our smashing entrance

Edinburgh Fringe Festival news: we certainly made a smashing entrance when we arrived at our theatre venue for our technical rehearsal of The Clan of Divorcees... our truck arrived mere minutes before our slot-time, driven by a stage manager who was under-slept (to put it mildly) and not used to driving on the left, and as he slid into the loading zone outside the venue the top of the oversized rental truck crashed into the scaffolding around Adam House. No lasting damage was done, but it ensured that everyone present knew we had arrived!

In a slick move, after having frightened the smokers outside the venue, our stage manager opened the back of the truck and out came a measly 6 panels, white chest containing utter crap, costume chest and a strobe light from its cavernous interior. Yes, that's right, the massive truck transported virtually nothing useful, save for the lighting 7 sound teccie's guitar and the stage manager's bedding. In terms of our set, we had nothing, except some panels to make up the walls, a broken teapot and broken champagne glasses from the white chest.
Where were our table and chairs, bar counter, bar stools, kitchen sink, step ladder and host of other accessories too numerous to list here? Why did we need a fuel-guzzling, ferry-travelling, border-crossing truck from France to deliver a few random, broken items, minutes before our 4-hour technical rehearsal? Nobody knew, but it was clearly a typical case of broken telephone. The people who had driven the truck from Avignion via Paris to Edinburgh blamed the people who had packed (or not) the truck in Avignon, who blamed the people who had driven the truck for not having packed the truck, and management back in Paris didn't understand how this could have happend! So we spent 4 happy hours at our technical rehearsal discussing whether to construct a bar counter in the morning, using the inside of the monster truck as a workshop, so as to "avoid the shame of others seeing what's going on as we cobble a set together", or whether to capitulate and pay IKEA a visit. After some initial arguing - tempers have a tendancy to flare in sleep-deprived individuals - plans were hatched and charity shops were googled at 2am.

The upshot of which is that we spent our first day in Edinburgh split up into teams of set-scavangers. Some of us did a reccie at the Salvaton Army furniture shop. We struck gold there with a man named Brian who was ever so helpful, patient and accommodating. We then called the giant truck in, to collect our treasures. Meanwhile two actors were cruising the inner city streets for accessories and an ugly tablecloth (which, to our disgust, they found!) and the 3rd team set off for IKEA, searching for last minute items that hadn’t been uncovered elsewhere.

And guess what? Our new Salvation Army set is much nicer than the original! All’s well that ends well, I guess.