Frankfurt! The Storyville Mosquito EU tour. WEEK 4!

Hey Everyone,

Thought I’d do a little recap of our last stop on the European tour!

Our bus got to Frankfurt late in the evening. So we just looked for something to eat by the hotel and found a place across the street that had giant bowls of rice!

The next morning we went to set up at Mousonturm, a theatre arts space in Frankfurt.

The Storyville Mosquito would have 2 performances here and was also the Opening Event of Mousonturm’s Autumn Season.

We unpacked the equipment cases and worked with the local technicians to decide how to set up the stage for the best sight lines.

Our stage manager Alizée Millot then proceeds to measure, and mark the stage with spike tape so we know where to set up the camera rigs and different set pieces.

After the stage is set up, we start bringing out the miniature puppets and props.

Our cinematographer and camera operator A.J. Korkidakis begins to assemble the camera rigs. There are multiple camera set ups including, dollys, jibs and sliders. Each one allowing for different styles of camera moves which adds to the cinematic effect of the show.

Mousonturm hosted a press conference to introduce the new season the next morning so they asked me to show up and chat a bit about The Storyville Mosquito production.

During the lunch break, Rena Kozak (our sound engineer) and I went to check out a local music store called Musik Bornheim. The proprietor of the store is a delightful multi-instrumentalist who immediately started a jam once we were in the shop! Singing Happy Birthday and When The Saints Go Marching in on Ukulele, Drums, Harmomica and 2 two trumpets which he somehow managed to play simultaneously!

I found a vintage guitar fuzz pedal at his shop and he gave me some Maple Leaf guitar picks because we were from Canada. LOL.

Here’s the moment right before the show on Monday. It was the rowdiest crowd of the whole tour. We think it’s because the venue was serving beer and popcorn.

After the show, we decided to invite the audience to visit the stage to take pictures and meet the puppeteers. The large scale mosquito and katydid puppets were especially popular with the kids!

The next day I went for a walk around the city and met up with Kieran, a Nufonia Noise Consultation patron who travelled from the UK to see the show and we went digging for records at a 2nd hand vinyl shop! I’ve been teaching Kieran some turntable scratch techniques throughout the pandemic via Zoom so it was fun to hang out IRL after all this time.

We also saw this bizarre taxidermy mouse angel in the window of a pest control shop.

and this dj mixer that has diagonal channel faders? whut!?

One of the mosquitos needed some paint touch ups before the show so our puppet designer Patrick Martel spent some time working on that prior to the show.

The second performance went amazingly well also! Super rowdy energetic crowd that also included one my patrons Julien, who travelled from Switzerland to see the show!

After the show we invited the crowd to the stage again to take closer look at the sets. It was nice to see all the smiles on their faces and to be able to answer any questions they had about how the show was put together.

At the end of the evening, we spent a few hours carefully packing everything up and loaded it onto the truck. We ordered pizza for the whole crew to celebrate a great tour! 

Thank you to everyone who came out to the shows! Next stop, North America! We’ll be in Toronto at Bluma Appel Theatre October 20th til 23rd. Then heading to San Francisco in November at SFJAZZ November 25th til 27th. If you have friends in those towns, please tell them to come see us!

Thank you for your support! More news soon!

E