Was my number up? Well, I did disappear for a while, I guess about a month… Was traveling (my first trip back to Canada post-immigration to Spain), visited with friends and family, met and spent some quality time with my wonderful, gorgeous, brand-new (okay, 10-week-old but new to me) niece…

Am now back home, in Barcelona. Had a busy week of driving practice sessions, also wrote my PER (Patrón de Embarcaciones de Recreo, aka “boating”) exam. (The Catalan acronym is the awkward “PEE” — Patró d’Embarcacions d’Esbarjo.) This one was longer and more complicated, but at the same time more forgiving than the driving theory test, since you were allowed up to 17 wrong out of 65…but I got only two wrong. It involved a wide range of of new concepts, and so I’m pretty “chuffed” to have done so well, including 100% on all the critical regulation questions, buoys, coastal navigation solutions (which are not just multiple choice; your drawn/written solution must also be right).

What most deserves a mention right now, though, was a play we went to see last night. It was in English, up on Montjuïc at the Teatre Lluire, with Catalan surtitles. [Part of Grec’08.] My favourite playwright/director by far is Quebec’s Robert Lepage. I have seen every of his works I could, include six-hour-plus epics (The Dragons’ Trilogy). This show, “A Disappearing Number” by the troupe Complicité (conceived/directed by Simon McBurney), was brilliant, and reminded me very much of a Lepage-style production. Very technical, lots of video projections, moving/adapting set pieces, innovative leaps through time and space. It was far more captivating than a movie, and the two hours flew by.

It followed several parallel stories in different times, mainly revolving around the life of Indian math genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920). Imagine a play all about math, starting out with a whiteboard lecture that was probably above most peoples’ heads, tons of formulae, abstract concepts, string theory…and yet every person there was completely enraptured, I’m convinced. The five curtain calls the actors received at the end were proof of that (I was impressed that the Barcelona audience didn’t give a standing ovation — no “freebies” to troupes performing here, as in some cities that shall remain nameless — even though these folks certainly deserved one).

It was a brilliant piece of work. A true inspiration — the kind of thing that leaves you wishing you’d gotten involved in theatre years ago…