Aight.

Hello my neglected blog.

So still not many things out of the ordinary are occuring here, we've had less cancelled shows over the last few weeks. Unfortunatelt though a few days ago my collapsing lamppost stunt was condemned by the park maintanence crew as the hinges have finally given up the ghost (we all saw this coming due to the flimsy nature of the metal that had been used), problem is no-one knows when it'll be fixed so for now it's been secured in the upright position and instead of falling towards the crowd i simply slide down it. Boring i know but there is no other way down from the balcony where I make my entrance.

In a couple of weeks Jason (Wolverine) returns to England for about a week for his brothers wedding. This leaves the rest of us with no days off until his return so it's going to be a tough finish to the high season. After that though we're into September which sees the park closing for 3 days a week for the 2nd, 3rd and last week of the month. This is when many people are going travelling and sight-seeing, the two American girls have booked themselves a trip to good old England and Phil (Magneto) has also booked some foreign adventures. I'm personally looking forward to September as my Brother and Sister-in-law are coming out to visit which is great. I wont be leaving Germany in this time but might get the chance to explore a bit more of it :-)

Anyways, thats a few weeks away yet so for now we're knuckling down and keeping the 3 shows a day pace. I'm going to a gig in Oberhausen tomorrow to see Slade, that should be fantastic :-D

Till next time!

P.

Rainy Day Post.

Alright everybody.

So its been a good few days, we were celebrating just the other night as Ocean, cheif Shaolin, became the father of a little boy back in China :-) Both Mum and Child are fit and well and Ocean can't wait to go home and see him! So yeah, we had a massive party it was the first time we've really socialised all together, the Chinese guys often say they can't afford to go to bars etc with us so it was nice to party in the house and generally get along with each other. I'm sure some photos will emerge that a few of us may regret, it was a good party!

Currently we have Brad (one of the high-ups for Mirage) and a film crew recording the shows and tomorrow we expect to film some special shots inbetween the shows. Mirage always manage to put a good looking promo-reel together so I look forward to seeing what they do with the footage they've collected so far plus tomorrows activities whatever they may be.

high season continues to provide us with large Audiences most of the time, the weather has become quite unpredictable with heavy showers and storms between bright sunshine and blue skies, people never seem to be deterred from visiting the park though, didn't realise it was such a popular attraction.

That about wraps it up for now, soon i'll be able to tell you about the filming we're doing tomorrow and what extra stunts or fight scenes we might be required to do!

P.

good morning.

Hello all.

So on Tuesday I went to the Kung Fu class that our Shaolin monks have been running at the park. It was an intense workout and i'm seriously feeling the effects on my muscles but I intend to keep going and getting my stamina etc up :-)

Shows have had a few glitches lately, just the usual things like the flame grill not working. The show had definitely had an air of consistency to it these last few weeks which is a good thing. High season continues to give us big audiences, particularly the second show each day. A few days ago we filled the theatre and people were being turned away at the entrance, first time thats happened!

We have some mirage representatives in Germany at the moment, they came to watch the shows yesterday but I dont know if they'll be suggesting any more changes to the show or if they're just keeping an eye on the progress we've made.

Right I must dash, have been a bit lazy with the blog recently but i'll try and fix that in the next week or so and keep you up to date!

P.

hallo.

Alright readers.

So it's another day off for me today. Completely tidied my room, how dull! Was good to give my muscles a rest and catch up on some sleep though.

We've had a few difficulties recently with the show as an increasing number of FX were being very inconsistent. The moving car hadn't been working for a weeks and the flame grill and collapsing balcony were malfunctioning quite often.

Earlier in the week we started the first show and about 10 seconds in we noticed a problem with the sound track. Shortly after we had all realised backstage the techies gave an announcement that they'd be restarting the show. However the next 3 attempts at starting the show all ended the same way and the show was eventually cancelled. We spent the next few hours of day waiting to see if the problem had been fixed but when it got to 3:30pm, the time they let the next audience in, we were told that there was still no solution and if it carried on then we might not be doing shows until Saturday (the earliest date that the one person who could adjust the sound-board was available). Amazingly though, about 45 minutes later our cheif techie had managed to isolate and solve the problem so we managed to do the 3rd show.

The day after that we arrived to work and were told that all the problematic FX in the show had been fixed, the car, balcony and flame-grill were all functioning well so we had a very good day of shows then.
Unfotunately theres a lot of tension between people in and involved with the show at the moment but that doesn't belong on my blog so I wont elaborate. Hopefully we'll continue to have fully functioning shows and big audiences over the weekend at that might help things along.

Till my next one ya'll!

P.

Day off update,

Hello all, so todays my day off and therefore a good time to update!

We've recently lost internet in our greenroom hense my lack of regular updates, hopefully we should get it back soon.

So yeah, we're well into our high-season routine now. 3 shows a day as standard, on the weekends we're on standby to do 4 or more, it hasnt happened yet but you never know. The shows remain pretty consistant, recently though we had a show where the biggest moving part of our set (the "iron" bridge that Storm arrives on) failed to work. What's meant to happen is that she appears, fires a few lightning bolts at Magneto who then lifts the bridge about 8 feet up and tips her off it. It's quite a long procedure, about 15 seconds for the bridge to raise and tilt. Not too long you may be thinking but when the bridge doesn't work it felt like an eternity before we could move on with the show. Anyway, turns out it hadn't been plugged in... nice.

So today I finally got round to opening a German bank account with the help of one of my new German friends from the other Stunt Show in the Park. When I asked if there was anything I could do in return she said "well today I play the girl out of the audience role and I need a pretend boyfriend to sit with". Normally she just asks someone from the audience as they walk in but she says it's always easier if it's someone you know. So I agreed and we went into the park. Met her at the beginning of the show and about 10 minutes in they call for a "volunteer" and she gets selected. She's then asked if she's here with anyone and she points at me and I get told "say goodbye to your girlfriend!" Everybody laughs and the pretence is a good one. That is until people sitting near me start asking questions along the lines of "is she part of the team?" and many things in German. People did get a bit suspiscious when I told them i was English but it becomes pretty obvious it's all a setup when she starts doing dangerous stunts on stage :-p

So that was fun, didn't actually go see the x-men show, the one time I did sit in the audience I was plagued by some of the regular audience members who kept taking photos of me, didn't really fancy doing that again.

Anyway, that about covers it for now, we're on a slightly different schedule for the weekend so im going to chill out for the rest of the day and make sure i'm well rested for then.

Catch you later!

P.

must dash...

Hello all, very quick update before I go out. We're going to a party tonight, will be celebrating the halfway point of the contract. 15 weeks out of 30, so time for a knees-up.

Shows have been pretty consistent recently, we had our pyro-technic budget reduced from 90 Euros a day to 60 meaning we've lost some of the least important explosions from the show (in my opinion they were all important but nevermind).

Second show today was fun though, we had another CO2 explosion but this time I was the one holding the cannister. As the "electric transformer" (really a big heavy foam cylinder) explodes off the wall it's meant to land on the stage and take no further action in the show. However, it has recently taken to bouncing off the floor straight towards me and it's a pretty hefty thing too! Yesterday i got pretty good at watching it and then side-kicking it away as it bounces towards me but today it bounced very low and flew into the CO2 gun that I was holding causing the hose to sheer and the entire high-pressure contents of the cannister to start spraying out with some ferocity. I leaped like a startled Gazelle out of the way and kept my distance until it had emptied itself (which took a while!)
The techies have said they'll be altering the angle at which the transformer gets fired so hopefully thats the end of that little problem.

