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.