|
|
Ring*Con 10th-12th November 2006
Friday 10th November 2006
Friday morning I went to the Esperanto Hotel to get my Con-Band and to have my first look around. The very first person I talked to was Mel from Parker-Blue.net. She was very friendly and asked me to come back after registering, so I did. We agreed to have a drink together after her shift as helper was finished. In the meantime I had a little stroll around to check out the different rooms and all as it is not so easy for a Ring*Con newbie to find one's way around.
Mel and I met again later and had a drink at the lobby where she introduced me to some other Ring*Con old timers. It seemed that they had all seen Craig walk about the hotel, only I hadn't. I was a bit nervous and wondered whether I'd go home after this weekend without ever having talked to Craig at all.
A little while later – on my own again – I saw Craig and Mark for the first time. I was just then in front of the lifts when I saw Mark (one head above everybody else) ploughing through the crowd. He was led by his personal assistant I suppose and held on to the steward's waist with both hands. In the same manner Craig held on to Mark as this little train of people walked past me.
After that I went to see some panels and later on, in the evening, I went to the first floor and met Mel again who was standing in front of the lift. I said 'hi' and she looked at me for a moment as if unsure about making a decision, then said that she was about to give Craig the cheque from the birthday project she'd done over the year and that I may come along. I was totally not expecting this and was all the more happy and nervous. We went to the bar on the 6th floor. There was a huge group of people gathering around Craig and Mark. Mel said that she wanted to give it to him in private and that we should go to the corridor which led to the bathrooms. So there we waited, while she went back in to get Craig.
He came out into the corridor with her, said 'hi' and then something like: "Do I have reason to be nervous now?" in a joking way since he didn't know what to expect. Mel then explained to him that she'd done the birthday project because he'd said that he didn't want so many presents just because his birthday was during Ring*Con and that he had everything anyway. "Except a little puppy" he said with a fake regretful look.
He was overwhelmed when she handed him the cheque, he couldn't stop praising the idea, saying how wonderful this was, what a great idea…He asked Mel: "What do I do with it? Do I go to some bank…?" and she explained to him that this cheque was symbolic and that the money was already on the way and he needn't do anything. He looked rather relieved. And then he hugged each one of us and stayed for a while longer to chat.
He said that he was not much of a birthday person and didn't really celebrate such occasions. Also he said that he'd go back to NZ soon and stay there to do a theatre play.
At some point we talked about maybe continuing with the birthday project and Craig said that he hoped we'd double the figures next year. Then he looked at the amount which was stated in Euros and said that it already doubled when being converted to NZ$ and he was all the more happy.
Mel gave him a bottle of champagne, he opened it and poured everyone a glass. After sipping champagne and talking for a while he glanced at the cheque again and enthusiastically hugged us all once more.
Sebastian, Craig's personal assistant, came out on the corridor after a while to see if everything was alright with Craig. We told him about the birthday project and he said that for such an occasion he'd of course wear a tie and pulled out and awfully coloured tie which he actually put on. After laughing with us and reassuring that Craig was fine he went back to the bar, leaving Craig with us.
At some point a girl came out to buy cigarettes from a machine around which we had gathered and seeing Craig was such a surprise to her that she only said: "Excuse me, I just quickly wanted to use the ashtray." We couldn't help but laughing at her being so confused. When she had her cigarettes she gave one to Craig as a birthday present. He took it and promised to smoke it later (so he has started smoking again, Mark's bad influence?).
The only guy – apart of Craig – in our group then took pictures, holding two cameras simultaneously much to our amusement.
After about half an hour Craig said that he should probably go back to the bar soon, but where to put his cheque and the letter and card that had come with it? "Does anyone have a bag?" I pulled out one as I always have some plastic bag with me and unfolded it, holding it to him: "Is this big enough?" He grabbed it at the lower corners: "Oh my, this is beautiful, so cool! I cannot take this…" – "Sure, take it! It's only from a shoe shop, nothing special!" – He looked hesitatingly. Me: "Take it!" And finally he took it and happily packed his cheque and letter from Mel into his new treasure bag.
The bag really was nothing out of the ordinary. It was red with a black puss in boots on it. From a shoe shop, nothing special. Nice, but really just a bag. Still, Craig was seen taking care of the bag and its content very well through out the evening. (After seeing the Sunday 'Birthday' Panel I'm starting to wonder though if there is a deeper relationship going on between Craig and plastic bags).
After many happy goodbyes and thank you's he went back to the bar.