No more 2 day shows for us anymore, it'll be 3 a day from now until we close give-or-take. On the plus side we've had a full crowd on a couple of occasions now so that's always good :-)

Will be updating again next week.

P.

and recently...

Hello all, just a brief detailing of the last few shows for you...

As far as I recall Sunday wasn't too bad. I do recall that in one show one of the CO2 guns wasn't working from early on, it was the important gun as well, the one thats used by Gambit to give the other X-Men their powers back. During the show we were exchanging advice to see if we could get it working but to no avail, so about halfway through the show I heard Aidan say "i'll use the other one". Now the other one is left on the wrong side of the stage so like a pro Aidan ran over and left his staff on the ground in time to spray the X-Men with it. A couple of minutes later I go over to where Gambit had left the staff and think "oh blimey, he's going to need this in a bit" so I casually pick it up and throw it to him. Pretty good improvisational skills dont you think? So yeah that was Sunday.

Yesterday we awoke to another scorching hot day but about 10 minutes before the audience were due to be let in the theatre the sky became practically black with a massive storm cloud, within minutes the wind had become so ferocious that there was debree flying all around the park. All the rides were shut down and as a result we lost power in the theatre meaning no first show. There was nothing anyone could do so we spent the day just waiting for the next show which went just fine.

This morning we got off to a usual start, I had a bit of a dodgy entrance as I lost balance on my front handspring and therefore lost my footing for my brief fight sequence, everything went ok but i'm sure it will have looked a little sloppy. The show carried on and we got past Nightcrawlers entrance before suddenly the lights went out. Now we've been told from previous occasions that the lighting is linked with the special effects and once the lighting has reset the pyros and FX simply wont work. We carried on for a few seconds before the soundtrack stopped and we heard our techie calling the show off. Now in England this probably would have lead to a lot of boo-ing from the crowd but German audiences are a bit more respectful than that so they all left without making any fuss.
The second show went well except for Gambit's rising flame grill which got stuck on it's way up and consequently didn't fire (thank god for some of the failsafes we have). Talk of sabotage has quietened down as we now have a heavy security prescence at the theatre but the question of "was it ever sabotage in the first place" is still in a lot of peoples minds. Guess we'll have to wait and see!

It's my day off tomorrow so I intend to have a few beers tonight and chill out all day. Lovely :-)

P.

Me and my big mouth.

Well I think I officially jinxed that show, after saying how we'd been trouble-free for some time.

At the end of the show when the snow and rain machines are going, Gambit throws down his stick and 3 huge plumes of fire erupt from 3 manholes in the stage. However, in the last show we noticed that one wasn't shooting any fire up, instead it was just swirling around and when the other 2 shut off the hole remained burning. A brief moment of "uh-oh" occured before Aidan and myself grabbed both Co2 guns and used them as impromptu fire-extinguishers, succesfully putting out the blaze. It's strange, this is my 3rd stunt show ever but the second time that I've had to put out a fire on stage.

Now the main problem we have is that it looks like this was not an accident. There has been talk of Sabotage flying around the park for a while now and we feel we've been the victim of many accidents that just can't have been fluke incidents. There is currently an investigation going on to get to the bottom of this but every time we go on stage now I worry about everyones safety, the people rappelling from the ceiling, those who stand by pyro-technics, everything has potential to be very dangerous especially if it's being tampered with.

As it stands we will be doing the 3rd show today but without the flame jets. Particularly annoying since there are lines in the show about using the fire but what can we do? It's all pre-recorded and the park dont want us cancelling shows.

Certainly hope this is resolved soon, will keep you up to date with any developments.

P.

Guten Tag

Hello all, blimey has it really been a week since I updated? My apologies. Time seems to be moving quite quickly now that we're so set in our ways.

So where were we last time? Oh yes, the lamp-post had broken and I was going to try something different. Well it went ok but looked really awkward from the audience point of view, I was miles away from the explosions that were going off on the balcony and the whole thing just looked a bit weird. Fortunately everything had been repaired for the next morning and it was business as usual.

It's also been a while since we had to cancel any shows, it was becoming a rather too frequent occurance, every occasion was due to something technical though, still no performer errors.

The heat has reached a pinacle today, we have a lot of people coming up to us after the shows asking if we're hot, the Germans don't seem to understand the premice of "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer" so we just have to be polite and say yes, we're very hot indeed!

3 shows today, high season should be starting the week after next. We've been told to expect 3 shows a day all week round with the possibility of more. We're all secretly hoping that 3 will be enough, we're yet to perform to a completely full theatre and would much rather do 3 shows to a full house than 4 shows to a smaller crowd.

If anything exciting or interesting happens i'll be here to let you know!

Px

Alrighty then.

Hello all, update time.

So things have been going pretty well of recent, the weather was really becoming a factor towards the end of last week. This current heatwave has meant that we're tiring out during shows and risking dehydration, particularly those in muscle suits which are essentially padded duvets. No-one has fallen foul of dehydratiuon or exhaustion yet though.

Yesterday I received the employee of the month award which was nice, I got a big mirage entertainment bag and a bottle of Bishops Finger ale, which our show manager had to go to an English shop in Koln to buy. Much appreciated.

First two shows today went very well. The park are doing a promotional day, something to do with one of the German bank groups. The second show today was specifically for people utilising this deal and they got a warm-up guy to get the audience cheering before the show. The crowd were very good and we got a very long round of applause at the end of the show.

However, when I went to reset my lamp-post I noticed that the safety cable attaching it to the set has become severely frayed, to the point that I refuse to use it again until it is replaced. So we were left to devise an alternative, someting that got glossed over when we first mentioned it. After a quick discussion about options it seems the best thing to is climb my way over that part of the set to a nearby ladder. To make it look a little more exciting i'll be jumping from quite high up the ladder into a shoulder roll (I knew that Parkour training would come in useful one day!)

So we'll see how it goes, hopefully it wont be long before the cable is replaced, tomorrow is my day off so if I do break my leg it can have a day to heal :-P

Bye for now!!!

Update

Howdy folks, just a quick update on the last few shows.

Show 1 yesterday: We had a new techie running the show so were told to be aware for slight mistakes with sound effects etc. He actually did pretty well for a first attempt and the only mistakes were noticible to us on stage and probably not noticible to the audience.

Show 2 yesterday: Well we were all in our places backstage, the pre-show music ended and the backstage light got brighter signalling the beginning of the show. However it quickly became apparant that there was no music, only dialogue coming out of the speakers. There's no way the show would work like that so without even setting foot on stage we went upstairs and the show was cancelled.

First show today: Unfortunately cancelled again, this time the show was running fine to begin with but at the point where Wolveine repels in and the action starts (i'm sitting in the wings watching the stage) the curtain dropped and there was a distinct lack of Wolverine. I waited for a couple of seconds but it was clear that Wolverine wasnt there so ran backstage to inform the techies that we were missing a character and the show would have to be stopped. Well the music continued to play to a baffled audience before an announcement was made saying the show was cancelled. Turns out that the glove needed for the Wolverine repel had been knocked off the walkway, making it impossible for Wolfy to come down the rope.

