Stan's Cafe

After a couple of days off exploring the city with Sarah and Eve I’m back with full shifts through to the end of the festival. I love performing this show, once you get locked in the time flies by. Having been open for almost a week it was time to shake things up and repay return visitors with a fully refreshed layout. The early shift was fairly quiet and allowed for wholesale movement of rice, which was useful as in the evening crowds grew until it became one-in/one-out and we were almost pinned behind our work table.

A good TV feature, impressive review and word of mouth recommendations have built audiences day on day, so with tent leaks fixed and free beer tokens aplenty everyone is on good form. We have even managed to get out to see a couple of shows.

On Tuesday Jake and I attended Nature Theater Of Oklahoma’s Poetics: Aballet Brut, which is billed as a ballet by people who had never been to the ballet. It feels like a one joke show, but there is also the suspicion that there’s more going on that we really can’t decode. Which ever way we looked at it, despite some fun moments, we left disappointed.

Last night, at the last minute, the night shift all dived into a tent that had been intriguing us all week. The puppet company TamTam were performing a half hour almost wordless show To Have Or Not To Have to a packed house of thirty. Animating rusting and broken found objects on a bed of sand they told a simple, elegant story of competition for possession of a small velvet bag. The soundtrack was brilliantly conceived, the vision clear and inventive, the performances strong and engaging. It was the ideal way to conclude a day spent modelling populations in rice.

You pays your money and takes your choice – unless you get in for free.

James