Tour Tales – Yaron Lifschitz

When a show is going on tour, the contents of the luggage can be vital for the proper functioning of the show… Then when they are lost! Yaron Lifschitz, Director of the company Circa and Director. Here he tells us a story that happened during the tour of Carnival of the animals.

Probably the scariest moment on tour was when 7 bags with most of our production equipment did not arrived in Bogota in Colombia, when we needed it. And I was out of the theatre and I got a call saying “The bags are here now, there at the customs”. So some members of the theater drove me to the airport and they said “you need to walk in” and there were guards with these huge machine guns. They walked me through to the other side of the aeroport, at immigration and customs. And there, I’m sitting with nothing: no paperwork, no passport. I don’t speak any Spanish and I’m trying to find someone who could help me find the equipment. And then I have to talk my way with equipment that has no paperwork and me, with no passport, back to Colombia. I was a little worried, but I saw someone from the Festival on the other side and he came over and started to translate, but it took a while!

But these things happen all the time on tour. Touring is like surfing the waves of optimism over the rocks of disaster!