After the unfortunate events of the last two parts (1 | 2) we kept on pushing. Village after village, success after failure. It is getting really tiring but we are not giving up. This month was to be the most punishing and rewarding of them all. We would go through our hell week. Five days in a row. We would travel up and down Cyprus without ever going home. Set up, play, tear down. Day after day. That was the real tour for me. That's were we needed to push our limits to the max.
Thankfully, Cyprus is a very beautiful island, thus the road was astonishing to view. Sea in the distance, and above us mountains. Mountains filled with green. We had to be 2 hours in the van for every ride, yes that is a lot for Cyprus, we had to be cramped up, as the items we had upfront kept trying to move due to the curves of the road. I have knee problems and they surfaced more than they do usually. Uncomfortably bend my legs in the van, then carry lots of weight as we set up wooden walls and doors, move brick rock around to hold the doors and things like that. The land and view would somehow make it somewhat worthwhile.
Some villages were small with only 100 to 200 inhabitants. Others were huge with thousands of people. Size did not matter as we had a huge village bring us only 30 people where as a little tiny village bring 100. We had of course big villages give us even more. It all depended on the day. Sometimes we had a small crowd thus almost no one would laugh, while other times we had a big crowd and everyone would laugh. Then again we had small crowds that laughed and enjoyed the show and big crowds as moody as my grandma. The ones that were the most fun were the ones that even we were on the verge of laugh. If we are in a mood to laugh on stage that means we are loving it. We had some plays like that were our improvisation would almost throw the others under the bus. That was really fun.
For me my favorite part of the trip was the random encounters. I am actually a DM for some small DnD Campaigns and thanks to these encounters I actually got a lot of material to use. For example sitting on a table with 5 presidents. All are presidents of something else. Everyone making fun of everyone. Or maybe finding a guy high as a palm tree, with a car stuck in the mountain with a wheel in the air, afraid to call the insurance. To his incredible luck, we were four kind-hearted men that pushed and got his car our of the ditch. He was drinking at some camp site with his friends so my guess is he came here to buy drugs, got them and tried to reverse to leave, and got stuck like the drunk he was. That was a really fun night. Unfortunately I don't think I am allowed to put any of the footage here.
Lots of villages would treat us to food in taverns after the plays and we would talk about the most random things and experiences for hours. I learnt just how many things can happen in ones life and simply how enjoyable every moment in life is. We had actual lessons about life and made some great connections. The people that were open to us and talked to us with a happy smile were amazing, and it was my most valuable experience and I do hope I get to meet them again. From the 40 year old lady shouting at people to come see our play while laughing, to the old man talking about how he is going to marry his house helper. Everything was said in a joking manner and everything was funny. That to me was the best part of the tour.
As a person that loves Theatre I believe it was one of the greatest experiences in my life. It was extremely tiring and I did almost nothing else this summer. I wouldn't change anything however since this was amazing. I might have lost a lot of fests and events this summer but I will get to enjoy camping next week. It was a summer full of theatre and it is something I've been waiting for. Being on stage was great even if we had a small audience. Thank you all for still reading my content and I will start uploading more often soon enough. For now however I am going to enjoy the rest of the holidays.
