Chocolate Apprentice

Highly Descriptive Chocolates

I am spending this weekend learning how to describe theatrical performances for vision compromised patrons.

It is a highly specialized skill, and I have been in awe, watching and listening to four of my skilled colleagues as they describe 2 hour long performances, inserting descriptions between dialogue, and painting the picture of the story, without any subjective terms or personal interjections, so as to leave the patron with a clear, objective view of the story.

This all happens as the play is going on! [Read more…]

Life, Love and Strawberry Ice Cream Sodas

I have been working every Sunday since September, with a group of teen acting students, on a play close to my heart:  Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

The play is one of the most oft-produced in North American Theatre, and features some pretty big themes:  Life, Love and Death.  Not exactly a light-hearted farcical romp, this quietly moving play has demanded a great deal of commitment and maturity from our students – and I am proud to say – they have risen to the challenge. [Read more…]

You’re Nobunny ‘till Some Bunnies Love You

The walk through Minoru Park, on my way to rehearsal at the Gateway Theatre is hopping with bunnies.  My co-director and I have named several of them, as their personalities emerge along with their upstanding ears, from the hedgerows.  There is Piggy, Nosy, Brat, Cheeky, the Twins and Stanley.

I have also taken (in self-preservation) to carrying bags of “not at their peak” vegetables with me, in anticipation of being met by some very curious, and rather assertive wiggly noses, beady, unblinking, expectant eyes and twitching whiskers. [Read more…]

Springy Fluffy Thingys

It seems as though it may finally be spring in Vancouver.  Or, if it isn’t and we have another hailstorm (as happened yesterday), I still feel a desperate need to invent things that will make it feel like spring.  Like that bank of fluffy clouds, lined up in a perfect row across the skyline, as though someone has pushed  a ruler underneath their bottoms.  So white and happy, and not full of rain. [Read more…]

Edible “Artwork” – Fun with homemade transfer sheets

After spending a lovely afternoon talking to Adam Chandler, at Beta 5 Chocolates, last week, and thinking again how much their chocolates, topped with in house crafted transfer sheets, look like beautiful mosaic tiles, I am ready to have another go at making my own transfer sheets.

And because I want something safe and sturdy to enrobe, I am going to make homemade malt balls (turned into cubes) as the centres.   That would be Maltesers to those of us from Canada and many other countries, Whoppers to those who hail from the USA. [Read more…]