Day 6: Tech Day 2!

After a hot hot hot last week, it was great to wake up to a cooler day.  L and I had to be at the theatre by 9 for some notes (L) and a zoom meeting (me), but we had time to grab a coffee before heading into the theatre.  W, our video designer and general tech wizard, was in with his assistant working on content, and we had a nice few hours getting stuff together while the actors worked in a rehearsal hall.  

The view off the rooftop patio at the theatre.

After a few hours, L and I grabbed a falafel before corralling all the artists into the space to start tech for Interview the Dead.  Lunch was a falafel wrap, and we did a bit of shopping at the Waterloo market.  After a blistering week in Amsterdam, today was glorious.  It was breezy and cool, and it was refreshing to walk down the street without my shirt sticking to my back.

Our poster, augmented with pushpins.

Interview the Dead is an improvisatory show.  Each of the actors has done extensive research on a number of well-known dead people (Omar Sharif, Saddam Hussein, Amy Winehouse, Toni Morrison, Karl Marx, etc.), and the audience has, for a few hours, the opportunity to ask them any questions they'd like.  The actors respond in character, and often engage in dialogue with each other. Because the text is entirely improvised, the design needs to be hyper-flexible, so instead of a traditional linear tech, L and I played around with design ideas while the actors worked in the space.  

M designed the sound system and was helping me solve a problem.

The cast on a five.

After tech, L and I had a few hours before we had to be back at the theatre, so we walked around town for a bit on a photo safari.  

At 6, L and I had a talk with the first- and second- year tech/design students about the work that we were doing.  L asked them all to introduce themselves and give their areas of focus.  All were lights and/or video.  None were specifically interested in sound.  We talked about the design process for the shows, and then we talked about some of the tech we're using.  I've got a lot of new-to-me stuff going on - SPAT Revolution, Leap Motion 2, Sound Particles.  I got to demo the tools and talk about how I applied them to the show. Along the way, I talked about Wave Field Synthesis, Granular Synthesis, Open Sound Control, Variable Beam Amplitude Panning, and a few other ideas.  It was a lot of fun!  L talked about his approach, and we demonstrated the show control connectivity and the whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts power of good design.

Afterwards, dinner at an italian restaurant that would be considered excellent in LA, but was disappointing for how close it is to Italy.  Oh well.  

Day 5: A hot day off!

Today was our first day off since we got to Amsterdam.  We all slept in and made breakfast at the apartment.  At noon, we hopped on our bikes and headed across town. B took us to see a few of his favorite places, including a restaurant that hasn't changed is decor in hundreds of years, Amsterdam's hottest rock venue, and the cafe that Amsterdam's filmmaking community hangs out in.  It was HOT.  88 in the shade.  We were on bikes, riding on sunny streets.  Gross.  Grossssssss.

B's tour ended us at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's Modern Art Museum.  We had a great time poking through it.  The older stuff on the ground floor was a little staid for my taste, but I loved the humor and the grand metaphors of the upstairs.

This ibex is wearing other ibexes.

It took me the entire time in the museum to dry off from the sweaty ride!  After the museum, we hopped back on our bike and rode through Vondelpark. We stopped to listen to a Cuban band playing in the local shell. 

We then stopped for a snack of water and tiny pancakes at one of the park cafes.

We hopped back on our bikes to head to dinner.  Along the way, K asked for some photos of her on a bike.  This one turned out really well!

For dinner, we ended up at a pancake house.  There aren't a lot of true dutch specialities, but one of them is pancakes topped with stuff!  We got a bunch and shared them all.  Here's a paprika/mushroom/onion one and and apple/bacon one.  

After that, L and I split off from B and K to wander the city at sundown and take photos.  We had a nice conversation and ended the evening meeting up with B & K at Cafe Basquiat for water and g&t's.  

We are all soaked.  It's absolutely miserable outside.  I'm so glad the weather is supposed to cool down tomorrow.

Day 4: Tech

Woke up again at 6.  That's been a consistent thing for me, regardless of jetlag and when I went to bed.  Is there something in the apartment that's waking me?  Unsure.

After showering the sweat off my body from yesterday, L and I biked into town and grabbed breakfast.  We were in the theatre by 9am to get ready for the day of tech for Anatomy of a Home.  The tech went well; we were able to take care of the notes we needed to do for lights and sound, though we won't have video until next week.  This is my first show using SPAT Revolution, which I'm really enjoying due to its power and flexibility.  

Raffi in tech.

We ended the day early and all got to catch up on work in the space (and a/c) for the rest of the afternoon After we wrapped up our notes session, B and K found a bar (the 1695 bar below!) to work at while L and I wandered the area taking photos. 

Tipsy buildings lean on each other for support.

You have to be a good parallel parker to have a dry car.

The small bar in front of our theatre dates back to 1695.

This city is lousy with beauty!

We all met back up at the bar (where I tried my first Bitterball) for dinner at an Indonesian Restaurant on Rembrantplein.  I found it on google, and though we were initially skeptical due to the restaurant's presence in a very touristy area, the food was delicious!  I could eat Indonesian food every night here!  

After dinner we walked to the Dutch National Opera to watch Ivo Van Hove's production of Mahagonny.  I'm not a big opera fan (pace, musical style), but this was a terrific design that revealed so much about the text and the story.  Plus, I am a big Brecht and Weill fan. What a treat!

