China blog III

Tuesday.
Last nights show was awesome! Awesome audience! We added the other side of one of Emily's phone calls to Roger. It was great! Cody is a wonder at memorizing lines . It worked perfect. At the curtain call, out student crew ran on to the stage with bouquets for everyone. A wonderful moment.
After the show CeCe and JingJing took the cast and crew out for Szechuan. It took three cabs. Our driver seemed to take it as a personal challenge to get to the destination first. CeCe took issue with the quality of service. Never get on the bad side of CeCe. This time we had a big bowl of very hot soup with a cat fish in it. Ira named it Chet. Moo shoo pork was served with veg and Chinese pancakes. JingJing carefully showed us how to put it together to eat it. It was like street tacos. Really good! And mango sorbet kind of stuff. Then we set out to walk about home about 11:30 pm. Shanghai never really closes down. Alan and Hayley and I caught a taxi half way back. I understand that the others stopped for street bar-b-q of cow stomach. No one is sick.... Yet.

The last show has begun. There was another change made to the show today. Nothing like a "new show" everyday. Some where the "Now I now pronounce man and wife" had been dropped. So now it is added back with a new music que. Today's audience is full of directors and writers. We have been informed that there is an extra row of audience seated on the floor in front of the front row. And after the show we are scheduled for a Q&A.
After that, several of us are going for massage before the banquet provided by Cheyenne's sister.
Tomorrow, JingJing has a tour of the production shop arranged for me and then I want more shopping. I walked around town after breakfast for hours this morning. I found an antique store where everything was expensive and I didn't have CeCe with me. I have learned to never purchase anything without CeCe.

The audience was terrific and there were LOTS of them. There were no Q's for the Q&A so Jeff and Shane and Kara and I took off for the massage place. One hour foot massage, followed by one hour body massage. It was incredible . The spa was all soothing music and candles and quiet fountains. All for 120 yune (Chinese currency) ( about $20 us).
Then we sprang over to the banquet, which was wonderful and fun and laughter and singing. Then on to bed after a long day. I named the fish in the soup Phil. I watched JingJing eat the tail.

After an early breakfast, Shane, Deb, Kara and I went to the Buddhist Temple not far from the hotel. It has been there since 300ad. Incredible. Deb and I have great photos that don't that begin to do the place justice. Then we jet back to the hotel to meet JingJing and Alan and Hayley for the more shopping that needed to be done. We would have loved to go back to water town, but it is just too far. So we returned to the the first place we went shopping on our tour day. I still didn't get the name of the place. I had lunch with Shane at a " pub" and ate real French fries and other non-Chinese food. Shopping complete, Shane , Kara, and I met up with Jeff and returned to the academy for " A good Man of Beijing" in Chinese w/o subtitles, but Kara had done a production of it so she kept us up in the story. It is a "Brechtian Theater" piece ( see wiki for Bertolt Brecht), and is my new favorite thing. The production was innovative and really captivating. Their use of live projection of video of puppet models, shadow , lighting, music.. Captivating is a good word for it. When Kara did a production of it, they had a cast of 25. This cast was 7 actors, 1musician, and 4 "techs" who did the video and foley work on stage in view of the audience. They used masks and costume to become the different characters and never left the stage.
By the time the show was over, we were all pretty tired , so Kara and I went back for a rest until dinner and the much anticipated show by the Koreans.
Jack, Hayley and Allan went to a local commercial theater companies tech rehearsal with Cheyenne. Kara, Shane, Jeff, Ira, Cody and I met up out side the theater for the Korean show. I was kind of confused when the half hour pre show usual " let in the audience" time came and went and we were still out side. At curtain time the doors opened and the audience was direct to sit on the stage on small , floor hight , rolling stools. This was going to be "different".
The Korean show was like nothing I have ever seen. It was more of an "experience" than a play. I think I will describe it in deep detail in a separate entry.