Lagos Day 1-3: arrival, Fela, rehearsal!

On Sunday morning, I started a weeklong trip to Lagos Nigeria to work on the sound design for an adaptation of UCI colleague Bryan Reynold's play 'Eve's Rapture.'  The trip started with a 6am flight from LAX to Atlanta, followed by an overnight direct flight from Atlanta into Lagos.  We arrived Monday morning in Lagos to a sticky cloudy day.  The airport was chaotic and felt half-finished, but our host hired a guide to help us navigate immigration.  We got through the airport without to much trouble and were on our way.

Our hotel is in Ikeja, a relatively pricy area of Lagos.  There are gated houses all around, range rovers and jaguars driving driving down the street.  We wandered into an organic grocery store, and the manager took a shine to us and walked us across the street to a high-end department store/art gallery.  This being a tony part of a tony part of town makes some of the other bits more pronounced and meaningful.  Most sidewalks are just concrete slabs laid over sewage, and every ten feet or so a slab is missing, so you either have to jump over the gap or step into the street.  There is still visible poverty, and guards at the doors to shops and hotels are a reminder that while rich, this place isn't completely safe.

After a siesta and a walkabout, Kate came to the hotel to join us.  She's a local actor, not in the show, who seems to have been voluntold to be our companion for our trip.  Lagos isn't really set up with a tourist infrastructure, so it's great to have someone around who knows how the city works.  We first headed to the Kalakuta Museum, the former home of Afropop founder and Nigerian musical pioneer Fela Kuti.  His house has been turned into a museum, and his grave is in the front area.

From there, to a traditional Nigerian dinner at Ile Iyan, where had a delicious meal of pepper soup, chicken, goat, snails, fish, and plantains!  

We were in bed by 9.

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On Tuesday morning (Day 3), I woke at 4.30 (jetlag) and got some work done before breakfast.  At 7.30, we hopped in a car with Kate and a friend of hers for the 90 minute drive northeast for rehearsal.  Along the way, we could see that Lagos was already up and hopping, even at that early time!

As we left the city proper, the roads got crappier, and even the potholes had potholes!

After a little more than an hour on the road, we turned off the pavement for the final 25 minutes of driving along a very rutted-out dirt road.  The dirt was red and dusty, but the activity on the side of the road didn't stop.  Vendors, clothiers, schoolkids, motorbikes, etc, were all jockeying for position on the road.

We finally pulled up to a big wall with a metal gate in and honked the horn.  Someone came to open the door and we drove into the parking area/rehearsal space for the Crown Troupe of Africa, our hosts for this trip and the company putting up 'Eve's Rapture.' The space a big open dirt area, in full sun.  Along one wall was a laundry rack and a little coop for a fresh batch of puppies.  At one end was a big house with running water but (as far as I could tell) no electricity (maybe they had it but didn't use it since it was not and no one wanted lights on).  The cast was waiting for us, and as soon as we got settled, they started the rehearsal. 

The rehearsal was glorious.  Segun, the artistic director, translated the text into Pidgin (a thick local dialect that sounds like English if you squint), expanded the cast from 4 to 17, and turned the whole thing into opera complete with an orchestra.  It was stunning. And hot.

After rehearsal I got to spend time with with Segun and the other artists, eating lunch and talking about music and theatre.  

The ride back to Lagos was uneventful, and Bryan and each took a siesta after we returned. For dinner, we me back up with Kate and her friend for dinner at a local restaurant called Tilapia.  No one ordered the fish.

Days 9 & 10: Vienna and home

 Sunday (Day 9) was a full day for me in Vienna. I woke up in my comfy bed at 5.30 (the Hoxton Hotel is deliciously awesome btw) and lazed for a bit, hoping that I’d snooze again.  When that didn’t work, I got cleaned up, checked out of the hotel, stowed my bags, and hit the city on foot.  I had a few destinations in mind, but mostly I wanted to wander.

First stop was breakfast.  I was hoping to find a nice casual café, but after too long wandering with no luck, I stumbled upon the Sacher Café.  They’re a super-touristy venue with a hotel, a restaurant, and a very famous chocolate cake that my dad still goes on about.  I had a very expensive (and surprisingly bland) breakfast of pastries, egg, smoked salmon, and cappuccino.  Thus fortified, I set out for the National Library.

Monument to the end of fascism. Maybe it's a little premature? 

H has an Atlas Obscura book about a bunch of cool places to see, and The National Library piqued her interest with its secret doors and passages.  I wandered the great hall, examining illuminated texts, reading about how Austria views its own history, and seeking out the passages.  I didn’t see any secret passages, but I saw lots of bookcases that doubled as secret doors to hidden rooms for storage and scholarship.  And a couple of amazing globes!

After the library, I spent too much time trying to find some interesting shopping.  Vienna is full of shops, but they were all closed for Sunday.  The city’s deep catholic roots and trade union workers’ rights efforts continue to keep most retail closed on Sundays.  The only exceptions I saw were the schlocky souvenir shops.

Lunch was Wienner Schnitzel.  My waiter asked me if I wanted fries or a salad as my side.  I thought the potatoes would be too heavy with my fried veal, so I ordered the salad.  It was a potato salad.

After lunch, I took an English-language The Third Man tour.  The Third Man is one of my favorite movies, and this tour takes us underground through the very sewer stairs that Orson Welles used and into the sewer tunnels where the movie was shot.  It wasn’t too stinky!  The tour was really only about the intersection of The Third Man and the sewer system (the guide glossed over all the superterranean bits, but it was still pretty rad.  And, we got to see the spot in the tunnels where Harry Lime was shot!