The National Opera

When the opera was done, we walked around town a bit, enjoying the beautiful lights on the canals.

After riding our bikes back home, K turned in while B, L, and I took a late night walk (so much being still during tech meant we had energy.  We wandered through Oosterpark before finding a bar for an outside beer.  

A cafe near our apartment. Always bustling.

Day 3: load-in and a play!

 I woke on Friday at 6, feeling alert but with a small headache. The rest of the apartment was quiet, so I showered and went for a walk, eager to stretch my legs and watch how the city wakes up. The neighborhood we’re in is out of the tourist area, so the hotels and high-end shops are replaced with apartment rows and stores for Amsterdammers. Paint shops, halal markets, McDonald’s etc. 

The city is slow to wake up. By 8am, there was only one coffee shop that was open for business in the neighborhood (Google Maps shows at least ten in a two-block radius that opened later in the day). I grabbed a cappuccino before heading back to the apartment to grab my stuff for work. 

L and I got ourselves from the apartment to the theatre on a really beautiful ride. My favorite part of the ride is the section that has a city park on the right and a small grassy field with tram tracks on the left. There’s something cool about the grass growing all around the tram tracks, with hundreds of Amsterdammers biking on either side of them. 

Work at the theatre was the last day of load-in and prepping for tech. I ran my SPAT test track and it worked like a charm, so I built out longer versions of the sound sequence. I set up microphones, started programming qlab, etc. I watched a run of Anatomy of a Home, and when I got back to the theatre from the rehearsal hall, I discovered that the theatre had booked two workshops into the venue for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had planned to work all afternoon spatializing sound and building the show. Instead, I had to wrap things up to make space for the workshops. Oh well. 

A quick lunch with L, B, and E before heading back to the theatre to work in their maker lab for a few hours. I kept building content while L and B went to pick up K from the train station. She had just flown in from CA and gamely jumped into rehearsal with R while L and I watched. 

After rehearsal, L, B, and K headed back to the apartment to get K settled in while I rode my bike to the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. The four of us were going to meet R to watch a show with the Nederlands Theater Festival called ‘The Story of Travis’ and I wanted some time by myself to take photos and collect some thoughts. I didn’t find the area very photogenic, but I found a lovely bar called NJoy that had a great cocktail with scotch, cognac, citrus, and thyme. Then, I grabbed a quick bite and headed to the theatre. 

The venue itself is old and grand. I was in a box seat all to the side on the second balcony. The air was warm and humid, and the spotlights glowed as they shone from the back balcony. The play ‘The Story of Travis,’ was performed in Dutch and focused on a Black man who grew up in Chicago before relocating to Amsterdam as an adult. I didn’t get any of the details b/c the language, but the text was clearly working through issues of Blackness, culture, and African heritage. There were elements of the design and staging that felt very simplistic, compared to some of the conversations we’re having in the US about these issues, but the (95% white) audience ate it up. Five standing ovations. 

Afterwards, we biked back to the apartment. K and L went up to go to bed, while B and I went for a beer and some more conversation. He took me to a nice local beer bar, and we got back to the apartment at around 1.

Amsterdam Days 0-2: arrival and hot/sticky/worky

Last Tuesday, I hopped on a plane for Amsterdam to for two weeks to put up two shows with a couple colleagues from UCI.  I flew direct out of LAX, flying overnight.  My hair looked good when I left...

... but by the time I landed in Amsterdam, it was...less than.

 

L and I flew in on the same flight. After we landed Wednesday morning, moved through passport control, and hopped a train into central city, B, R, and H met us to walk us to the theatre.  Along the way, we passed over lots of beautiful canals and BOY was it hot!  I had been checking the weather for the previous week and the forecast was reasonable (mid-70's), but it was 80F by the time we landed at 9am.  

From the train station, we went straight to the theatre for a while to get settled in.  The theatre is roughly 50x50', and the grid is a system of trusses that can be raised and lowered individually.  Here's a shot of a few of them lowered to the ground.

After a few hours at the theatre, L and I were beat, so we headed to the apartment to get settled in.  We're on the 4th and 5th floor of a walk-up with no a/c.  L passed out and I went to buy an oscillating fan.  We cooked in (and triggered the smoke alarm), and I was passed out by 10.30.

On Thursday morning, I was up at 6 and we were at the theatre by 9.15.  L and I walked in to the theatre and kept working on load-in.  We took a break mid-afternoon and walked across town (hot! HOT!) to pick up rental bikes. H & S facetimed along the way!  Everything you've read about Amsterdammers riding bikes everywhere is 100% true. This city is full of bikes, and the roads are designed to prioritize bikes over motorized vehicles.  Plus, it's super fun to ride in Amsterdam!

After rehearsal, L and I had dinner with E, our producer for these two plays.  We met at a small pub right next to the theatre for a beer, and then E took us to a chinese restaurant in the Chinatown section of Amsterdam.  The dinner was delicious, and on the way, we passed this small castle that used to host a human dissection theatre on the top floor.  Today, there's a restaurant on the ground floor.

Back home, I got a chance to check in with S before working on some notes and then blogging.  Off to bed soon!  Another workday tomorrow!