Live from UNIMA 2008: Day Twelve

Read yesterday’s post here. Follow with Flickr pics here.

Well, it turns out that last night it took me a lot longer to get everything online than I planned, and I didn’t go to bed until 5am – whoops! I got a couple of hours of sleep, and then rushed to breakfast, where I met up by chance with Hilary and her husband, Michael.

I headed off by 9.30, because I had to run to my first event of the day – Richard Bradshaw’s puppet show! I was really looking forward to it. You see, I’ve been wanting to see his work for a number of years, but never quite got around to it. I hadn’t planned to see anything Aussie while I’m here – figuring that I will have more of a chance to see Aussie shows than I will international ones – but since I had space today I booked myself a ticket. And I’m glad I did. Read my review here.

The show finished at about 10.30, which left me enough time to look at the other puppet exhibitions, which were in the same building as Bradshaw’s show. There I checked out the Karagozis (Greek shadow puppets) and the Wayang Kulit (Indonesian shadow puppets) displays. Disappointingly, and without realising it, I had seen pretty much all of it on carnival day, and it took me all of 15 minutes to walk through and take some pics.

There was heaps of time left before my last show of the festival, so I headed back to the Perth Town Hall in the hopes they could reprint my ticket – I’d lost it somewhere at home I’m sure. I was planning on heading to the hotel too, and just resting my feet, but I decided to go down to the shops on the left, which I haven’t explored yet. I had a look at some arcades – I’ve been trying to find a second hand bookstore, simply because I like looking for puppet and theatre books, and only found this tiny room (imagine the size of a large shower…) full of really boring antique books. I discovered where Perth hides their mainstream shops – Myers, David Jones, etc – as well as a few lolly shops and fun stuff like that. I didn’t buy anything though. I was tempted to get some sunglasses, but unfortunately, there weren’t any that I liked. It’s hard to buy sunnies when you were prescription glasses 24/7, and your frames are an odd shape.

Well, then it was back to the hotel to change into something less hot, as it’s quite warm today, and to eat lunch in comfort.

Next came my last show of the festival :cry:

This was at 2pm, and again bumped into Hilary and her hubbie. The show was Angel by a company from the Netherlands, and was pretty damn awesome – but in a way totally different to Diva, which is my lead favourite show from the festival. And Angel was a perfect way to finish the festival. Read the review here of Angel.

So the show finished, and there’s nothing to do for the rest of the night. As the festival is closing today, I’m probably going to head to the Transit Lounge and say goodbye to the people I’ve met here, or just simply indulge in a last few morsels of good puppetry.

I won’t have time tomorrow to post anything, as I check out in the morning, so I’ll post as much as I can now, including something for tomorrow – a list of highlights, a tally of the shows and my ratings, and a little info about my day even though I’m writing ahead of time.

As for tonight, if I go out, I’ll come back and update this post with any interesting notes, pics, or thoughts. Please do return to check for any updates, and for tomorrow’s post.

EDIT: I did go out to the Lounge, and stayed for an hour or so. It was very quiet, and didn’t see anyone I knew. I got bored and left. I’ve been trying to upload this post since last night, but for some reason the hotel internet wasn’t working, so I’ve had to go to an internet cafe to get this done. Frustrating! UPDATE: Read the next post here.

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