So here we are, with a very long gap before our next showtime, thank God the weathers nice eh!

P.

Allo.

Oh dear, goodbye England from the world cup, going to be annoying putting up with all the smug Germans, at least until Friday when they get beaten by Argentina!

So the weekend went fine, a couple of glitches in the shows but nothing serious. Huge audiences on Saturday afternoon, maybe the biggest since we opened which is always good for us on stage.

Back to the usual 2 shows today, the weather is really playing a part now as it's been so hot, having to be very careful about running the risk of dehydration and exhaustion but we get plenty of time to rest and recover between shows so we're all taking it easy.

Not much else to report except I seem to have aquired a groupie, added her on Facebook because we had some friends in common but it turns out she is just a crazy fan and is emailing me saying she wants to talk after the shows, signs all her emails "Your Jacqueline". It's quite funny in a creepy sort of way so that's my entertainment for the week!

Til next update!

Px

Ay 'up.

Afternoon all.

Well it's Friday and also my day off so hopefully the shows are running well today.

Not too many disasters to report on since the incident with the CO2 tank. Wednesday was the first time that Gareth played Magneto and he did very well considering he hasnt had to play that part for 5 weeks or so.

World cup fever is still very prevolent here, Phil, Gareth and myself went to a little bar to watch the Germany game that would determine if they would be playing England this week. It was quite funny trying to act inconspicuous as we got very excited every time Ghana looked as if they would score, fortunately I dont think anyone noticed us and as it turned out Germany will face England on Sunday. We're not busy when the game kicks off but we have our last show of the day at half time, we're expecting a very small audience indeed but will be able to run up to the green room in time to catch most of the second half. It's going to be pretty bad if England lose as we wont hear the end of it from all the techies and crew but hey-ho, maybe we'll win and can gloat at them for a while!

So back to work tomorrow and the usual weekend schedule of 3 shows a day, the weather has been brilliant recently but as a result we come home exhausted every day, still, it's good practice for the high season which looms ever closer!

Will update you all again after the weekend unless anything spectacular happens In which case i'll update sooner!

Px

Post number 40.

Hello all.

Well yesterday was quite funny. Our first show began at 1:15 and started off as per usual, however about 7 minutes in a noticed from my backstage position that the lighting was wrong, we were in pitch black and i could see that the lights weren't running to their usual programme. Just as i was climbing down the ladder to see what was going on the wholw show stopped and i heard our lead technician over the mic announcing that the show would have to be cancelled due to technical reasons. So I didn't even make it on stage in the first show :-P

Show two ran normally and was free from any disasters but we'd all been in since 11:45 and without doing the first show the energy levels werent particularly high, but still, it went fine and we were told the sound issues wouldnt happen again.

Today has the same show schedule and the audience will be arriving in 10 minutes so im off.

Catch you later people.

Px

Lo.

Alright readers.

So yesterday my parents came to visit me. Was great to see them, we went to a few places around the local area and had a general catch up. They're in the park today and have watched 2 of the 3 shows so far, should have some good photos and footage.

So as for the shows:

Show 1 highlights: All started off well until Gambit struck the CO2 cannister on the back of one of the mutants, it sheared a valve at the head of the cannister and the entire contents began to spray violently from the top, causing the guy to trip forwards and graze his knee. He was very lucky in my opinion, if that CO2 had been spraying his skin then he'd have ended up with serious burns. Anyways, he's ok but is taking the rest of the day off.

Show 2 highlights: A very successful show actually, little bit of audience reaction when Magneto came on stage which is always good. No technical or pyro faults and no performer errors either, lets hope this last one will be just as good!

P.

Easy Friday.

Alrighty. So today was second Friday in a row where we only had one show. The show time was 1.15, fifteen minutes before Germany kicked off their second world cup match so we were expecting a tiny audience, we were however quite surprised to see an avergae amount of people for a weekday so put on a good show. Just before curtain up Aidan (Gambit) and i had a little boxing sparr, not uncommon, but this time he managed to give me the perfect dead-arm and right up until my entrance i could hardly lift it. Somehow managed to muddle through without wiping out in the tumbles, must get him back for that! :-P

So tomorrows a day off for everyone due to a dance competition in the theatre, tonight we'll be watching the England game at Aidans appartment then going for a few celebratory/conselation beers in Dorsten. My parents arrive in Germany tonight and will be picking me up tomorrow to spend the day together, will be good to see them :-)

Next update might be sometime Sunday which, i should imagine, will be a busier day with 3 shows on the schedule. See you then!

Px

And so...

So first show over, reasonably successful except our "repaired" rotating car failed to rotate. Upon inspection it turns out it just wasn't pre-set properley so hopefully we'll see it work in this coming show.

Finally got some good footage of me as Cyclops, i'm also planning to do some Parkour in Kirchhellen to give me plenty of new show-reel material.

Next show is in an hour and a half so i'm going to enjoy the sun and eat some lunch!

Catcha later.

Px

Briefly.

Hello all.

Been a pretty un-eventful week show-wise. Pleased to say I haven't landed on my arse again. We're about to do a show with the big boss of the park in the audience so have been asked to pull out all the stops, to be honest there's very rarely any problems caused by performers, just technical issues with the FX so really it's just business as usual for us.

Weather continues to be lovely, when we first started I was freezing backstage since I don't have to wear a muscle suit, now i'm very glad I'm not wearing one as it gets pretty warm on the stage.

Have got Gareth filming the show today so can hopefully get some decent footage of me in action, might start piecing together my next show reel soon. Happy days :-D

Will report on show 1 later on.

Byeeeeeeee!

*ahem*

...

In show 2 today i tripped over a Chinese and landed my handspring on my arse...

...bugger.

P.

Sunday, sunday, sunday.

Hello folks.

I realised the other day that all the times on my blog posts are all messed up so please ignore them. It's currently about 3:30pm on Sunday and we've just finished show 1 of 2. A lot of the new changes have been applied but with that has come a few technical difficulties. Yesterday we were off due to the Shrek premiere, turns out that in order for the cinema screen to be put up our stage had been completely ravaged and many of our on stage props had been taken down. Consequently this mornings technical run through highlighted that loads of effects weren't working anymore. We were told that if the show was going too badly they'd pull the plug and cancel it. So the show began and started off ok, up until my entrance, whereupon i stepped out on the balcony and it fell immediatly leaving me awkwardly poised by my lampost trying to shoot the laser. I managed to scrape it together and rode the lampost successfully. However it became quickly apparant that the entire sound track was far too quiet and we struggled to hear our audio queues for the rest of the show. I've also had 2 lines added into the show and wasn't told what they were so i had to face away from the audience and try to blag it. I've got the new lines sat in front of me now and am doing my best to commit them to memory but it's not easy.

So the next show is in an hour and a quarter, hopefully some of the technical issues will have been resolved but we may be in for another trying run.

Here's hoping for the best!

P.

Friday

Alright folks.

