Gothenburg! The Storyville Mosquito Europe Tour! WEEK 2!

Hey Everyone! 

We finished our two shows at Gothenburg's Grand Theater (Stora Teatern).  Which very much looked like a life size version of the Muppet Show Theater in all the best ways! 

We left Hamburg and took a bus to Denmark to a ferry terminal, where we would board this boat to cross the Baltic Sea. 

The ferry ride was about 4 hours. After exploring all there was to see on the different decks, cafes, arcade, gift shop, we decided to film some scenes for the 8pus tour documentary. Here we are filming a scene where 3 (the one with 3 tentacles) is looking at the water and thinking about reuniting with his formerly conjoined brother 5 (who has 5 tentacles).

It was a nice overcast day and perfect weather for the sequence. Here's a screenshot from the clip.

The ferry docked in Sweden. Then it was back on bus towards Gothenburg. The first thing we did when got there was walk around the neighborhood near the hotel. The theater was just minutes away so we went check it out.

It was a beautiful theater from the 1850s! 

Here's the Mosquito on one of the digital marquees on the front of the theater. We would be doing 2 performances here as part of the Gothenburg Dance & Theater Festival.

The next day we started to load-in all of our cases and gear and began setting up the stage. The wonderful crew at Stora Teatern helped us hang and adjust their lights as we need some specific spot lights on certain sets during the show that would make it look like day and night time.

Meanwhile backstage we were working on "localizing" the show by building special city specific additions to the sets and props for fun. Since we were in Sweden and the promoter told us that "Everyone in the whole country has at least one piece of IKEA furniture in their house", we decided to put a little IKEA shelf in the museum set. 

Those of you who DJ will know this shelf as the KALLAX, (formerly EXPEDIT) as it's pretty much perfectly designed for storing vinyl records. Here's the assembly instruction sheet named "KATYKALLAX" after KATY (one of the main characters in the story) This was in the show and on screen for all of 20 seconds but it did get a laugh! 

I was doing some lettering on the localized cards for the credit roll. Those apples were amazing. 

Here's the mosquito in the main part of the theater

On our dinner break, we discovered a market across the bridge from the venue. 

They had a few snack bars and food stands, one of which featured this amazing soup. Corinne and I both decided to order it! It was delicious. If we ever come back here I'm getting this again.

Following that paradigm shifting soup experience, we walked around the neighborhood and saw this wormhole.

check out this acronym!

We also saw this statue in the park.

On show day 2 we went to the theater early to do the "preset" (getting all the props, puppets, records, lights in order to start the show).
We had 45 min before the show started so we decided to shoot a scene for the 8pus since they had an actual barber's chair in one of the dressing rooms. Here's one of the Octopuses getting a pedicure.  

Both shows went well and the audiences were great! The Sunday show was a 3pm matinée and there were a lot of families there. It was fun to hear all the generations laugh together.  

Later that night I saw a huge line up at the 7-Eleven. We found out one of the late night traditions for Gothenburgians is to go get hotdogs after hitting the bars/clubs. They have these massive hot dog condiment bottles hanging from the ceiling like huge punching bags. Clever idea!

Anyhow, Gothenburg was wonderful. The audiences were super fun and the presenters and venues want to have us back. Maybe with Nufonia Must Fall next time! So hopefully we can make that work in the future! 

Next stop: Aarhus, Denmark!

Thanks for reading and for your support!  More updates soon!

E