Life on Tour

     These reports were written by two members of the 2002 tour –Twelfth Night – Ben Wood and Arthur House

Arthur House – Actor

     Twelfth Night round Europe on a bus in little over a fortnight? The sights and smells, the songs, the rows and the revelling are still fresh in the memory, but ETG 2002 flew by in a blur. From an actor's perspective the tour was useful for picking up some invaluable techie skills, and because every night it was a case of adapting to a new venue and a new audience.

     Special mention must go to 'Barry' Cantrell, who really bridged the gap between actor and techie. His constant inventiveness onstage despite such a small part combined with a real professionalism during scene changes, when his creative frame manoeuvres were liable to earn a 'Las Vegas' style ripple of applause from even the most civilised of Swiss audiences. Equally at home with a 'Gsr' power-drill or a pair of tights and a ruff, he encapsulated the ETG spirit and was an example to us all.

     Anyway, the venues ranged from a 450-seat school auditorium to a converted medieval bread oven, which squeezed in 90 people, so gauging a projection level was essential early on in every show. Because the audiences' understanding of the play also varied, it was necessary to pitch the performance accordingly; but whether they had just laughed at the fart jokes and visual gags, or shown via their responses a profound grasp of Shakespearean language, they all seemed very appreciative. The funniest bits on tour were when things went wrong during the play; exiguous and unpredictable backstage conditions often led to hilarious slapstick errors, including actors walking into walls instead of exits. The uncertainty that was part and parcel of touring a show was what made it exciting, not only in terms of the play itself, but in wondering what your host family for the night would be like (in one case, they lived in a castle complete with moat and stables) or where the all-conquering ETG football club would get their next game.

Ben Wood – Stage Manager

G.S.R's and all that

     27 people, 2½ weeks, 11 venues and an entire theatre (minus seats for the audience) packed into one coach, you'd be forgiven for thinking ETG was crazy! From a technical perspective, it all started back in the summer, where several people spent many hours on the phone trying to blag as much free equipment as possible out of theatre companies, its amazing quite how much expensive stuff people will lend a group of students! We took absolutely everything we could possibly need with us, from lighting and sound desks to miles and miles of cable and of course the set. Once all the gear arrived at the ADC, we then played the fun game of how to get it and everything else onto the coach. With a group of people all expressing their opinions (you don't want to do it like that) and several (most noticeably Messer's Godwin and Booth – although actually putting yourselves in an overhead locker was a little excessive guys!) actually helping, we managed to squash everything in.

     I'm not going to bore you with a venue-by-venue run down on what we actually did, I'll just give you some of the highlights. In Switzerland we had a half hour tour of the technical set-up in fluent German – a tip I would give anyone doing next year's tour is: If somebody talks to you in German, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to reply in German, otherwise fluency will be assumed! In France we also had to convince an elderly electrician that we weren't going to trip all the power to the building. We'd succeeded in doing this when El Nabeero helpfully turned off the L.X. desk sparking a massive interrogation as to why all our lanterns had suddenly gone off! We also coped with venues that lacked enough power to do all the things we wanted and one's which were too small or had too difficult access to get all the kit in. From a technicians point of view, though, this is part of the magic of ETG, having to continually think on your feet and adapt what your doing to each individual venue and circumstance.

     One of the most pleasurable aspects of ETG is that it's a team thing – it doesn't have the same actor/techie divide that so often occurs in Cambridge. It was great just to be able to get to know everyone so much better than you ever do in a normal show as you're living with the people for the entire tour. Everybody is involved in all the get- ins and I think the cast gained a much better idea of what technical stuff actually involves. Special mention must go to the 'Barries' for being absolutely fantastic at frame assembly and set moving (It was they that invented the term G.S.R. apparently it's the first three letters of the model number of Doug's Bosch!)

     All in all ETG is a fantastic thing to be involved with, it has its challenges in that you have to adapt to each venue and doing five venues in a row across three countries is very tiring, but its thoroughly enjoyable and I'd recommend it to anyone.