I had yesterday off so had a very lazy day at home, did go to the top of a massive hill in Bottrop which has a massive lookout structure, you can see all the towns and cities around here, it was pretty cool.

We've only got one show today as the park are playing host to the Shrek 4 premiere tomorrow and they're using our theatre. They're expecting a lot of people so they're having to prepare our theatre this afternoon, hense only one show at 1.15.

Tomorrow is a day off for everyone so we'll probably end up going somewhere tonight for a drink or two, tomorrow as i'm sure you know, is England first world cup game so again we'll be going to a bar or something to watch. Will be interesting to see who the Germans are cheering for, hopefully they like us a bit more than the States :-P I dread to think how it's going to be in England have to play Germany at any point!

We're implementing a few changes into the show again, Matt from Sigma services is fixing our rotating car and Storm now gets to stand on the rising bridge, we're also tweaking the end so that the audience know when to clap, it's a bit awkward at the moment.

Weather continues to be a mix of pouring rain and glorious sunshine meaning varied Audiences but the show is still going well and every crowd seems to enjoy it so all is well.

That's it for now folks. More updates soon.

Px

Hallo.

Alright everyone.

Well it's been an un-exciting week so far, lots of rain during the mornings has left us with very few people in the Audeince. We're still down to 2 shows a day except for weekends and holidays so the workload is pretty decent.

It was Amanda's (one of the yank girls) birthday on Monday so we all went to tyhe local biker bar and resteraunt and had a nice meal and plenty of drinks. Was good fun :-)

No show disasters of recent, we have a guy from Sigma (fx people) working on some of the broken effects aat the moment so the show is nearing completion. We still have some changes due to be made, I've been given some more lines but they havent been edited into the soundtrack yet. Just been told that we'll be rehearsing at some point tomorrow. The end of the show needs tweaking too, at the moment the audience dont really know when to clap which makes it awkward for us on stage, standing looking like lemons :-P

So that's about it for now, hopefully we'll have 2 good runs today despite the small audeinces, if anything happens i'll let you know!

Px

Show highlights, weekend.

Alright everyone so i'll start where i left off with Saturdays shows:

Show 3 highlights: all was going well until Gambits entrance whereupon he proceed to spin his stick and launch it across the stage (it was bound to happen sometime) there was a ripple of pity from the audience and Aidan ran to retrieve the stick just in time for the flame throwers to go off. A bit later on in the show one of the CO2 guns failed to work causing a bit of a plot hole in the script but hey :-P

So onto today...

Show 1 highlights: About 5 minutes from the end of the show we were plunged into darkness, however all special effects and sound kept going so we carried on with the show (pretty difficult for me especially as i can hardly see with the Cyclops goggles as it is!) Later we found out that the lighting programming had decided to skip back to the very beginning of the show where only the stage curtain is lit.

Show 2 highlights: Not too much to report on the show we just did except the CO2 gun i use at the end of the show had been leaking throughout and by the time i picked it up there was gas erupting out of the thing. Still got to shoot Magneto with it though so no problems :-)

Show three coming up soon. We're about due a show with no errors at all!

Px

Weekend!

Hello all.

Well i'm pleased to report that Aidan did a brilliant job covering me on Thursday. I had a brief lie-in before going into the park in time to catch the second show which I filmed. Because Thursday was a holiday in Germany the park was very busy, it felt strange to be up in the audience for a change but it was great to be able to see what the crowd see's.

During the 3rd show I sat right at the front with my camera but had to obey the no flash photography rule meaning all the photos are a bit blurry but nevermind. The funniest thing about the 3rd show were the groupies sat near to where I was who spent most of the time taking pictures of me... sitting there, watching the show. Groupies are funny.

So Yesterday was Friday, David Draves (one of the higher ups from mirage) had been back for a couple of days to monitor the shows progress. He watched the first show and then gave us a few notes on things that are yet to change. Most of the notes werent about us, they were more focused on some technical issues and the like. I've also been told that they'll be recording a new line for me to clear up a mildly confusing part of the show.

We also got payed yesterday so a small handful of us and people from the other stunt show in the park all went to the Irish bar in the local (ish) shopping centre.m I took it easy knowing that we'll have big crowds again today and tumbling hungover isn't very fun at all.

That's all for now, will update again soon :-)

P.

Briefly...

Today so far...

Highlights of show 1: Had to bail out of my wallflip as the cover guy was late getting to me and wasn't holding my arm correctly. Didnt matter too much. Other than that a good show.

Highlights of show 2: Some kid in the front row decides to puke up very close to the stage and sits there for 5 minutes before leaving. Smell was horrible but whole situation was pretty funny.

Show 3 coming up at 5:30, It's very very hot today so just chilling out between shows without shirts on. No internet tonight but we have a router in the green room now so i'll probably keep doing the whole "show highlights" thing :-)

Bye for now!

P.

Previously.

Hello all.

Well i'm pleased to report that Aidan did a brilliant job covering me on Thursday. I had a brief lie-in before going into the park in time to catch the second show which I filmed. Because Thursday was a holiday in Germany the park was very busy, it felt strange to be up in the audience for a change but it was great to be able to see what the crowd see's.

During the 3rd show I sat right at the front with my camera but had to obey the no flash photography rule meaning all the photos are a bit blurry but nevermind. The funniest thing about the 3rd show were the groupies sat near to where I was who spent most of the time taking pictures of me... sitting there, watching the show. Groupies are funny.

So Yesterday was Friday, David Draves (one of the higher ups from mirage) had been back for a couple of days to monitor the shows progress. He watched the first show and then gave us a few notes on things that are yet to change. Most of the notes werent about us, they were more focused on some technical issues and the like. I've also been told that they'll be recording a new line for me to clear up a mildly confusing part of the show.

We also got payed yesterday so a small handful of us and people from the other stunt show in the park all went to the Irish bar in the local (ish) shopping centre.m I took it easy knowing that we'll have big crowds again today and tumbling hungover isn't very fun at all.

That's all for now, will update again soon :-)

P.

Good morning.

Hello readers.

Well today is my first official day off, in about half an hour Aidan will be performing as Cyclops and I might start thinking about getting out of bed. Yesterday we did 2 shows with our back-up Magneto, they were pretty disasterous, in the first show his costume pants wouldn't stay up, for literally the whole show. We were all doing our best not to burst out laughing but had to remain a little bit proffesional. Also, he didn't know his lines or his blocking making it harder for the rest of us to perform like we usually do. Anyway, the second show was a bit better but I think everyone will be glad to have Phil back today.

Last night a few of us went to the local Brauhaus for "Die Party", pronounced "dee party". We didn't know what to expect since there's a lot of middle-aged and elderley people in Kirchhellen but by the time we went inside the room was full and the average age looked a lot lower than we'd thought. Beer was very cheap so we all had a few drinks whilst occassionally dancing. Was a fun night :-)

So here I am at home, I'm probably going to Rollerskate into work shortly as I really want to see Aidan as Cyclops plus i've never seen the show from the audience before, will be taking my camcorder in to film the results.

Speak to you all soon folks.

P.

Interesting day.

Hello people.

Well today should be very interesting, we have a lot of people covering today so we're not performing with our "A-Cast" infact it's more like our "C-Cast" but there you go.

