The Leeds Performing Arts Festival

The week that Stacie and I have been spending in Leeds, England, has been incredible. We are staying in home hospitality with a wonderful couple who has four grown children and we get spoiled with home-cooked meals, laundry service, and our own rooms! We cannot get used to this!

The show has been received very well by audiences. I'm performing in this cool, black box space that gives the show a great intimate feel. I also got the chance of leading some drama workshops at the Jewish day school in Leeds this week. When I first started talking, the children were amazed by my accent! It was a lot of fun working with them. Enjoy the pictures!

With Rena Strober and Josh Esptein, two other solo performers at the festival, and Stacie

Bruno the Bull....is Bruno the Bull!

Here's Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno at the premiere of his movie in Madrid.

Hmmm....quite similar to Bruno the Bull from Jordy Pordy!

The Jordy Connection

Stacie's bags arrived late last night to our hotel in Newcastle. A great relief since we left very early for the bus this morning. Thanks, British Airways! It was so thoughtful of you to return our bags only hours before we leave the city. We head to London today, but only overnight. We will be stopping by the theatre we're performing at to drop off some of our bags and get ready for our trip to Ireland later in the week.

Newcastle was a great start for our tour. Since the city is in Northern England, the people there aren't used to American tourists, so everyone treated us so nicely and wanted to hear us talk in our "American accents" more. Coincidentally, Newcastle-ites refer to themselves as Geordies (pronounced Jordies).

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie

How fitting for our first stop on the Jordy Pordy tour!

Bruno grasping for air upon his arrival to the UK.

The First Show

Location: Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, England

Today was the first performance of Jordy Pordy in England and I was very excited but nervous about audience reaction. Plus, I was scrambling to figure out how to get around not having my set and only half of the bull costume (Stacie's bags are still missing—and it's day three!)

The performance was a session option included in a day-conference for Jewish learning. Our session was the same time as the wine tasting, so I already felt like I was being gypped. Jordy Pordy over free wine? Tough Call. We arrived at the Royal Grammar School in the morning for our rehearsal (the show was slated for the afternoon) and we met a loopy 40-something woman who was getting ready for her dance workshop right before our show. After talking for a few minutes, she slyly forced Stacie and me to join in on her workshop. Fine, I'm up for a little movement as a warm-up before my show.

Turns out that Stacie and I were thrown into this "dance workshop" with eight 60+ and older British Jewish women who thought tapping their feet and waving their arms in the air was dancing. The instructor led us through her favorite Jewish dances, apparently off her "Annoying Jewish Kids Sing Jewish Music Volume 3" CD. I was the only guy in this workshop, which also made things awkward. But the highlight of the workshop came when the instructor got to the climax of the session: The Hava Nagilah! "Did you know," she informs us, "that people don't know how to dance the Hava Nagilah anymore! Seriously. People are now hiring dancers to come in and teach the dance at their Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties." The next ten minutes was spent learning how to cross one foot over the other while moving around in a circle. Oy.

Finally, it came time for my session! The show was in a nice intimate space and about 20 people showed up. As I began the first 20 minutes or so of comedy, the audience had no reaction. Nothing. No laughs. No smiles. Just completely motionless faces. Shit, I thought. My first performance in Britain and they already hate it. It was a long show to get through, but afterwards I was pleasantly surprised with the audience reaction: applause! People came up to Stacie and me and told us how much they liked it. Great, but, um, were you ALIVE during the actual performance? I guess I'll just have to get used to these quite Brits.

Our First Night Out

Location: The Jesmond Hotel, Newcastle, England

Since last night was our first official night of our tour, we decided to go out on the town and treat ourselves to our own welcoming. Everyone was impresse

d with our American accents. (Newcastle doesn't get many tourists.) One of the most interesting things of the evening was heading to "The Gate" in the middle of the City Centre. From the outside, The Gate doesn't look any different from any old American shopping mall. But walk inside, and BAM! It's a clubbing mall! Yup, two floors of bars, discos, night clubs. It was weird. I felt like a middle school kid hanging out at the mall—but bar hopping!

Because it would be in poor taste to type out the details of the night, I will take the high road and refrain from doing so. And no, that's not because I don't remember any of it! But this post wouldn't be complete without a shout-out to my new best friend in Newcastle, Paris Hilton! That's right…Stacie and I met the exact replica of Paris on the streets of Newcastle Saturday night. The only difference was she had a strong British accent. I wish I could prove her look-a-like-ness to you, but alas, I didn't bring my camera out last night. But I did just use "alas" in a sentence, and that now makes this post complete.

Even Airport Customs Workers Are Jordy Pordy Fans

Location: Heathrow Airport, London, England

Just got off the plane from New York. I sat next to a 40-something-year-old cover band rocker decked out in black skin tight pants, a button-down black shirt with shiny silver buttons dangled down the sleeves, and some rocker-friendly chain necklaces. Turns out that he's headed to Europe for a tour with his band. Nice job, American Airlines, for seating the two touring artists on your plane right next to each other!

