(Faye with Sean in Hereford)The Hereford road trip was amazing and lots of fun! Our team of six (consisting of Josh, Simon, Sam, Heather, Faye, Mari and Sean...Sam's younger brother and up and coming stagestorm :P)spent Friday at Simon's rehearsing the new play as well as brushing up on Everything and Four Horsemen. Mari once again graciously donned the robes of Death while Sam embraced a new role as Money!
(Sam as Money...yes I know, he looks like Pete Doherty, but hey, the audience loved it!)We arrived in Hereford on a grey but sun-shiny Saturday morning and drove to the small campground where the church members had rented us a lot for our caravan....
YES WE WENT CAMPING, PEOPLE!
I tragically don't have any pics of the trailer or the antics that squishing six people into a relatively small space would produce, but it was crazy and fun lol.
The event turned out to be a combination of three different churches in England and was being held that evening in a big, old fashioned Marquee on the grounds of the Herefordshire Food Fair! Check it out.
(Me (Heather) and the awesome tent behind!)Inside the marquee, we got set up (they had a terrific stage going on, complete with dry ice and disco lights) and spent some time rehearsing on stage (I won't say how that went because I don't want to get dead :P). The event didn't start till 8 PM so we meandered through the food fair and took in some of the local sights (and tastes :D).
(Faye lounging in the grass...)At 8, the gig kicked off. About 200 young people turned up for the event, including a very special Christian band from Bracknel called Ethos. Their members are all from the ages of 15 to 20 and they were the winners of the Battle of Bands competition last year. Their stuff rocked! They had the whole room moshing to their music in no time, and we traded off with them every few songs to perform one of our dramas.
Amazingly, all three plays went off without a hitch. The crowds loved it! We got cheers and hoots every time Jesus spoke and all the other Horsemen got loud boos when they gave their speeches, lol. The Everything skit wasn't foreign to some of the people there, but the ones we spoke with afterward said that ours was the best they'd ever seen (I think that might've been due to the fact that I was literally getting thrown around for real which they oohed and ahhed at, lol).
(A rather blurry shot of Four Horsemen being performed)What really crunched was when it came time to perform the Set Me Free skit (that's now the official name of the Who Pulls the Strings skit). We were very nervous about doing it, but all the frantic prayers (God please help us do it right and I promise I'll stop yanking Sammy's chains so hard for fun)paid off and it was a roaring success! Well, by that I mean the crowd loved it and everyone oohed and ahhed again, especially at the very phsycial and risky fight scene at the end (which involves Josh versus just about everyone else in a battle for Sam's life...and there's no weapons in the picture ppl).
(Some of the audience watching our plays at the event)Just about everyone got hit (right hook to the jaw, kick in the chest, elbow in the neck, a hazardous flip over Josh's back which wasn;t controlled and had the crowd gasping as Faye went soaring head over heels and landed smack on her back...the crowd went WOW and Faye went Ow...very quietly of course lol).
Sadly since we were all performing the skit, there aren't any pics, but you can watch the original on youtube here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=alleRy70rAM
(Warning: it's not for the faint of heart!! But it's worth it if you're brave enough!)
Ethos came back on stage and rocked on, and the Horsemen ditched their costumes with relief and joined in on the moshing as the night rolled on (sorry, don't have any pictures of that either, and it's too bad, cuz Josh and Sam leaping around is a funny sight any day). The event wrapped up around eleven PM and we happily headed back to the trailer, bearing the numbing winter cold with new smiles on our faces as we quickly drifted off to dreamland...
Our gig with the actual church was at around ten thirty the next morning, so we were buzzed awake at seven thirty by the cheery sound of our alarms. We ate and got ready then drove off to the church, only to come to a horrible realization...
(dramatic music..) THE CLOCKS HAD CHANGED!
That's right. Daylight Saving was activated the night before and we'd actually gotten at six thirty AM (oooh yes...heads were going to roll...well...wires actually, once we attacked our alarm clocks for the injustice lol). So our team ended up with quite a wait on our hands.
At least they were kind enough to let us inside the church and show us to a nice, warm room a ways off where we could wait it out. The boys went a little stir-crazy after a while and an impromptu game of tennis-ball hockey (yes we invented it) commenced.
(What do you mean, we didn't have hockey sticks? The weapons did just fine...) Ethos were there again to grace us all with a softer but just as awesome batch of songs before we were called up to perform. Again, we alternated with their band, although this time we just did the Four Horsemen and Everything skits (everyone was still nursing their wounds from the Set Me Free skit the night before, lol).
(Four Horsemen hits the pulpit...actually amazingly enough, we didn't. The boys behaved themselves during the fight scene for once :P)
("I am the second horseman and my color is black..." - Sam on stage)The congregation were very generous with their applause and their praise afterward when they approached us to talk. We were very privileged to have witnessed the sight of different christian groups in the UK coming together with a vision to offer their myriad of talents in aid of bettering the quality of life for their communities. We were especially impressed by Ethos and their youth group - a warm, lively bunch who made us feel at home with their welcoming and friendly antics (and their pizza :D) ...awww...
(Faye with the Ethos band and pals)We bid everyone farewell around two PM and popped in on Frank (the wonderful man who made this all possible and invited us to the event - Frank, we love you and couldn't have done it without you!) who was still at the food fair before hitching up the trailer and heading home - tired, sore (in more then one place for some of us) and exhausted, but happy!
(Some post-trip pics when all the stage make-up comes off and the weapons are laid to rest :P I just thought these were too cute to leave out. Enjoy and God bless!)
(Jesus slept...)
(Sam catching a snooze...)
('Huh, what? Oh...' Heather caught unawares)
(And that's about all for now, peeps! Catch ya on the other side! -- The Four Horsemen team)