We're about to go and do a run-through to see how disasterous the shows are going to be. We still have our lead Cyclops, Gambit, Nightcrawler and Wolverine but that's about it :-P

Big party at the Brauhaus in Kirchhellen tonight so i might not get to update again but yesterday I put another months worth of credit on my internet USB so will no doubt get to write a large update soon :-)

Fingers crossed for today :-S

P.

Live from the X-Men Green room.

Hello folks. I sit here now with my laptop in the green-room at the studio. Our first show today is at 1.15 and then we do another one at 4.15. This is definitely a good thing, 3 shows a day when there's not much audience is a bit draining. The weekend was good though, Saturday had big audiences for all 3 shows and Sunday would have been the same but the rain came down pretty hard for most of the afternoon.

We've been given an official rota for the next 4 weeks, we've been given designated days off (mine being Thursday) so that we dont all work a 7 day week. My cover guy is yet to try my role but he's been in the show as another character and gets to see a lot of what i do, plus he knows all my lines so hopefully it wont take long to pass the Cyclops torch.

There havent been many more mishaps in the show since my last update, however, yesterday part of the set was broken when two foam barrels that fly up in the air during a big pyro effect came down right on the lip of a balcony, sending fibre glass and wood all over the stage. When we came down for the next show there was a very strong smell of glue coming from the stage :-p Surprisingly, normally everything in this business is fixed with Duct tape!

Anyways, on to the next shows, the park doesn't look too quiet considering it's a Monday so hopefully we'll have some enthusiastic audiences.

Cyclops awaaaaay!!!

part 2.

So i figure i should use my last remaining internet hours to update. I could be without web access for a few days until we get a wireless router installed in our green room.

So we went to the Brauhaus tonight, just a small handfull of us. It was good fun, as soon as we walked in and ordered our round we noticed the big boss of the park sat with some important looking poeple, shortly after that he came over to us and said hi and told us the first round was on him which was a very generous and well received surprise. We spent the night talking about how things were going and swapping stories of shows gone by. This happens a lot, there's a lot of history in the live-action stunt show industry and it's all quite closely knit. I hope that sometime in the future i'll meet some of the people who seem to be the focus of these stories.

So here I am a few pints later, very sleepy and looking forward to another day of shows tomorrow, who knows, in a couple of days i could be in the audience watching Aiden (my cover and the lead Gambit) doing my role. Will be nice to put my feet up!

Speak to you when I can people.

P.

Holy Smokes Blogman

Hey guys.

So today was day 4 of shows, we're still definitely hammering out the dents but overall things are going well.

Recent incidents include the soundtrack starting 5 minutes early and messing up the lighting for the show, CO2 guns running out of gas, the flame grill refusing to fire and the odd effect malfunctioning. These things are to be expected I guess!
We're currently the only show running three times a day in the park as we're the latest attraction and have been in all the papers, however the park is pretty quiet on weekdays and after a while we may see the show cut down to twice daily.

We're still doing rehearsals between shows as the cover people are starting to learn their alternative roles. So far our back up Gambit has done some shows as has our back-up Wolverine and one of the mutants. Hopefully soon my cover will be able to let me have some shows off so I can sit in the audience and get a perspective of the show that i wouldn't normally see.

Outside of the show life is going alright, the sleepy town of Kirchhellen plays host to some upcoming parties which will be great as very little goes on here. Our little group of performers tend to be the noisiest people in any bar we go to but the locals here seem entertained by us foreigners and we've had no trouble (stunt teams living in Kirchhellen in the past have been known to cause a few problems :-P)

Tonight we return to our favourite watering hole, the Brauhaus, as Gareth's girlfriend who has been visiting for the last few days is leaving tomorrow morning, any excuse for a drink basically! Depending on just how much we consume and how early we get back I may update later this evening.

Till then ya'll.

P.

Guten tag von-blog.

Hello all.

Well as you know we opened the show yesterday, properley this time! Our first Audience was very busy, there's been so much hype about us since we got here and we finally had a chance to impress. Thankfully we put on the best show so far, it felt great and the crowd loved it. However, show number 2 began to have technical difficulty about 15mins into it and by the end nothing was working, not even the sound track. Luckily our tech guy in the sound booth came over the microphone and apologised to the audience (who had probably guessed that things had gone wrong)and told them to come back for the 3rd show. During the meet and greet loads of people asked us what effects they had missed and when we told them they all seemed really keen to come back to see the third.
The third show had the biggest audience yet, unsurprisingly, and like the 1st show it went pretty well.

In the evening our director (also my agent) took all his agency employees out for some drinks which was great, he'd worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks and thanked us for our hard work too. He drove back to England today and we wont see him until the end of the season.

So onto today. Show number one was a bit awkward as we had new people controlling the lighting (which is on an automated system, like pressing play on a cd player) he was a bit nervous and as a result we ended up with the lighting que's 5 minutes ahead of the soundtrack but hey, he was new and these things happen. The second and third shows went smoothly and once again the audiences were fantastic.

So this is really where we settle in, our covers are beginning to try their hand at the shows by doing one a day, it may be a few days before I get to sit in the audience as my cover plays Gambit but also covers Wolverine. It's probably more important that he learns Wolverine first as he has much more to do on stage than I. When I do finally get to watch the show i'll record the whole thing. No chance to upload thigs yet as i'm still using this bloody USB stick which doesn't tolerate such things.

But hey, there's many a month to go so i'm sure when I do get to upload videos they'll be of a high standard! Hope everyone reading this is well and you're enjoying the updates.

Ciao for now!

P.

So here we go.

Hi folks, time to let you know the recent news.

So after our press release day we were given Saturday and most of today off, this was mainly due a to a national cheerleading competition being held in our theatre... weird no? So after some R&R we trudged back into the set today to discover that the cheerleading was still going on, i.e, running late.
After a 2 hour wait we were finally able to get rehearsing on the elements of the show that needed changing after our performance to the press. As a result i'm sat here at 1am, 7 hours before i need to get up to go to the set for our first public performance day.

Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany so the park will be packed, also, there is a lot of hype about the show after we appeared in loads of newspapers with some very good reviews so we're expecting a full house :-)

I think that'll do for now, I definitely need my rest before tomorrow and should hopefully have the internet again by midweek. Wish me luck!!!

P.

Slightly neglectful.

Hi blog, just a quick message to say i'll be updating later tonight :-)

P.

Success!

Well hello again bloggers.

So today was the day, our first show with an audience, i'll get onto that shortly but first let me tell you about yesterday.

So after having worked a 12 hour shift on Tuesday it came as no surprise when we ended up doing another 12 hour shift yesterday. The morning and early afternoon were spent doing final alterations to costume and the set and Fx. We then watched a run through of the show with all the Fx, pyro, music and lighting and no actors on stage. The purpose of this being that we had to remember when to avoid certain explosions etc. After that the techies had to work hard to finalise some of the things that hadn't worked particularly well in time for a full run through. At precisely quarter to midnight we began a full run of absolutely everything, most of us were pretty worn out by then but we knew it had to be done.

It went pretty well bar the odd hiccup, some lighting and pyro were a bit off but there wasn't much else wrong. Finally, at about 12.40am we were allowed to leave but were told we'd have to be by 9 the next morning.

