Month: June 2017

Mi Casa Su Casa – San Diego International Fringe Festival

As some of my full time readers will know, I am also a performer/teacher/director who has toured the world doing shows and workshops. I have worked in South-eastern Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the US.

I am currently doing a one-man show at the San Diego Fringe Festival called Mi Casa Su Casa or How to Get 175 Roommates (The AirBnb Show). The show is about my other job which is owning and operating the Hacienda Guest House in Los Angeles, and being an AirBnB host for the past 6 years. All the wonderful, strange and downright weird things that happen when you open your home to perfect strangers from around the world.

The opportunity to combine my show and my travel writing was too good to pass up- so here goes.

My show was to open at the SD Fringe on June 22 at 6 PM in the Geoffrey Off Broadway Theatre, 923 1st Avenue (which really just a half block from Broadway) in the Gas Lamp district. Instead of enduring that hell that is the 5 Freeway which can take anywhere from 2 to 6 hours one way from LA to SD depending on the traffic, I chose Amtrak instead. The train, the Surfrider, is a lovely stress-free way to get to San Diego in about 3 hours with about half the train ride along the coast with great views for about $40 one-way.

The end of the line in downtown SD at the Santa Fe Station was literally an easy 5 block walk to the theatre on First Street, so I got there in plenty of time for the technical rehearsal at 12:30 PM. After tech rehearsal, I went over the the hostel that I had rented a bed for the night, the USA Hostels San Diego – Downtown on Fifth Steet. Located in a historic 1880s building in the Gaslamp district, the hostel serves a daily free breakfast and offers shared accommodations with free Wi-Fi. The hostel offers exclusively-designed privacy pods with a light, a shelf, an outlet and screening from roommates. All shared guest rooms have free lockers (guests need to provide their own lock). The daily free breakfast includes all-you-can-make pancakes, baked goods, toast, oatmeal, fresh fruit, juice, coffee and tea. Guests can cook their own meals in the shared kitchen.

This all sounds very lovely until you arrive. The hostel is tiny with no lobby, tiny kitchen and small lounge area. If reception desk is really busy, the lobby space gets really crowded and it is impossible to get to the kitchen or lounge area. The place is reasonably clean but the rooms are very small and people seemed packed in tight. I do not recommend this hostel if you are looking for space or comfort. However, the location cannot be beat right in the heart of the Gaslamp district.

I returned to the theatre for my 6 PM curtain. While very nervous as this is an entirely new play, the audience was half full and very receptive as I tried to work out some of the kinks in the script. For 45 minutes, I regaled the audience with tales of random people who have ventured into my front door over the past 12 years. I only got lost in the new script once so I was overall pleased with the first show. Special shout out to Kevin, the CEO of SD Fringe, and my stage manager, Scott for their amazing work and dedication to theatre and live artists.

The San Diego Fringe is part of the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit. Each festival houses about 100 shows over a 2 week period and provides the artists with venue, technical and programming support. Unlike an open fringe festival like the Hollywood Fringe Festival which the artist pays FOR everything, and the Hollywood Fringe festival in 2017 had 375 shows in a 3 week period. It is just too many shows and too much competition for any one show to get any traction for an audience. San Diego Fringe is much more calm, professional, and easy to attract an audience for.

Next morning, I took the Surfrider back to Los Angeles the next morning. Arrived at Union Station in DT  Los Angeles about 4 PM and took an Uber home. Quick but really nice trip.

I have two more shows in San Diego on June 25 and 26. More about those next time.

The Poet and the Goats – Carl Sandburg House – North Carolina

On a visit to see my sister in the mountains of Western North Carolina not far from the city of Asheville, and the famous Vanderbilt home, Biltmore, lies the quaint mountain city of Hendersonville.  On a beautiful spring day we drove over to the mountain village of Flat Rock,  to see the home of Carl Sandburg, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet and writer. Connemara, the name of the farm, is run by the US National Park Service and houses the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. Connemara consists of a 264-acre site including the Sandburg residence, the goat farm, sheds, rolling pastures, mountainside woods, 5 miles (8 km) of hiking trails on moderate to steep terrain, two small lakes, several ponds, flower and vegetable gardens, and an apple orchard.

Though a Midwesterner, Sandburg and his family moved to this home in 1945 for the peace and solitude required for his writing and the more than 30 acres of pastureland required for his wife, Lilian, to raise her champion dairy goats. Sandburg spent the last twenty-two years of his life on this farm and published more than a third of his works while he resided here. In 1951, he won his 3rd Pulitzer Prize for his book of poetry, Complete Poems.

It was Lilian Sandburg who found the farm, already named Connemara. She was searching for the ideal place, large enough for raising her prize-winning goats and sufficiently secluded for Sandburg’s writing. While a writer and poet herself, Lilian’s legacy was a prize-winning goat-herd. She became famous in her own right for her goats which she started raising in Michigan. She purchased her first goat in 1935 and began to research the benefits of goats milk. Seeking a better climate (as well as a place where Sandburg could write) she chose Western NC. She improved the herd and had a thriving milk and cheese business. She became well-known for her ability to genetically select and produce improved goats. (1)

Our guide that day, a volunteer for the Park Service told us that often people would stop by the farm to specifically see Lilian and had no idea who Mr. Sandburg was. Lilian would become a household name in the world of dairy goats.

The goats living at Connemara today are descendants of the very goats that Lilian Sandburg raised. There are three types of goats: the Toggenburgs , the Saanens , and the Nubians (who have long, floppy ears). They keep a revolving herd of 15 goats on the site selling off the older goats as new ones are born. Guests are allowed to visit the goats in the pasture and barn. It is very funny to watch the young goats play and run around with each other. Be advised though when the goats decide to let go with a bodily function, it can get really messy real fast. Customer beware!

A very pleasant day in Flat Rock. A little family, a little history, a little nature all in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. You can hike the trails at Carl Sandburg anytime without a fee or take the house tour for $10 adults or $6 for seniors. Check it out, it will be worth your time.

Plus literally across the highway from the Sandburg House, the Flat Rock Playhouse, a world-famous regional theatre offering plays, musicals and concerts in addition to workshops for children and students. If you like theatre or live performance, the Playhouse is well worth a visit as well.

(1) Lilian’s Goats, Blog Post, Mountain Musings, 2008.