Bluebeard at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Ok, im going to keep words down to a minimum here, so just a quick update, we left Birminghm on out little bus to Heathrow, sat round in the airport for quite a while, flew to Lisbon and checked into our hotel ready for another 48 hours of Bluebeard madness at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian theatre Lisbon. Here i must say this building is fking amazing! I believe it was built around the 60’s and almost everything looks original, the decor the seats the James bond style underground car-park and tunnels and building plant rooms, if your in Lisbon, this place is a must visit.

Steve & Richard in the underground carpark.

 James Bond Dr No style plant-room, this is original!!

We have an entire days get in here which is a treat but is also useful as we have some crazy projection angles to deal with, were quite high up off the set and off centre also which throws up some masking issues. On-top of this we have a technical issue with the sails, an integral part of the set. We spend the rest of the day updating and reprogramming the rest of the show with only one sail which actually didn’t look out of place!


Nick Hilel, Steve Homles & Myself dealing with MonoSail!

Once again the setup time and rehearsals prior to the gig seemed to vanish into a frenzy of activity updates and lineup tweaks. After programming all day I can get quite grumpy and frustrated, probably due to forgetting to eat, drink enough water and generally the hard thinking for 6 hours straight its all worth while. The past 3 venues the content has evolved gradually, the programming and some of the timings have changed, to make things fit better after seeing the show in a few different scenarios now, I like this, generally I just like progress, progress in the right direction! Alongside the updating and evolving of the show, we had heat issues to deal with in Lisbon after sticking 4 high power projectors in a small room, the local guys came good with air conditioning

and the creative use of fans to help with the circulation, the picture is a bit shit but you get the idea!

4 x BARCO HD20’s, a little helping hand!

Once again the gig went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, I still have no idea how to judge opera audiences though! On the way home we spotted a traffic light which made us giggle. Im glad to see that childish humour carries through the world over!

This entry was posted in Work. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *