Colorado!

The month of June has been a busy one and we find ourselves in Colorado working at the Colorado Renaissance festival until the first of August. Yes we miss Austin but we do not miss the 100 degree days and humidity which is the summer in Texas. Colorado is Beautiful and we are very excited to be working for the Ren Faire this year. It has been great to see all our friends from last year and hang out with other crazy performers. Looking forward to an amazing summer of performing!

Petanque!

Well it is official we are addicts. Today we played at least 8 hours of Petanque. For everyone who does not know the game Petanque is a french game very similar to Bocce Ball. The goal of the game is to get as close as you can to the Chochone or "little piggy" in french. The team which is closer after all the balls are thrown gets the point or points depending on how many balls they have closer.
Today we got up, ate some food and drove over to the local Miami Petanque court. (yes we are in Miami doing a Renaissance Festival for three weeks. We will be back in Austin int the end of Jan.) The Petanque court is not your normal gravel path or your normal city park location. The Miami Petanque club meets at the Biltmore Hotel one of the fanciest Hotels in Florida. Here is the link http://www.biltmorehotel.com/ This is the kind of place where a cup of black coffee costs $4 and the past guests include the Clintons, Heather Gram and the Dali Lama.
Our Mentor Arsene Dupin (Please check him out he is amazing) is also our Petanque coach ( I know, who would think it?) His addiction to the game is worse than ours. He is the president of the Heart of Texas Petanque club (the one we play with back in Austin). Wow this really is a lot of background. Anyway we arrived at the Biltmore at 11:30 where we were supposed to play with the executive chef and the general manager (Arsene has a way of connecting with people, especially the French.) It turned out that they could not play because of some important meetings and such so we played just the three of us for a couple hours.
Later the chef asked us if we wanted to eat and had a fabulous lunch served for us. Then we went for a walk down the smancy streets of Coral Gables and back to the Biltmore for more Petanque. We were joined later (5:00) by the locals and had a rematch of team Texas vs. team Miami. We won again. We quit around 9pm wow. A year ago we had hardly heard of the game now we are marathon players, what a strange life.
We had fun pretending to be millionaires today. Wherever we follow Arsene we end up in the strangest most wonderful places. Today was fun tomorrow we go to visit a famous animal trainer and pet tigers. (I'm not kidding)

Austin!

What you are seeing above is the view from our fourth story rooftop deck! We moved into a house in the Barton Hills area of Austin a month ago. This is a big change because we have been living in the van for the last year. Our room is huge. We could probably fit four of the VW's in our room with the tops popped! Our ceilings are about 12 feet high! We can pass 7 in our room. Soon we will be installing a trapeze so that we can monkey around when we wake up. We live with 4 other awesome people who are all into various strange and wonderful things. Music marching bands, theater, and slowly the addiction of juggling and sillyness.

We finished the Texas Renaissance Festival last weekend. And we are happy to say that we will be back next year!

We have been helping teach a class at the community college as guest instructors in acro. The class is Stage Movement and has been a lot of fun. The instructor David Yeckel is an amazing well of knowledge. Teaching everything from basic mime, prat falls and stage combat. We have been helping them learn some partner acrobatics and incorporating dynamic acro into their stage combat routines. The last class and showing is on Wednesday should be fun.

Looking forward to hearing from you all soon. Come visit us in Austin!

We have a Website! If you have not had a chance to check it out go to flourishandfool.com We have been working at the Texas Renaissance Festival for three weekends. It has been a really good experience but also very difficult. In Pittsburgh we were on a stage and in the program where here in Texas we are on the street gathering our crowds for each show. We have had to cut out some of our material because the attention span is much shorter on the street. We are also learning more of the subtle art of crowd control (dealing with drunks and children). We have met some really awesome people here at the festival. Camped next to us are the Clan Tynkers It has been awesome to meet other performers our age who we can juggle with.

We are planning on moving to Austin as soon as we can find a place. This is a picture of us outside the Long Center for the performing arts after we saw Birdhouse Factory. We should be here in Austin until May so if anyone wants to come visit please do.

will post again soon

Jules

Fire!

Wow! was that the sound of my eyebrows burning off?


What you are seeing is a photo of our last show at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Faire. We cut loose all the strings for this one and invited the Celtic band to play also. If you look close you can see Sam the drummer in the background. This fire show has been an amazing collaboration between us and Wilsome the Fire master. We call it Not Dead Yet! because of how crazy the stunts are. We will miss Dan he is off to North Carolina Ren Faire and we are now in Texas

The Texas Renaissance Faire or TRF as I will now refer to it is huge. we got to see the site for the first time today and wow! Gardens, amazing buildings and the stages are incredible. the Joust is set in a huge amphitheater which probably seats 5000 people at least.
Ok thats it for now but I promise to write regularly.

Please comment so that I know people are reading and don't feel like I'm talking to air.

any questions?

pittsburgh Renaisance Faire

Hello all.


I am Sorry it has been so long. I am a bad blogger I know.

We are at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Faire in a little more than halfway done with our six weekend contract. We work Saturday and Sunday. each weekend we do between 8 to 12 shows. It is exhausting and exciting especially the fire show (more on that later). We are calling ourselves Flourish and Fool which seams to be working for the Renaissance faire circuit. The faire provides camping and electric for us which is great because we have the van. The only issue is there is nothing to do around here. We are 45 min south of pittsburgh in Depressingville America. The weeks feel long but we have been keeping occupied.
Last week we took a trip to Gettysburg were we met up with other performers from other Ren Faires. there were two rope walkers, one sword swallower, a mime, a comedian, a fire eater, a drummer and three (including us) acro/jugglers. It was awesome check some of it out at "http://heartoftexas.wordpress.com/"
We have also been developing a fire show with the fire eater/ breather who works on the same stage as we do. At the end of the day during the last joust we do a show together. All fire all crazy stunts which we have hardly practiced or just think of on stage. we have been doing it for a couple weeks now so we are starting to develop material. you can see some pictures of us and the fire show at
http://imageevent.com/ralf/pennsylvania/renfest2009/flourishfool
http://imageevent.com/ralf/pennsylvania/renfest2009/fire
hope you enjoy. These fire shows at the end of the day leave us with a ton of "oh my god I am glad to be alive" adrenalin. it is the best way to end a long day of performing.

OK thats it for now but I'll try to post again as soon as I can.

Jules and the Mud Bays

Jules here.

I am in Vernon BC doing shows with the wonderful Mud Bay Jugglers. The shows have been going pretty well even though they are at 12:30 and in a conference room instead of a theater. We set up the MBJ's pipe and drape system so that we have a back curtain, this makes the environment a lot more appealing. In the last week and a half I have learned half an hour of material including some of the really difficult ones, like drop sequence, slow motion, and tango. At this point the sequence has solidified itself in my mind and I can focus a little more on character, I have to be careful though of loosing myself or being over confident in that regard. Today we layed out drop cloths for the last act, because of my fire drop yesterday. oops, sorry about the melted carpet Vernon Lodge. I did not drop today. We have three more shows and then off to seattle to Austing and back to Kelsey.

It has been strange being away from her. This was our trip together, a joint resoultion for change and growth. It was, and it will be, but I feel a little guilty sitting in this hotel room in the fridged northland while she drives halfway across the country alone. mmmm....

Thats all for now, post again soon

Jules