Surprise!

It's been such a long busy day. We had a 3 show day and the first show was at 8.20am then we had an hour break before the next show and after that a 2 hour break which was nice because we usually go straight from show to show. And before the third show the company manager said "can you all get On stage please I have some notes"

In my head I was thinking of all the things it could be

 - Don't mess about on stage.

 - Don't add in lines

 - Tinkerbell, dance better

 - Nana the dog stop weeing On the darling children on stage .. 

Could be any of those. But as we all sat down Kate's friend walked through the door to surprise her! It was so cute and then all of a sudden he said 'I brought someone else' and her mum walked in. They'd been planning it since Kate got the job months ago and no one in the cast knew. I cried and text my mum 'expecting you to walk in any... Minute.... Nowww....' Unfortunately she's still in Leeds. After work we went out to the Dubai mall and had some dinner and it was amazing! Right outside the Burj and the Dubai Fountains. Then after we showed them the fountain show and we walked around and took some nice holiday pics! We got back quite late and completely forgot that we had to pack up everything as we were travelling to Abu Dhabi the next day. After the next morning we got back, cleared the apartments and packed ourselves into the minibus. It took us about 3 times longer to get there than planned but it was eventful.... I'm now an expert at guess the intro and the game where you think of a word for every letter of the alphabet for example if the animal is categories it would go like this: 

Ant, bear, caterpillar, dragon, elephant, frog, giraffe, horse, iguana, jellyfish, kangaroo, Lima, monkey, narwhal, octopus, pig, quail, rhino, snake, tiger, Umbrellabird, Vulture, whale, Xenon , yak, Zebra .. 

And if the category was modes of transport it would go like this: Airplane, bus, car... I think you get it.

How Its Made

I find it quite hard to get back to the apartments and write about what's happened during the day as so much  happens in one show I end up missing out details. I also find it useful to write as things are happening because if something really excited is happening or something really funny then you write with those emotions therefore your blog is different... As I don't have wifi at all during the day I write up all my notes on my phone and then I have another read through when I get home to make sure it makes sense then I send it to myself on Facebook and upload it onto my blog page using my laptop. 

Me: A Name I Call Myself

It's 5.34 and I'm only awake enough to write one sentence. 

6.25 an hour ish later and after breakfast and my brain is now at least half functioning enough to write more than a sentence. We're about to get our 6.45 taxis to the theatre. 

It was a long day at work today, another 12 hour day. We've got a 3 show day at one of the biggest schools I've seen.  As we walked in to set up the set last night, the school had to screens in reception that would show a child's school headshot photo and their exam results of the last test they took next to it! 

We're also filming for a short advertisement clip for the Book festival in Sharjah next week. The last show is at 1 then we have to go to Sharjah, about 40 mins away, to do a full get in and set up the floor cloth, video screen, put chairs put, costumes, props and lights.  

... I'm always really dramatic about how much energy the show takes but as Tinkerbell, I don't speak and have to Mime nearly everything. Tinkerbell is also the comedic character of the show and I have to throw myself off set, give an Oscar award winning performance of me drinking poison and dying, then give an Oscar award winning performance of coming back to life etc.. It takes A LOT of energy and I have to create that before I start the show otherwise the audience don't get emotionally attached to Tinkerbell which means when she dies later on in the show they're less likely to get as involved when bringing her back to life as it means the audience clapping/cheering/stamping until Tinkerbell is full of life again! 

.. A few days off and we come back into work with a 4 show day. I thought 3 was tiring! Waking up at 5am and getting back to the apartments at 6pm is draining. It took us so long to get to the next theatre and drop off all the set/costumes and everything else. But if there is a positive to come out of all of this, the amount we sweat must be doing something for our figure!

Act 1: Scene 2: Week 3

So as a cast member of Peter Pan we have to move from venue to venue and every morning we set up the props, costumes, and lights etc. On an average 2 show day we will wake up around 5.30 make sure we have all the costumes that we've washed the night before and had them ironed. We get our instruments and we go down to breakfast while we wait for our taxi pick up which is usually around 6.45/7. Once we arrive at the venue we will get into the theatre and set up. We do the shows, and then we all chip in to do the get out. Me and Kate, who plays Wendy, are on props and costumes. Michael is on lights. Mr Smee's jobs is to take up all the wires and floor cloth. Captain Hook, the narrator, John and Peter Pan all have the job of taking down the video wall. The video wall is essentially a HUGE TV made up of 60 little TV's to create our background. It shows the street, the nursery, Neverland and on board The Jolly Rodger. This is the main feature of the show as it has animated scenes that make us look like we're all flying to Neverland. It takes us all about 45 minutes to get everything out the building and loaded onto the truck ready to move to the next place. After we have done the drop off we head back to the apartments and relax for the rest of the day! 