So after a few hours sleep we all went back to the set today to do one more run-through before the very first show with an audience. The run through didn't consist of any pyro etc as there wouldn't have been enough time to reset everything. We started the run at about 10:30 and decided that we were ready to go ahead at 12pm.

The audience today consisted of all sorts of officials from Moviepark and lots of members of the press as well as senior representatives of Mirage entertainment, basically it was time to impress and everyone gave 100% resulting in an un-interrupted show with only 3 or 4 errors, all of which were Fx of Pyro (I.E, not our fault). After the show finished we were asked back out on stage where we were given flowers and received much more applause. We then spent an hour doing photos for the press and for the park publicity team. So all in all, a successful day.

The next 3 days at the set will be taken up by a cheerleading show (weird isn't it? But we have known about it for a while now) meaning that we've been given tomorrow off to recover from the last few weeks and we dont need to go back til Friday evening when the cheerleaders are gone to do some final tweaking of the show before our director, Mirage and Sigma (special fx) people all fly home.

Tonight we're going to Dorsten for a celebratory meal with all the cast and crew, no doubt celebratory drinking will happen too. I'll raise a glass for all you people back home who've been following the blog, from now on it takes the role of telling you about each performance day and the kinds of things that go on once a show of this magnitude is open to the public.

Cheers!

P.

Blimey.

Well hello blog readers.

What an insane few days it's been since my last update, let me fill you in.

So after discovering that our new soundtrack was very different to the one we'd been rehearsing to we spent a long time re-choreographing a lot of the show, with reasonable success. We also watched a lot of Pyro and FX testing which all looked pretty cool, however, our Italian director Angelo left yesterday and we were immediatly gathered together in front of the producer, our fight director and the writer of the script, who has been here for a few days now. They told us that the show needed some drastic changes (to which the cast all agreed) and that those 3 would be our directing team until the show opens. So we started, essentially, from scratch; keeping most of the character blocking (their stage movements) but completely re-working the acting styles, some of the fights and the general vibe of the show.

So after busting a gut yesterday we had started to make improvements. The X-Men characters are now much more realistic to how they appear in the comics (bearing in mind that the shows are based on the comics, not the movies). Today we finished re-doing every last dead-spot in the show and believe me there were a lot of them. Myself, Aidan and Phil (Gambit and Magneto) stayed behind to assist with the lighting, we thought we'd be in for an all nighter but ended up leaving sometime around 10pm much to our relief (especially since we were in at 10am)

So tomorrow is crunch time, it's our last day before opening which means we'll be running the show with full costume, pyro, visual Fx and sound effects. We'll be running it many times over until we're happy with every last scene. It's going to be a really long one and to be honest i'm already feeling the strain since we havent had a day off for 2 weeks or so, nevertheless we all know that we have to commit fully to doing the best we can so we can put on a show on Wednesday that we all feel proud of.

On Wednesday night we're being taken out for a staff meal as a reward for our efforts so my next update will be later in the week. Wish me luck folks! Hopefully i'll be able to tell you all how well it went soon :-)

Till then readers.

P.

A'ight.

Hello blog.

Well today has been a perfect mixture of good and bad.

Lets start with the good shall we?
So this afternoon we turned up for rehearsal and I was told that after many teething problems my collapsing lamp-post was ready to be tried out again. So after discussing the logistics of what I would be doing I tried it out and it's fantastic. Basically I stand atop a balcony and fire my laser eyes at Magneto, narrowly missing him. He then takes aim at the balcony and using his powers begins to destroy it, firstly a lot of pyrotechnics go off and then the entire thing hinges down (done with pnuematics). As the balcony falls I swing onto a nearby lamp-post which triggers it to fall down towards the stage. It's tied off with a rope disguised as a cable so that it doesn't go all the way to the ground and just as it stops moving I jump to the floor and proceed to kick some bad guy ass. I was very satisfied with how that went.

Now for the bad news...
After having sent off a list of edits that needed to be made to the soundtrack we finally received the new version only to discover that it's been made very different indeed. Music has been cut, changed, added and altered and even more frustrating nearly all my lines have changed. This leaves me in the posistion of having to hammer all the old lines out of my head (and i was getting damn good at them) and re-learn the new ones with only 5 days of rehearsal left. As for everyone else, well a lot of their lines have changed too, some considerably. So we now have to spend some time re-choreographing the parts where the music has altered whilst trying to learn where our new lines have been slotted in.

But hey, those are the cards we've been dealt and to stand around complaining would just waste more time at this stage so we persevere. Tomorrow we are having a German lesson with one of the tech guys to ensure that we understand our new lines as well as learning to speak them correctly, hopefully it won't take too long and we can get back to practicing all the stunts that are in the show. Speaking of which, we're now able to do run throughs with abseiling mutants, abseiling Wolverine, my lamp-post stunt, a mutant running up a building at high speed and another stunt where Nightcrawler runs up a ladder only to have Magneto rip it from the wall and falls nearly to the ground.

So I remain positive and still look forward to the opening of the show. 5 Days and counting!

That's about it for now guys, speak to you soon!

P.

Ooh, me aching bones...

Hello blog readers.

Well today was another long one. We came into the set at 2pm to have an official costume fitting so we could make any changes. My costume is a lot different from last time and not particularly flattering, but I suppose I shouldnt expect much when playing a spandex clad superhero. Only a few adjustments needed for mine so I can imagine we'll be rehearsing in them soon. Only 10 days left until opening now!

We then spent the rest of the day working through every scene in the show and trying to improve our acting skills, it's turning out to be a very long process and i'm beginning to think that we should be focusing on the pyrotechnics etc so we're safe on the stage when all the effects go off. Still, acting is important as our performances need to be convincing, there's a lot of dialogue in the show so we cant just rely on the action sequences to keep the audiences attention.

So here I am at almost 11pm, not been home for long but we probably wont be in until the afternoon tomorrow, time for a well earned glass of whiskey with the rest of the cast I think!

Hopefully soon i'll be able to let you know about the stunts in the show, going to be a couple of veeery long days when we get to that stage as we're teaching Shaolin monks to abseil!

Until then everyone!

P.

I'm back.

Hello all.

Well as you can tell it's been a little while since I was here. We ran out of credit on the internet USB and since we were well into rehearsals we didn't have time to get it topped up.

But here I am so i'll give you the latest news; we have been rehearsing under the supervision of an artistic director called Angelo. He's been finding ways to fill the dead spots in the show by improving our acting. It's a very slow process as it turns out as he is Italian and has to use a translator most of the time, then Jocelyn (Wolverines wife) has to translate to Chinese for the Shaolins and the 2 Chinese acrobats. But we're making progress and right now i'm sitting in the auditorium watching the first attempts at abseiling from the ceiling.

We're also getting closer to the time where the special effects will be going off and there's a hell of a lot of them. We have 7 exploding drain covers that fly into the air, numerous explosions and much of the set is collapsible so Magneto looks like he's genuinly got the power to control metal. It's all very exciting, just a shame it's taken so long to get this far!

Well i'm sure i'm going to be needed soon so i'll sign off for now but hopefully the usual updates will resume for the next couple of weeks.

Ciao for now!

P.

I make it blog o'clock.

Alright people, time for an update.