The actors probably went for dinner after that cause we didn't see them for a while and when the bar was really crowded they came back and just sat on the ground. They didn't take anybody's seats, didn't have anyone reserving some sofas or so, simply grabbed a drink and sat down on the floor. Sarah McLeod, Mark and Craig sat there and talked peacefully.
Saturday, 11th November 2006
I was a bit in a hurry on Saturday morning to arrive at the Esperanto Hotel in time for the Acting Workshop with Lori and Mark after that long night at the bar. But I made it. Just in time.
Mark and Lori were in a really good mood and obviously enjoyed seeing all the eager students who got up early. We started with a little warm up game. Most of the time, Mark explained to us the rules of impro acting and such and then he and Lori gave us a little example of what we're supposed to do for the next couple of minutes.
He said it's very important to always look into your partners eyes and really focus on them in order to avoid misunderstandings and breaks on stage. Cause, he said, the audience will see anything, even the tiniest bit of hesitation. Also he said that he was very well aware that he and Craig loved to break the rules he was telling us about here, but that Craig and he had been improvising together for so long and knew that they could trust each other, that they could break the rules without letting their partner fall. And that was a very important rule: always keep your partner safe.
He also said that even though sometimes on stage they made it look as if they were making it difficult for each other, in truth they were helping one another.
So now to the warming up. We all stood in one circle, Mark and Lori joining us. Then we started a clapping game in which one person clapped at the person next to them either on the right or left side. This person had to be looked at so that the clapping could not be misunderstood. We started this, very slowly, changed the direction a couple of times, then Mark said we're gonna speed it up. Do it as fast as you can and try to remember that you always look at the person you're clapping at and make sure that they got your signal. If not, clap and look again.
After this had worked well we added a second clapping. The task was also to try avoid that both claps got to the same person at the same time. It was fun and crazy. You had to try to keep an eye on both claps going round, be prepared if one got to you, make sure you passed it on properly…. And in the end we did it with three claps. Oooohh!!!
I'm not sure anymore about the exact order of the exercises we did, but at some point we also did the game "freeze". We made groups of three or four persons and only two of them acted a scene together. Also, they made sure to make gestures with it, not just stand there and talk. After a while, one of the persons on the side would shout "freeze!" and the two actors would stop in the middle of what they were doing. Then the one who had shouted freeze would replace one of the two actors and take the exact same position of the replaced one only that the new actor would continue acting a whole new scene. It was hilarious and difficult and again a game where you couldn't stand and think, but had to act and react immediately on first impulse.
For example Mark and Lori were playing hubby and wife. Mark was changing a light bulb while Lori was fussing around him, telling him how to do it, be careful etc etc... Just when Mark was stretching his hand to the ceiling, the imaginary "freeze" came (since they had no third actor) and they changed the scene. Mark, still his hand stretched high up said: "I'm the state of liberty." To which Lori quickly replied: "And I'm a poor Russian immigrant." And from there the new scene developed until the next freeze came.
Also, as a group we had to portray images with our bodies. At first, we were allowed to communicate and to tell each other how we would do it and who would be what part and all that but later we were not allowed to talk anymore. Mark would just say: "You're a Mercedes driving out of a garage!" and we'd have to somehow do this. One would be the star, the other the garage door, one the garage wall…
I think the last impro acting we did was called "emotions". We got together in pairs and played a scene in which we had to buy a car. Only from time to time Mark would shout out an emotion which we both would portray immediately and continue in this vain until he changed the emotion. I think we started off with "anger", changed to "romance" and there was another emotion… "sadness" perhaps…?
Since so many people wanted to do the acting workshop Mark had agreed to add another one right after ours was finished at 11am, so unfortunately there was no time to talk to him or even invite him for a drink or so.
I went downstairs to meet up with Mel and Claudia again. My migraine was getting worse by that time and when Claudia and I joined the queue for the autograph session it didn't help much that the woman behind me always used her darn flash right when I was turning my head. Argh! I thought I might have an epileptic fit if this continued.
We started queuing at about 1pm or so and I think it took us two and a half hours to get through and out at the other end. And the plan was to start queuing for the photo session right after being finished with the autographs. But since Mark and Craig were stuck at the autograph session anyway, it wasn't much of a problem that we were pretty late for the photo session. But first, autographs.
I got all autographs for free with my gold ticket and so I did the whole big 10 autographs tour with Claudia who only left out Miranda and Sean as they were too expensive for mere mortals (read: silver ticket holders).
