Aarhus! The Storyville Mosquito EU tour WEEK 3!

Hello Everyone!

Just a little recap from our time on tour in Denmark! We had 2 performances here. The Storyville Mosquito would be the Opening Gala Event of the Aarhus Festival. When the tour bus arrived it was past 10 pm so a few of us just walked around some of the town looking for a grocery store or somewhere we could eat. Everything was kind of closed but I could tell it was a beautiful walking town!

Finding time and a place to do laundry half way through the tour was pretty much at the top of my things to do list. Luckily the venue, Music Huset, had some laundry machines in their basement. They even had a heated drying rack (I guess for theatre companies that have delicate costumes etc.) It was almost like a convection oven for clothes and worked very well!

The rest of the day off was spent walking around the town.

it’s a very beautiful place with loaded with interesting architecture

and beautiful canals

we even found a little beach near the city where we sat and watched the waves. A couple of the the crew decided to go for a swim but it was cut short because the water was full of jellyfish.

I visited the Aros Art Gallery which included a very well curated collection of paintings, sculptures and video art installations.

I also found a music instrument shop that had an amazing collection of effects pedals and these really weird drums which I’ve never sceen before. They look a Dali painting and apparently are designed to project the sound toward the audience very well!

The music store was also the headquarters of a local boutique guitar pedal company called EMMA electronics. Here’s one of the of their designs which was both an octave pedal and a fuzz pedal built into one called the Okto Nøjs.

3 weeks into a tour is also that point where some of the puppets and props needed some attention. Here, some of our puppet team (Anne Lalancette, Patrick Martel and Colin St-Cyr Duhamel) are doing some paint touch ups on some of the puppets and props.

We set up our equipment in the theatre. The first show was the Gala Event and would be attended by the Queen of Denmark. The Queen is an artist herself as she is a painter and a costume designer for the opera!

The Festival organizers reserved her seat as well as some of her other guests which included the Head of the LEGO company, the mayor of Aarhus and the director of the festival! She would be seated right in the front row.

Prior to the performance we could see and hear the audience find their seats thanks to the nifty monitor in our Green Room. I have to admit we were all a little nervous at this point.

However, the shows went very well. The audiences were great and the production manager at the venue said the Queen was smiling and laughing throughout the performance.

We got a standing ovation and a big batch of sunflowers! which is a theatre tradition I’m still learning about.

After the show a couple of us went to 7Eleven to find a snack to celebrate! But then I realized I had packed my wallet in my record bag and it was already on the truck heading to the next city. DOH!

It was a lovely time in Aarhus and we hope to come back to Denmark someday soon!

More updates soon.

Thank you all for your support!

E