As previously mentioned things are definitely going up in terms of recent productivity. We spent the day walking through the whole show with the accompanying soundtrack. I also have my first fight sequnced choreographed, it consists of backflicks, somersaults, free cartwheels, a wallflip, handsprings and lots of kicks and punches. Looks pretty awesome if i do say so myself! However my hands are pretty bruised from tumbling on a solid wooden floor, even more worrying considering when we're doing the show i will be tumbling on solid concrete, better toughen up by then!

Tomorrow after rehearsals we're going to Woodpeckers American Bar and to be honest we're planning on getting a little tipsy to say the least. I think we have definitely earned it this week though, plus we've finally received some money and news from home says I've got my last cheque from Frimley Park hospital. Drinks are on me!

Tomorrow might also see the arrival of our costumes. Some of you may have seen the one i wore in Jakarta, this time they are meant to be slightly different so i'm really looking forward to looking less like a Thunderbird! (Fingers crossed anyhow.)
On Monday we'll be meeting our Italian Director, we can only hope that all the things we've choreographed will be up to his standard (he doesn't really have a say in our fight scenes but will probably give us instruction about stage movement and things like that. Hope he's used to the attitude of Stuntmen!)

I may treat you all to a hungover update on Saturday but there probably wont be much to say as we have the day off!

Till then!

P.

Wassup blog.

Hello dear readers.

Well the last 2 days have seen a little bit of productivity, we've been working hard in Studio 4 and have been working on some fight sequences and playing with harnesses and cargo netting. It's quite hard to come up with final choreography when we're not on the actual stage and without the 5 Chinese acrobats and martial artists who are playing the henchmen but still.

Weathers been a bit up and down recently as well, i've been occupying myself by watching scary movies, namely: the fourth kind, drag me to hell and paranormal activity. All were very good in their own right.

Unfortunately the opening of the show has now been pushed back to the 19th. Not even particularly sure why this time but I think it's all to do with the special effects who understandably need enough time to make everything safe. On the plus side though we've been told that we'll be able to rehearse on stage very soon so i'm looking forward to that :-)

That's about it for now, have to say it's satisfying working til 5pm every day, feels like we're finally getting somewhere. It's all forward movement from here!

P.

Things of recent.

Lo blog.

Still not much to report here I'm afraid, we went into the park yesterday but mainly to go on the rides and see the other Stunt Show. I thought it was pretty good, they have a fantastic set and the cast were all very enthusiastic. We went into Studio 4 today to play around with some of the rigging that will be in the show. Turned out to be a bit of laugh and hopefully productive for when it's all rigged on the set rather than the rehearsal studio.

After that the cast from the other show came to the set to say hello, they're all German but all spoke good English so we chatted with them for a bit and they invited us to join them for a big Barbeque on their set later in the week. Every performer from the park is going including the costume characters and the people from the Dance show so that should be a lot of fun.

Last night Phil, Gareth, Amanda and I went to a pub about 15 minutes from here, to begin with it felt a bit awkward as it was clearly a very 'local' bar but we eventually ended up playing Knieffel (or Yahtzee as we know it). Phil says most small bars in Germany will have Dice games available to everyone. After a few round with just the 4 of us 3 German guys who had been playing opposite us asked if they could join, so we had the first unofficial Knieffel world championships, England versus Germany and one Yank fo good measure. You'll be pleased to hear the Brits won rather comprehensively :-)

We're supposed to be having an orientation tomorrow, which we assume will be listening to someone explain the rules of the park and what is expected of us as employees. Our director returns tonight so we might end up doing some more fight sequences. We were all pleased to see the set is coming along very nicely so fingers crossed we'll be rehearsing in there in the next couple of weeks.

That's all for now guys, will update later in the week :-)

P.

Passing the time.

Hello again Blog.

Well yesterday we all visited Phantasialand (which i have apparantly been spelling wrong). Thanks to our work passes for MoviePark (which everyone had been refering to as Movieworld...) we got in for free and spent the morning checking out the rides, of which there were some awesome ones! We also stumbled across a Chinese acrobat show which I have some video of and will try to upload it soon.

After that we went to see the Stunt Show that so many of the people here have worked in before, it's currently under the name "Street Extreme" and you can find it on youtube. After the show was over we met the cast, which was esentially a reunion for a lot of people however it was the first time i'd met the people who feature so heavily in stories of days gone by working in Germany. We all left the park and sat in a little outdoor foodery, we drank lots of beer and chatted for a long time before we go invited back to one of the performers houses. Once we were there we continued to drink lots of beer and people remenisced and swapped stories for the whole evening. Eventually though it was time to leave so we said our farewells and all of the Phantasialand cast said they would love to come and see our show when it finally opens.

So a much less boring day yesterday, our rehearsals have now been pushed back even further to Monday so we have 4 more days of tedium to go.

Until then folks!

P.

Update.

Well hello blog.

Things have taken a weird turn here. Everything has been postponed, mainly due to the airports being shut, until Friday. We can't get performers or stage equipment here and the opening date of the show has been pushed back. Our director has gone back to England for the time being and we've been left to fend for ourselves.

So as for updates there's not really anything to say. We've checked out a bit more of the local area and have just returned from a big lake near here. It's going to be perfect in the summer as the waters great for swimming and there's plenty of barbeque friendly areas.

We're planning to go to Fantasialand in the next couple of days, it's a theme park in Colone where many of the guys here have worked before and there's currently a stunt team out there who would love to hang out with us. We've been given petrol money for our mini-van so road trips are quite high on our to-do list.

Admittedly we're all a bit annoyed that we're not doing anything as all of us have jobs back home and we could be earning money instead of spending it but there ya go.

As always i'll keep you posted on whatever goings on may happen but this hasn't turned out to be the exciting venture i thought it would... not yet anyhow.

My love to all of you back home.

P.

Hello again.

Well howdy folks.

At long last I have some internet access again so it's time to fill you all in.

Things are still moving pretty slowly out here, the 6 Chinese acrobats who are playing the part of Magnetos Mutant Army still haven't arrived, mainly because Dusselldorf Airport is shut due to the Ash cloud that you all no doubt know about.

We still can't rehearse on the set as it's a very complex design with an awful lot of special effects to factor in so our rehearsal days are spent practicing fight sequences and refreshing our acrobatic skills. The good news is that once we do get access to the stage it will only take a few days to work out our fight sequences (it's what our director does best).

We managed to find a cheap place to go drinking the other night, I'm sure we'll be spending a lot of time there to cure the boredom, i know i should probably be appreciating these days as come next week we are going to be spending a lot of time in the Studio getting our lines perfect and figuring out our movements around the stage.

Well that's about it for now, coming soon; the details of my entrance and opening fight sequences. Time to kick some mutant ass!

P.

Bear with me.

Sorry folks, i'm having a lot of trouble getting internet access. The USB dongle that i'm sharing keeps running out of credit unexpectedly. Will hopefully be able to come online frequently as of next week.

P.

Day 7

Hallo there.

