it's had a warm reception from two very different groups of kids.

Sometimes you get the luxury of walking into a venue and finding that you hardly ned to touch anything to get your show going. This was the case with monday's tentmaker at The Interchange. All i had to do was plug in my laptop to the sound desk and projector feed, put a CD on for walk-in music and make sure I could see my script when the lights were dimmed.
Of course i couldn't let it be that easy as I started to fiddle with EQs, different lighting states, trying to improve on the system that seemed a little rough around the edges. I'm not sure if I achieved it but it gave me something to do between meals.

As part of the deal with churches organising the first half of the north wales tour, the members of the team were put up with various church members for two nights. I was housed by a lovely couple who go by the names Steve and Sue. Both evenings that i was at their house we would watch some good quality TV, sandwiched between cups of tea and talk about our churches, life experiences, and all manner of good things like that.
Staying with these guys has been as much a part of this leg of the tour as the tentmaker and schools work has been, and I have been blessed so much by their caring and selfless attitudes, allowing a scruffy bearded stranger like myself into their home for two nights.

On my first night Sue asked me whether I had any phobias. Apart from a fear of heights I had none really. At that point she told me she was glad because she keeps all manner of creepy crawlies in the house to take to schools and show the children. I'm not sure what she would have said should I have professed to having a fear of snakes, spiders or mice! (Incidentally the mice aren't alive, they're for feeding the snakes!)
The next few days should be cracking, Cath has a show tomorrow night (she has a poorly voicebox at the moment so it could get interesting), then spending a day in Chester, then its back to Bangor for another tentmaker show. It's gonna be a blast!