Since Stacie and I were put on different flights, our plan was to meet at the gate of our connecting flight from London to Newcastle at Heathrow. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:30 a.m. and I got through customs around 10:00 a.m., only to find out they won't list our gate until 30 minutes before departure. As my airport stress started to kick-in, I was worried Stacie and I would never find each other.

As the customs guy checked my passport, visa, and all that good stuff, he asked me my reason for travel to England:

Me: "I'm performing at theatre festivals around the country."

Customs Guy: "Oh, well your tour manager friend is waiting for you upstairs."

Me: "Oh! What! How did you…"

Customs Guy: "She came through about an hour ago and told me all about the show."

What are the chances that both Stacie and I go through the same customs guy AND he remembers to look out for me? That's the power of the Jordy Pordy tour, people!

So Stacie and I were reunited, took the plane over to Newcastle, and get to baggage claim to find not one but two of Stacie's bags not there. BAM! Now, now, these bags were not just filled with clothes and girl shit. These bags included the whole set for the show and half of the bull mascot costume. Today is Friday. Our first show is Sunday. We talk to the lost luggage lady (try saying that 5 times fast) and she assures us that the bags could be in Dallas, New York, London, or practically any other city in the world…but they were definitely not in Newcastle. Our hourly prayer ritual for the bags' return began after that conversation.

We were greeted at the Newcastle airport by Jonathan, the guy in charge of the Sunday's conference where we were performing. He was very nice and helpful, gave us a quick tour around town, and dropped us off at our hotel. Jet-lagged, we decided to take a nice afternoon nap and try to forget about our baggage woes.

Crossing the Ocean Day

Location: JFK Airport, New York City

I've made it pass security (sorry, no weird questions about the hat this time, just a lot of staring!) and I'm sitting at my gate waiting to head over to England! I'm feeling all sorts of things right now: excited, anxious, nervous, and a bit overwhelmed. I've calmed down though since my crazy ass ride through New York City on Super Shuttle. I've spent the last four days hanging out in NYC with one of my housemates from South Africa, Kelly. I love the feeling of the City; there always seems to be exciting, exotic, and interesting going on at every street corner. I've been eating lots of great food (hello pizza and pita!) and love that there's a delivery service for just about anything you can think of—at any time. I saw two amazing shows while here: In the Heights, the 2008 Tony-award winning musical about growing up in Washington Heights. The guy who conceived and starred in the autobiographical show wrote it when he was a sophomore in college. Sound familiar? Let's hope Jordy Pordy will see it's day on Broadway sometime soon! The other show I saw was August: Osage County, the 2008 Tony-award winning play written by Tulsan Tracy Letts. Set in an Oklahoma city, there were lots of references to TU and Tulsa—so you can imagine how exciting it was to be in the Broadway audience.

Stacie was supposed to be meeting me here at the JFK airport and we were going to fly together to London, but because of the bad weather in Dallas (what?! what!?), her flight was delayed and she's now flying directly from Dallas to London. Not a big deal, as long as we both get there with all of our luggage. Especially because I have half of the mascot costume and she's got the other half, and I'm just not sure if a half mascot suit/half man combination will have the same effect. I'd like to just not think about that right now!

Alright, time to get ready to board. But before I head out—a special shout out to all of you! This tour would not have been possible without all of your love and continued support. I'm saving you all a front row seat when the show hits Broadway. Or at least a seat that's somewhere near the front row. Hopefully it will be in the same theater.

Getting Outta Town

Location: DFW Airport, Dallas, Texas

It's a little after 8 am on Sunday morning, the official first day in my 3-month show tour to Europe! Very exciting, but right now I'm so tired (I pulled an all-nighter) that I'm doing my best to keep my eyes open and have good grammar. I look a little silly walking around the airport because I am wearing Bruno the Bull's oversized orange ball cap. It wouldn't fit in my suitcase, so I thought I'd make it one of my own accessories this morning. I'm getting a lot of stares, but I'd like to think of them as intrigued peaks of interest in looking at me for a long amount of time. The most interesting conversation of the morning (and the only one) happened with the security guy checking IDs:

Guard: "Who's hat is that?"

Me: "It's my hat."

Guard: "And what's the 'B' stand for?"

Me: "Well, it doesn't really stand for anything. See, I've got a traveling show I use it in."

Guard: "A traveling show, huh? Well, how bout that. What do you do in this show?

Me: "It's a one-man show. It's just me."

Guard: "Huh. So you do a bunch of magic tricks?"

Me: "Um, well, not exactly…"

Guard: "Do a magic trick for me!"

Me: "There's actually a rabbit hiding inside my hat right now!"

Guard: "No! Show me." (He quickly thinks.) "You've got the rabbit in your brain."

I'd like to think that the "rabbit in your brain" is a very prophetic metaphor that means something I've yet to understand but will find out in the coming months. Either that, or the security guy needs to be fired because he's on some messed up crack. Nonetheless, I got through security rather quickly and now I'm awaiting my flight in an hour to New York City!

<------ My brother, Neil, sampling how outrageous that hat looks on a human.