It's the 3rd week in and this week has been really quite chilled out as we've only had 5 shows in 3 days work. It's going to start getting more tiring as we are slowly approaching 18 days straight of work. There is a place about 30 minutes out of Dubai where we are staying called Sharjah and there is a book festival there so we will be performing at that over the weekend which would usually be our days off to then fly straight to Bahrain to perform the shows again. It's all worth it though as I get to go to Abu Dhabi and see the richest city in the world! .. I think it's known as a state actually but for the blogs sake and to make it sounds more dramatic I'll say city. 

As we're approaching a hard weekend of relaxing with an iced hazelnut frappe, watching the Dubai Fountains, going up to the top of the Burj Khalifa, visiting the world biggest water park and having a touristy view on all the little back alley markets.. I'll try and remember what it was like to do house work and keep on top of every day life activities.. But for now.. I'm off to the Party beach. 34 degrees, sun, music and a lot of happy people!

Lets Start At The Very Beginning

Throughout summer 2016 i was thinking about how much i wanted to go away and I'd started to think about how much i would have to save if i were to go on holiday or travel a little bit. Whatever it was i was desperate to leave England and go somewhere sunny! It was a normal Monday morning and I got a message through saying 'SPOTLIGHT: Tinkerbell, Peter Pan UAE Tour, MUST BE A FLUTE PLAYER' Which sounds like a perfect job for me. I had just passed my grade 7 ABRSM Flute exam with a distinction so I was feeling pretty confident at the time. I emailed my agent and asked if i could go to the audition. The audition was at Jermyn Street Theatre in London on Wednesday, 2 days after I was asking to go! My agent called my back later than day and confirmed that there had been a space open for me to go but previously it was a full audition. 

On Wednesday morning i traveled to London, did the audition, sang, played the flute, did a piece of script from the show and i was in and out in 10 minutes. I was feeling good about the audition and i went on my way home back to Leeds. The next morning i got the call saying i was off to Dubai! My life had gone from working to save so i could go abroad to being paid to go and fly around a stage for thousands of children everyday, in the space of 2 or 3 days. Mad. 

I've played the Flute since i was 11 and I have never enjoyed doing exams or practicing. Just before every exam I've done i would always say 'no i cant do it, i need to give up,  im going to fail' and i always come out with great results that i should be over the moon with. Saying this i never would have thought that my flute would've gotten me my first job straight out of graduating! All the drama and tears suddenly seem worth it!

I also never thought that my first job would be travelling around the Middle East and include a lot of sitting by the poolside having iced hazelnut lattes brought to me by men dressed in three piece suits in 36 degree weather. I hadn't been on a plane in about 7 years and I've never been to Dubai or anywhere in the Middle East so I had no idea what to expect apart from that it would be very hot. There are 10 of us travelling and As we arrived into Dubai airport me and one other girl in the group got stopped for a bag search. This wasn't just any bag. This was the most thorough and nerve racking back search I've ever had. Worse than any one I've seen while watching 'Australian boarders' on that channel. They emptied every last thing out of my rucksack every card. Every penny. Every makeup item in my makeup bag. My flute was in my hand luggage as I didn't want anything to happen to it of course. And the woman was trying to look under every key and tried to pull my case apart! And they shook out my bag and collected all the bag dust from the bottom and searched it! I've never been so nervous. I was taken to a little box where I was away from everyone and I thought that was the last time id see the company again. I knew there was nothing for them to find in my bag but I was still shaking like I'd seen a ghost. She handed me back my stuff and said 'go'. So I assumed I was clear and I packed that stuff in so quickly before you could even say 'security!' After the initial shock we got to the apartments and unpacked ready for the next day to go straight into shows. This first bit of blog entry is about communication. And the most known form of it is obvious phone/speaking and social media interactions. Being in Dubai I've noticed another form of communication that is rather difficult to get across and that is purely just speaking to someone who's first language isn't English. On the first show we performed to 1500 children in an Indian school. It was like our dress run. Theatre is not a big thing here in Dubai and the discipline is completely different to how it would be in the UK. the children spoke over the whole show. They didn't understand the concept and thought they could just get up and come on stage. The children eventually all ended up stood and not one child was sat on the floor by the end. We close the show with bows and acknowledge each cast Member and technical team and they just had no idea what was going on. It was really stressful to be honest as none of us expected that reaction and also we couldn't hear each other on stage and that meant we would be out of time with the Loop music tracks. Since then the shows have been a lot better and we have become more accustom to the idea that they just have not seen this kind of thing before therefore don't really know what behaviour to have while watching it. Dubai has just had the Opera house built this year (2016). A couple of the cast are friends with a woman called Kate Gollage who directed the magic show, Imposisble. I was lucky enough to manage to get some free tickets to see it in the newly built theatre. It was the most amazing magic/illusion show I have ever seen in my life. I can't even begin to describe how unbelievable it was. Trying to explain to the taxi driver where we were going was so difficult as theatre isn't a thing here they hardly knew what it was!