Today was quite productive, we spent the morning brushing up on our Acro and visualising how the show itself is going to run. First off we unloaded some more of set from the storage container, a job which was eventually taken over by the American and German stage hands. After that it was a case of establishing just what gymnastic skills we would be able to put in the show, Cyclops has the potential to do the most Acrobatic stuff as it seems to go better with the character; Wolverine is a much more brutal fight, Gambit has a staff to work with and Nightcrawler doesn't get the chance to do much fighting in the script.

I haven't really done any training since the last show (the odd backflick and somersault combo on the Royal Holloway field doesn't exactly count) so it was reassuring to know I can still pull it off when necessary. I also learnt a couple of new tricks involving a supported no-handed cartwheel combo and a running Gainer (this is used when a character gets clotheslined by someone and does a 3 quarter roation into front support). This was all made a bit harder due to a lack of padded flooring, but hey, were tought Stunt guys so what the hell.

Tomorrow will involve putting these skills into some fight sequences, we can only do so much without the set to work around but transfering what we come up with onto the stage will be quicker than waiting for the stage to be finished.

That's about it for now, I'll keep you all posted with any other news :-)

Day 6

So at long last we visited the set today, the seating capacity is very impressive, the stage itself is huge and has lots of potential with many trapdoors and underground corridors. The set has been delivered in a huge cargo container but we couldn’t really unpack it as most of it is big and heavy, apparently there will be people from the park doing that tomorrow.

We also got to read the script and listen to the recorded sound track. The entire show is in German and we’ve all been given a copy so we can start to learn our lines. Undoubtedly changes will be made to accommodate lengthy fight scenes, but that shouldn’t take too long.

Tomorrow we will start to choreograph some of the parts, my entrance into the show involves jumping from a collapsing balcony onto a lamppost which in turn falls to the ground, however since Cyclops is so awesome he then gets to roll out of the fall and do some acrobatics/fighting. Nice.

I’m attaching some photos of the stage and the park; it’s much like any theme park you’ve been to with plenty of rides, stores and shows. There is already an attraction that puts you into a mock stunt scene from a Hollywood film set, don’t know if that will be running whilst our show is on but some healthy competition can’t hurt :-P











So tonight I’ll be listening to the soundtrack to try and get my lip-syncing up to scratch, Cyclops has a fair few lines so I’m going to have to work pretty hard at it. I’ll probably have to learn some other lines as well since most people have to cover other characters when they have time off. It’s nice to finally be doing some work but equally it only gets harder from here!

Will let you know how our first physical rehearsing goes tomorrow.

Peace out ya’ll!

Day 5

Alrighty then!

So it's the last day of boredom before we actually get to do something! Hooray!

Went for a long walk earlier and felt quite bad when a car pulled over and asked me for directions to Movie Park, not only did I feel bad because my German was only good enough to tell them that I can't speak it and also that I dont know how to get there yet myself. So yeah, emabarrasing.

The weathers taken a turn for the worse, it's now freezing cold and threatening to rain, which is a shame because looking out the window last night i realised that there are so many good areas for parkour round here! I promise you i'll start filming some soon. I've only taken 2 photos so far as i've found nothing to be photo-worthy, will take the camera with me tomorrow though.

As Dan has pointed out in his comments, this isnt a very exciting blog for a Stuntman but i'm working on it, trust me it's hard to make life sound exciting at the moment but just you wait, i've heard that there are going to be 4 high powered air-ramps in the show which will be launching people onto the stage. There's also a collapsing tower and from what the others have told me, plenty of potential for high falls etc so give it time!

That's all for now folks, tomorrows the important day, will let you know how it was when i get the chance :-)

Day 4

Hello world.

Well last night the entirity of the cast so far went to a pub across the road from where we're staying, it was very nice and the locals found it quite amusing to have a load of English people around (no-one mentioned the war...)

We were taken to a big mall this morning (despite hangovers) I got myself a cheap German phone and bought a Subway (against my usual fast food morals) but it certainly cured the hangover :-P

We've been told that on Monday we're going to the park to get our official work passes and to do a little rehearsing, hooray!

Accommodation continues to cause a few problems, we lost our hot water in the Kitchen yesterday and our showers only have 2 temperatures, freezing and scalding, I think baths might be the way forward there. Good news is one of the other characters in the show has already been house hunting and says there are some good double bedroom places for around the same cost that we're paying now so in a few weeks we could be settling in somewhere else. Phil (magneto) says it's commonplace for the cast to befriend workers from the park and pay to stay with them (very few people own properties in Germany, it's mostly done by renting) so that could be cool.

Anyways, i'm going to spend the rest of the weekend lying around watching movies on my laptop, or if the weathers nice, wander round Kirchhellen a bit more, see how far I can get without getting lost :-)

If I don't update again soon rest assured that the next time i do i'll be able to tell you all about the park and the show (i'm assuming we'll see some scripts soon).

Until then! Bye!

Day 3.

Alright everyone.

So we've been here a couple of days now and since there's nothing else to be doing I took a little wander around this small town of Kirchhellen.

The weather is fantastic today, summer is well and truly on its way.

The main purpose of my little walk was to buy some dinner, I was quite surprised to find an Aldi in the town and consequently found it to be the cheapest place for food so tonight i shall feast on pasta and Bologneise!

We're still awaiting instruction regarding the show, it may be a few days yet before we even visit the Park where the show is being performed. There is talk of using this time to visit another theme park, Fantasialand, as many of the performers here know the cast of the stunt show over there. It would be nice to see a bit of the show that I've heard many stories about.

I'm aware that there are a few of you now reading this blog, please feel free to leave me some comments (I dont know if you have to sign up to blogger for that, probably not!) I'd love to hear from you all to stop me going completely insane at the moment. Very glad I've got so many films etc on my Laptop to keep me entertained.

That's all for now really, hopefully over the weekend i'll have some more exciting things to talk about!

Paul.

And so it begins...

Hello there :-)

Well I guess i'd better start this blog by introducing myself, my name is Paul Davis and I'm a 22 year old English guy who has just broken into the live stunt show business, so far I have already performed in 2 live-action shows in Indonesia playing the part of Cyclops in the X-Men. I write to you now from the latest venue of the show, Movie Park, Dusseldorf, Germany.

The purpose of this blog is mainly to keep in touch with all my friends and family back home but i'm hoping to accumulate some new followers from the world wide webs :-)

Today is actually my second day here but i've only just been able to buy a USB dongle enabling me to get online.

I arrived in Germany yesterday afternoon along with Wolverine (Jason) and his wife. We were met at the airport and taken to our current accomodation, a series of rooms above an American style diner. Eventually most of the cast will end up residing here but we are still waiting for documentation for some of the performers.

We are due to start rehearsing the show on Monday but find ourselves restricted by many factors including the arrival of the set itself and, as previously mentioned, some of the performers.

Over the next few months I hope to keep this blog updated with all goings on, proffesional and social to give you guys an impression of what it's like working in the live-action stunt industry. Once I get to grips with the system then I can hopefully upload photos and videos too :-) For now though it looks like i'll be using the blog to keep myself from getting too bored during the day, I'm having to share the USB dongle so will not be online 24/7, this may change once the local Vodafone shop gets some more dongles delivered.

I hope you all are looking forward to reading these posts as i am about writing them, it's always nice to feel like i'm sharing this awesome experience :-)

Peace out for now! Coming soon, the arrival of more cast and our first visit to Movie Park itself.