HELLO Dreamwidth I AM HOME (for the next week)

[kaberett]

(at which point I'm moving house) (we are picking up the keys on Thursday morning) (NEW HOUSE NEW HOUSE NEW HOUSE)

We -- me_and, sebastienne, shortcipher -- got into London Euston at a quarter to seven this morning, having taken the sleeper down from Edinburgh. We got up to the Fringe on Saturday and spent most of the time there running between shows (sorry to everyone I totally failed to give a heads-up to, or to visit!), and I am Very Happy about this, and was also Very Tired. So I spent quite a lot of this afternoon -- after a medical appointment at the wrong end of town -- asleep; A, meanwhile, went into work and then promptly fell asleep in my lap more or less as soon as we'd eaten dinner after he got in. I have spent the intervening time doing paperwork of variously terrifying nature (HOUSE and also PhD), getting slo-o-owly caught up on parts various of the internet, and being gradually encroached on.

Some edited highlights:

1. Joan, a drag king's telling of Joan of Arc. It's on at the Camden People's Theatre for three nights in October. Heartily recommend. I almost didn't even mind that we were in a mouldy attic. I think it's also on as part of their Come As You Are 2017 festival, which is showcasing explorations of gender by trans artists, so... yay?
   
2. Transreal continues one of my favourite spec-fic bookshops, so I made my annual pilgrimage and acquired (1) a gorgeous hardback copy of Down Among The Sticks And Bones, which I devoured half lying on the grass in Holyrood Park in the sunshine watching dogs yesterday and half on the tube today, and (2) a paperback copy of Ninefox Gambit to lend to people so I can make more people read this book. (By default I read ebooks; this is sub-optimal for lending folk who prefer physical media.)
   
3. Topping and tailing with twelves: Douze, a Eurovision "musical" that was actually a cabaret, with exactly as much by way of gay and sequins and ludicrous over-the-top as you might expect, with bonus "pick which song you, as an audience, liked best, via the medium of DEMOCRACY, and we'll sing it again". So of course we picked Numbers, which is a... counting song in the style of a Eurovision ballad. There was also a stepladder. It was very nearly perfect.
   
4. The other twelve was 12, a queered-up dragged-up Twelfth Night with beautifully chosen modern soundtrack. The "this boat's about to sink" song number was My Heart Will Go On. The shenanigans about men-dressed-as-women-dressed-as-men was accompanied by I Kissed A Girl. The final post-wedding number was... Rickrolling the audience. And then encouraging us to sing along. This was my last pick before we got on the sleeper train; my face was hurting from grinning. I loved it.
   
5. There was a Kiwi shadow puppetry cartographical fairytale. I nearly loved it unreservedly; I am Disappointed that it contained not only the racism I'd been steeling myself for but bonus extra racism that didn't need to be there at all.
   
6. This was in fact a fringe of shadow puppetry for me! I also toddled off to see Alex in Shadow, which was... genderqueer... shadow puppetry... about navigating mental health and growing up and animal friends. The puppetry was beautiful; the take-home message I got from the show was broadly "c'mon, kiddo, you can get your act together, you're allowed to enjoy things, you don't gotta be Dramatic all the time for the sake of Authenticity" self-directed pep-talk that I identify with even when it's not aimed at someone who shares my name. And is represented by each of the five-strong cast, of various genders and possibly none, as they rotate through while the other four do the puppetry. So I was very fond of that too.
   
7. Doctor Faustus! Self-flyered for this one, upon hearing someone forlornly advertising "progressive science rock musical" on the Mile. They did not try to hand me a flyer. I turned around and said "go on, then," reaching out a hand. "It's a progressive sci-" they started, handing me a leaflet. "Yeah yeah yeah I know, I heard, you've sold me on it, good luck," I said, and vanished off to lunch. It... Doctor Emma Faustus' girlfriend-slash-fiancée died of a rare heart condition; she was actually present for a lot of this; Faustus was working for a big pharma company, and off-the-clock was working on a cure for said rare heart condition; pharma company's son very smugly kicked her off the machine, whereupon she makes a deal with the head of HR at a shadowy government-run project -- Mephistopheles, a sharply-dressed EVIL SCIENCE murder femme with a ~~dark past~~ of her own. The lab Faustus ends up working in gets abbreviated H.E.L. The shadowy government-run project is not, to my mind, actually obviously more evil than the big pharma company Faustus starts out working for (which is going Hard on the whole Shkreli thing). Competent singing and dancing! Entertaining set design! EVIL LAB COAT. We were all charmed; this was A's favourite of the things we saw.
   
8. Plum and blackcurrant sorbet!!!
   
9. I mostly didn't have crippling (I use the term advisedly) social anxiety about or after audience participation! Hurrah my pschological progress!
   
10. My familiarity with Edinburgh geography continues improving. I am still nowhere near a match for sebastienne