Lions and Pirates and Pigs, OH MY!

So today marks day four of rehearsal for the Theatrino Tour 2010. We have been working about nine to 6 with a nice lunch in the middle of the day. I spent a good part of today at the post office waiting around to get some more documentation stuff to live here. The paperwork situation is ridiculous. We waited in line for 30 minutes or so, after waiting at the office for 30 minutes or so with three other Americans who are just as clueless as to what the hell we are doing there in the first place. We need more documents, we DON'T need more documents, we need health insurance papers printed off, we DON'T need health insurance papers printed off because they provide it all for us. It was a whole lot of "bring this to the post office. Oh, you don't have that? Well, that's ok!" "Sign this in blue ink. Oh, you already signed it in black ink? well, ok, that's fine." Organized chaos is what Romina says. I don't know how things get done, but they eventually do. I filed a police report on the wallet last night so I am still hoping that my drivers license turns up. I am missing Italian driving lessons because I do not have it. I would like to drive on this tour. Or maybe I am secretly happy that I will not have to drive. I have seen the drivers here. The lack of speed limits, the creative ways of parking ANYWHERE.

When I returned back to the rehearsal space, we, "Team America" which were the folks who had to do all of this paperwork stuff, we got right into going over the blocking of the last couple of days. We have blocked five plays in three days. Among these plays are "Robin Hood," "The Three Little Pigs", "Excalibur", "The Wizard of Oz" and "Peter Pan". We also have a number of sketches for the older students. It will basically go like this, We drive to the town in the evening, we drive to the school in the morning, children gather, the stage is set, there is a storyteller who gives the synopsis of the play they are about to see with picture cards. Then, actors enter, perform the play with songs and dance thrown in appropriately, then we all say goodbye to the kids, do a little talk back and divide up into our workshop groups. Each actor (there will be three to four) leads a 30 minute workshop with the children in our group. Then, we pile the stage, props, EVERYTHING into our car and go to the next town for another show and workshop, we could do three a day. When we are done with that school, it is off to our next town, maybe a little dinner, probably some memorizing and rehearsing in the car, setting up in the hotel and most likely crashing. We have to memorize all of these shows and we have less than two weeks left. Can we do it? Hell ya we can. Hmmmm. I'm hungry.