After the tour, I had a realization about shopping – perhaps the museum gift shops would be an exception to the closed-on-Sundays rule.  And I was right!  My first stop was to the Albetina, a modern art museum.  The had a few great exhibits going on.  The first was one about the New Gothic movement of the turn of the 20th century.  It featured a bunch of artists that I was unfamiliar with, but also one that I know deeply – Katthe Kollwitz.  It was really interesting to see her work situated among her contemporaries, and I was fascinated to see how the Albertina’s interpretation of her work differed from MOMA last summer.

From there I checked out a few other museums before landing at Mozart House. This building houses Mozart’s last apartment in Vienna, but the whole building has been turned into a museum.  It was pretty neat to walk through his rooms and look at his scores.

Then it was time for dinner.  I had Viennese for lunch, so I thought I’d end my time in Europe with a nice Italian meal.  I found a solid restaurant and had a delicious mushroom ravioli with bresaola.  And a green salad.  And a glass of wine.  And a negroni.  And lots of water. After walking over 25,000 steps, I needed to rehydrate.

Dinner complete, it was time to get myself to the airport hotel for my last night in Vienna.  I talked with H and S on the way to the hotel, and I was in bed with the lights off by 9:30 pm.

Days 7 & 8: Brno & Vienna

Yesterday morning half of the company woke with headaches.  Between the grey and the exhaustion, we were spent.  We had planned on a full day of seeing Brno, but we ended up chilling out longer in the apartment.  I was a little nauseous, but after a few hours, it dissipated.

L and I went looking for breakfast and wound up at an asian noodle shop.  Afterwards, we wandered Brno.

Many of these old Czech towns have astronomical clocks.  Brno's is very modern, and while it's definitely functional as a clock, it also looks like it might be functional for some other things too.  In fact, while we were looking at it, a woman came up to us and wanted to know what we thought of Brno's big black cock.

There is a 500-year old vegetable market that is open just outside our apartment. The produce there is beautiful, and we took a tour through the labyrinth of cellars deep underground where the merchants historically stored their wares.

Flowers at the market.

Artifacts from the labyrinth.

Winemaking artifacts.

Torture helmets.

More market goodness.

F cancer.

The town is beautiful, with all sorts of eras of art & architecture bumping up against one another.

How many architectural styles are in this photo?

After our walkabout, we returned for a brief siesta. I facetimed with S&H, and then we headed to the theatre for our last performance of this tour.  This one was our strongest.  Everything came together, and we had a great run and talkback!

After the performance and quick strike, the company went out to an Italian dinner to celebrate the end of the tour!

On Saturday morning, I went out early to pick up breakfast for the folks.  Then, E and I took a short train from Brno to Vienna

In Vienna, we said goodbye to each other and headed our separate ways.  I checked in at the hotel and then headed over to the offices of Amadeus Audio, an immersive audio firm that I've been wanting to learn more about.  Fabio, one of their leaders, spent the afternoon with me, demoing their system and showing me some stuff they've been working on.

Then, back to the flat for a short siesta before wandering town.

Roman ruins in the foreground!

This church is sooooo biiiig!

Love is love.

I visited a bunch of Atlas Obscura sights just to find reasons to move around the area.  The main drag is full of the typical high-end stuff - Prada, Coach, Tiffany, but the side streets are full of cool discoveries!  I found two iron bars that were used centuries ago to measure cloth, a 400-year old tree studded with nails, and a baroque monument to the plague.  

Tired now.  Bed soon. More exploring tomorrow!

Days 5 & 6: Krakow and Brno

Yesterday morning we got up early after the performance in Olomouc and hit the road by 8am.  The morning was cool and breezy as we zipped through the countryside from Czechia to Poland.  We rolled into Krakow around noon and headed straight for the theatre.  Teatr Bez is in a 400-year old building that hosts a wide range of plays (the ropes tied to the rafters are from a play based on a Jules Verne text).  It’s a lovely cozy space that feels more like an experimental college space than a community or professional theatre.  It was definitely the least-equipped of our venues, but the folks at the venue were generous and helpful.  I sat on a bench at the back of the venue, with my script on the floor in front of me, the mixing console (an old Behringer) on my left, and my laptop running QLab on my right.

After I finished the load-in, I got a chance to wander town a bit before we did a short spacing rehearsal. 

After spacing, we went to the lodging for to move in and short siesta.  Then, back to the venue for the show.  The show was good; we had a small audience, but they definitely enjoyed the show!

After, we loaded-out and then met up with a few friends at a Polish restaurant in Krakow. After we ate pierogi, one of our audience friends took us to visit a local music hall in the basement of an old building.  So beautiful!

The next morning we had to make a 9pm taillights, so I grabbed a quick bite at the local Massolit (shout-out to my Bulgakov fans what what).  We headed out of Krakow, past Olomouc, and along to Brno, where Studio Marta is our next presenter.  

It was raining by the time we got to Brno, but the load-in was quick and we were soon on our way!  We have a strong team of crew and a nice venue, and we spent the day loading in and getting ready for a staging rehearsal.  Before the staging, L and I got a chance to wander town a bit.

Staging was fine, and we ended in time for L and I to get back to the lodging to teach our classes.  Tomorrow we have a bit more free time and will explore the city!