The first one we got to was Jed Brophy. I had never seen him before but he was a very nice guy and left a good impression. Same with Shane Rangi, though he is definitely like a big loud kid. But he was nice with everyone and spent a lot of time talking to fans, walking through the crowd during these days, he was cool.
Sarah McLeod and Bruce Spence just signed – Bruce had apparently written whole paragraphs of the books onto the autographs and such and by that the whole queue had come to a stop for a long time and then the organizers told him to only write his name from then on, the poor one. I would've loved to have my whole autograph covered with his LOTR script. Lori wrote "Dear Starry, be all the Hobbit you can be!" on my autograph and what really really impressed me is that Bruce Hopkins shook each and every one's hand when he gave back the signed autograph and said: "It's a pleasure to meet you, Starry". Whoa! The man had immediately won my heart. :)
When I got to Sean Astin (mind you 35 Euro an autograph) his pen just gave up life and I said something like "It's dead" and he didn't even reply. Didn't look up. Nothing. I thought what an arrogant guy and just waited for him to finish signing and when he handed me the autograph I saw that he had put a smilie on my autograph. Awww. So he's not completely unapproachable after all. Miranda was very nice, almost a bit shy, but friendly and smiling.
Claudia was already waiting at Craig's table cause she had left out Sean and Miranda. There were some people in costumes as the Two Towers in front of me and Craig was trying to make some origami eagle out of paper (or was it a flame?!) to put on top of one of the towers. It took him forever and I casually said: "So THAT is why we had to wait so long." – "Oh, yes, I'm to blame.." he said smiling and continued fidgeting with his origami art eagle/flame whatever. Finally he managed to fix it on top of the tower and was very content with his work. "That's much better!" Then it was my turn.
After saying 'hi' I handed him the birthday present together with the card underneath it. "I brought you a little birthday present." He took it carefully with both hands. "Oh, that's wonderful, THANK YOU!!! How lovely!" etc etc… a flood of typical Craig enthusiasm following, he had a close look at the ribbon with the smilies on it which matched the smilies all over the little cardboard box.
Then he glanced up at me: "May I open it?" – "Of course, it's yours." – "I mean, it's not my birthday yet…" He hesitated for a moment but since I didn't say anything more he opened the ribbon. He was so quick at this that I hardly saw what he was doing when he already had the little package on the table and had put the ribbon next to it. I said: "You probably like the packing better than the content." And he looked up, one eyebrow arched with a curious smile and then he lifted the cover. "Oohh…" was all he said when he saw the bright blue paper I had put on the stone to protect it. He carefully lifted that: "THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!!!" he said with emphasis on every word. "How wonderful, look at the colours!" He took the stone out of the box and carefully looked at it while praising its beauty over and over. "What a wonderful gift! Thank you so much!"
Suddenly I remembered that he had not even signed my autograph picture yet so I said: "Oh, please don't forget to sign!" and we both laughed while he took the photo and wrote: "Dear Starry, thank you so much for the beautiful gift. Love, Craig Parker" He blew over the writing and handed it to me smiling. I thanked him and walked on to Mark.
Mark just said "Hi" quickly and looked down at my ticket, which we gave to the guests so that when they personalized it (terrible expression) we didn't have to spell it out to them. It was more comfortable and quicker to just copy the name from the ticket. When he wrote "To Starry" he stopped mid-word and hesitated. "Don't make a spelling mistake!" He laughed. "Oh no! It's way too expensive to write them once more all the time!"
After finishing the autograph queue Claudia and I immediately went upstairs to join the photo session queue. Sigh. There were already many people waiting. So we queued there from about 3.45pm till sometime after 5pm, if I remember correctly. We feared that with so many people they might not have enough time to do the photo shoot for all people in the queue. And we missed Colleen Doran and the 'Bad Guys' panel because of queuing. Whoopee. :(
Oh well, finally, the boys came running, straight from the autograph session which they had apparently not left before everybody got their autographs. That's what I call commitment!
Mark and Craig were expected to show up at the Auction at 6pm and help Lori with it. But it was clear that they wouldn't make it in time. We did, luckily, cause right after our photo was taken, we went down to the main hall where the auction started and Jed and Shane helped out instead of Mark and Craig.
But first the photo. They were late with the schedule and the photographer really made everyone hurry and was only shouting "NEXT!!!" as soon as he had taken a picture. That made me really nervous since I always think I look terrible on photos, I have my eyes closed, there's always something wrong. And in this case, we all didn't look that very fresh anymore after four hours of queuing.
