Since my full time contract with a touring educational theatre company ended last week, I totally assumed that I’d be returning to the good ol’ days of staying up late, futzing around on the computer till some ungodly hour, and then sleeping until midday. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Last week was probably my busiest week of the year! Allow me to recap the many different jobs I did this past week as I list them in order of increasing excitement (aka – payment):

1. Upon completing the touring season, all of the actors of this theatre company that I was working with had to meet at HQ to store and categorize all of our props and sets. Dolls were missing feet, costume stank to high heaven, and legs were falling off tables. It was bitter sweet to see everyone one last time before we all moved on to bigger and better things. I very well may be back next year. They want me for a 1960’s psychedelic version of Romeo and Juliet.

2. Later in the week I got suckered into working a trade fair (in costume and character) for the above mentioned theatre company. I was dressed at Fred, Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew from A Christmas Carol, and hung around with Juls who was dressed as the dirty old Charity Worker. I got to wear a top hat and walk around with a cane handing out information packets to lost and confused English teachers. One of the other companies that had set up a stand had free candy to give out: jelly Coca-Cola bottles and giant chocolate Whoppers. So that was cool.

3. My other educational theatre company and I performed A Monkey’s Tale for a very appreciative and well behaved group of nine year olds at a school up in Horta. Every kid there was named after the little insignia on their shirt. One boy was named Tiger and there was a girl named Wave. I think another boy was called Frog. A very cool way of teaching the little tykes English!

4. I worked a corporate event for a group of 80 Spanish doctors. I was one of eight actors placed at random locations around the city while groups of doctors had to travel from one character to the next, collecting clues. I was dressed as a musician and they had me stationed with my trumpet in the Plaza del Rei behind the Cathedral. If anyone correctly gave me the secret password, I was supposed to pass them an envelope with their next clue. I spent most of the afternoon teaching random kids in the plaza how to blow the trumpet. They were kinda snotty.

5. I made an afternoon stop at a dubbing studio in La Garriga to dub two episodes of an ongoing cartoon that I’ve been working on called Edebits and then I dubbed two “romantic” films into English. Hey, it pays the bills.

6. I went to a new dubbing studio not far from my house in San Gervasi to dub three “romantic” films. In one of the films I provided the voices for 22 different characters! No that’s low budget.

7. A morning trip to a dubbing studio in Sabadell had me, as part of an ongoing project, recording all of the voices for four episodes of a cartoon series that hasn’t even been drawn yet. I’m doing the “pre-recording” so the animators can match the images to the inflection and rhythm that I create. Later, they’ll get a bunch of different actors to dub the voices for the final project.

8. The job that took the least amount of time to complete was a one minute documentary on Barcelona’s Zona Franca. I had to put on my corporate voice for this one. I think it’s scheduled to be broadcast on MSNBC. As you can see by its #8 listing, this was also one of the best payed jobs of the week.

9. Finally, I spent a couple days in yet another dubbing studio (making a total of five different studios in one week) dubbing the lead role in a horror film called La Habitacion del Hijo (The Child’s Bedroom). This was a Spanish made for TV movie that was part of the Historias Para No Dormir (Films to Keep You Awake) series. The movie was actually pretty good. The actors were very good and it even made me jump a few times. It took two days to finish the dubbing. It was the longest of my week’s work, and also the most rewarding. I was really happy with the work I did and I think the director was also. It was great when I overheard the sound technician telling the dubbing director that, after having worked with Spanish dubbers for many years, he could tell that I was “one of the good ones”.

So there you have it. That was my week. A profitable and exciting time, full of thrills and spills. Now according to my Palm Pilot, the next few weeks should have me futzing and sleeping as usual.