"Another Day in the Life..."

Yesterday started with Gregangelo saying, “Get in the back room and strip and I’ll be there in a minute,” and ended with him introducing me as “Chuck, a little queer boy who likes to play with dolls…and other things.” The time in between was spent inventing twenty-some scenarios for puppets, all involving homosexual lust and bludgeoning with noses (the largest part of the puppet’s anatomy).

Okay, I guess I’ll explain.

Part of my job is to play characters at various events that Velocity Circus is hired to do. On Tuesday night I got a call from Gregangelo asking if I was available to do this. I had no idea what the event was or what I would be doing in it, so naturally, I said yes.

Gregg Hood, our GLORIOUSLY AMAZING technical director, picked me up at my house at 8 am. We picked up Darkhijav (that’s “dar-kee-awv”) Dhamba, seamstress/makeup artist/ Mongolian Dancer/ character performer/superwoman extroardinare, and headed to the San Mateo Event Center. The event turned out to be a trade show, where we were assigned a “booth space” to set up our “Sugared Kisses Shack” installation. For this particular occasion, the Shack featured our “American Icon” Statue entry—a living Barbie doll--as well as a human cupcake, and yours truly as a French clown performing puppet theatre from inside a tiny striped stall. For five hours. : ) Gregangelo donned a metallic, holographic purple body suit and roller blades, and fished for folks in monkey suits with candy sweets, demanding that they “compliment someone” before they got fed. Jeffrey adorned himself in his gorgeous new pink silk, ankle-length dressing jacket and spoke with guests. Bettina Devin appeared as “G.G. Bridges” charming everyone with her fog, rails, and styles. We started setting up at 9, costuming and makeup around 11:30 or 12, and the show started at 1.There weren’t many people at the trade show. It was primarily a PR opportunity for us (today’s work has been inputting info from all the connections we made into our system, and sending “nice to meet you” letters to them), and the time available gave us time to play imaginatively, (I sure was. Who else is gonna entertain me?), and to become…batty. Especially Gregangelo, but that’s typical. I’ll try to upload a photo of some of us in the Shack on this profile… 9/19/07