Well, finally it was my turn. I went to Mark and Craig, stood in between them and Craig must have sensed my nervousness and looked at me questioningly. I just quickly said: "A lot of queuing today", since there was not really time to talk with the photographer sitting there impatiently. Craig just answered in his sweetest voice: "It's alright now. Just relax. Take a deep breath and… smiiiile."
After seeing the auction at the main hall we went to the bar. My migraine was still bad, the queuing hadn't helped and that I had left my medicine at the hotel was of course not very helpful either. Luckily Mel had some painkiller with her. Whew. Still, I didn't go see the Ring Stars Thrill Ride Show as I was told that it was very loud and I really didn't think I could enjoy that.
Sunday, 12th November 2006
Sunday morning I had an appointment with Claudia since we wanted to hear a linguistics lecture by Alexandra Velten and later on go to the autograph session again to have our photos signed by Mark and Craig.
I still had my migraine and to add to that, a sore throat, some coughing, sneezing… oi.
The lecture was funny though and distracted me from my misery. Also, during the lecture, the "Nummerngirl" (which was actually a man) came in very quietly from time to time to show us a big board with the numbers of the tickets that were allowed to go get their autographs. Since we already had our free autographs we'd have to wait for them to finish and only then would be allowed to go back and get more autographs (this in order to make sure that everyone got autographs at all).
On our way to the main hall we saw a lot of people walking around holding paper sheets saying "free hugs". I wasn't really in the hugging mood – even though I might have needed one desperately – until I saw an ugly orc. He was tall and slim and everybody just photographed him instead of hugging. Hm. I thought I might like a hug from this one. He looked over at me and I gave him a wink and a smile. I couldn't see his reaction as he was wearing a full face mask but since he didn't turn away and instead turned more fully towards me I thought I'd give it a go and went over to him. Oh my, that was one of the best hugs ever in my life. Long and warm and tender… siiiigh… it felt so good and brought a smile back on my face for a while. I just didn't want to stop it and he didn't let go either. But finally I managed to end it and float back to Claudia. I mean, I didn't want to seem greedy. Somebody else should have a chance to experience such a hug, too. I just hope that he will be at Ring*Con again next year. ;)
Since we really only wanted to go to Mark and Craig we thought we might as well try to get into the hall, but the helpers wouldn't let us. Wonderful. So we waited. Again. Already worrying a bit if we were supposed to make the whole 'all around the hall' tour again even if we only wanted to see those two guys. And if, would we make it in time? Their elven panel was scheduled for 1pm and we really couldn't see how we would make it. Would they interrupt the autograph session? Questions, questions, migraine and more questions…
But eventually we were at the tables of our desire.
Craig wasn't really that fit this morning. When we stood at the table he quickly got up from the chair, turned around to sneeze twice while holding up one hand in a 'just a moment'-gesture. After that followed some coughing and his voice didn't sound well either. Poor one. Claudia said something about him looking and sounding ill and he apologetically said that it had been too long a night at the bar.
We only had to wait for a couple of minutes and suddenly it was my turn. Craig was giving me a huge smile and enthusiastically asked: "So, how are you feeling today?" Then he looked down at the photo he was asked to sign for me and commented on it. "How beautiful! Lovely! Look at that gorgeous smile!" For a brief moment I wondered if he got the right photo or if his illness was blurring his sight. After he had signed the photo, he blew over it and handed it to me.
The rest of the afternoon I spent sitting in my place watching the panels of Mark & Craig, Sarah McLeod, Sean, Miranda and then already it was time for the closing ceremony.
After that we all gathered again and since everybody was reluctant to end Ring*Con we went to the bar and stayed there until the wee hours. Nobody wanted to go home. It was really that. Just make Ring*Con last a little longer. The guests obviously had gone to dinner and to have a private party. But Bruce Hopkins stayed with us at the bar and Shane was around for some time, too. Bruce danced the limbo and kissed Wayne (the Australian sword fighting workshop guy) and the barman made a strip tease so that there was some distraction from the inevitable ending of Ring*Con.
At some point the smoky air was just a bit too much and Claudia and I went to the corridor to have some fresh air. We opened the window and talked a bit. It didn't take long until somebody on the way to the bathroom came out on the corridor as well. It was funny to see that most of them stopped by and talked with us. The 'Nummerngirl' came out, too, and stayed for quite a while. We had good conversations there, in front of the ladies room.
Early morning there really was no other way than to leave and say goodbye. Sigh. I got 90 minutes of sleep before the alarm went off and I had to get up, pack my stuff and go to the airport. | | |