Grantblings

Puppet Up Toronto Tour Diary – Day 8 – Matinee

Ah the life of a big time puppeteer on the road. Today I got to do what, I’m sure, you’re all imagining we do on our downtime…laundry. Yes, today was laundry day. The excitement never ends.

It continued my love affair with Canadian Money. It is funny to me that Canadian Money is so different from american money. Our money seems dull and boring while Canadian money reminds of money you’d see in a sci-fi film as currency from an alien world. “I’ll pay you 15 Klurbuts for that.” and then you hand over a few slips of plastic covered paper. When we’ve gone out to eat, I often feel bad leaving Canadian money just because I feel like it’s not really paying. Of course it is, but I get the feeling I’m dining and dashing and just leaving colored slips of paper behind.

Anyway, this morning I’m at the front desk with two golden coins asking for dollar coins because, obviously they are gold so they much be two dollar coins and the desk clerk is looking at me like I’m an idiot. Of course, the golden coins are dollar coins. Duh.

At any rate, laundry was done.

The cast has discovered Kinder Eggs. We don’t have them in the states, presumably because our kids are stupid and would try to eat the toys. We’ve been enjoying the eggs and the toys inside backstage.

Today was our final show before a day off and it was a Sunday matinee. The audience was fantastic and the suggestions were great. Patrick also mixed up the casting a bit so we were all thrown into scenes we aren’t normally in and I think that helped make for a great show.

Michael and I got to start the show with a scene about a colonoscopy. Can’t get much better than that. Some great scenes in today’s show and it was cool knowing there were some friends in the crowd too! Brian K. and Ceris, both huge muppet fans, were there and it was great talking to them after the show.

Alien Barbershop was an odd one. Just a completely different type of suggestion than we normally have. The suggestion was: Training Fleas. So my rhyme was:

Oh, training fleas,
Is a tough road to hoe.
If a dog comes by,
He’ll steal the show.

It got an okay laugh for such a corny old joke. Other fun bits today featured a fantastic date scene, an amazing audience participation bit and a great round of play and understudies.

After the show, I cleared out my stuff from our dressing room so I could do more laundry (huzzah) and because we wouldn’t have access to the backstage until Tuesday night before our next show.

After getting back to the hotel, Dan and I went to a all you can eat Indian food buffet. Yeah, I may have been bitten by that bug. Don’t mind so much. It’s good. Should have tried it sooner.

After that it was home to retire to bed early because tomorrow we’re off to Niagara Falls. Look for fun pictures from that.

For not I’ll leave you with this picture of the Walk symbol from the Canadian crossing lights. To me he just looks like a really happy guy who’s excited to be going wherever he’s off to.