June

June was a bustling month!

Amidst wedding planning and work, I went to see the musical Wicked, plus I saw Hairspray at the Arts Cub Theatre - twice, I attended my stagette in Kamloops, I started volunteering at Bard on the Beach and I took in all that Vancouver Stanley Cup Hockey had to offer - the parties and the riots!

Wicked was my Christmas gift from Mike, and it was totally worth the price of admission. I generally like theatre where I can peek through the seams of the show, but this show had great production value. They put magic up on stage!

Hairspray I saw twice because the gentleman playing Edna Turnblad had something of a small stroke and had to take time off. His replacement was a good friend of mine, and my former director for Anne of Green Gables, Andy Toth. He now also runs a theatre company in Vancouver for young people - Awkward Stage Productions. Originally, I had opening night seats to the show, but when the Original Edna (OE) was ill, I had my tickets changed. Then, on the radio that same day I heard Andy would be stepping up and happily paid for an extra full-price ticket (though I always go for the cheap seats right at the front $29...and I love it because I can see the actors sweat - literally!) to see him play. What was even better was that though he was the understudy, he wasnt involved in the rehearsals, and so had to learn the entire show including dancing and songs in TWO DAYS. Brilliant. He was fantastic. And I didn't even know it, but I had seats to his opening night, too. I brought him man-flowers (a nice bottle of beer), and when I met him briefly after the show he gave me his number so we could hang out again later.

Ok. so when I say he's a good friend, I mean that in the 6 years since Anne, we've spoken only a few times, and he was still supportive, though we weren't terribly close. Frankly, when I came to hairpray, I wasn't sure that he'd recognize me. Did I blog about this? I think I did...But after I saw him, I did meet him and his fam for tea, and I offered him the other three tickets I'd won from CN to ride the Empress steam engine a few weeks later.

I won't go on about my stagette or the Stanley Cup riots much. The stagette isn't for Mike to read about anyway, and the riots are pretty well documented. What I will say, though, is that the Stag was plenty of fun (Thanks, T...It felt good to know I had friends around!), and the riots were a sad end to what generally was a good party. After our third win in the Finals, I went out for a walk. People were filling the streets of downtown, and everyone seemed in a great mood! High fives abound, it was fun to be able to walk to Robson and Granville, where you could berely walk - people were so crowded into the space!


these dudes kindly let me carry ther cup for a while...

 And like I said, I started volunteering at Bard on the Beach. While it was torture to know that theatre was happening only a few feet from me and I couldn't partake, I was happy just being that close. Plus the concession snacks were good. I also learned a new bike route around the city, and I got pretty good at passing over the Granville bridge!