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!