We arrived in Muscat, Oman, to commence working on the 40th National Day celebrations. We only have 12, 000 Omani children and adolescents (!!!) to move en masse in various sections to help create the ultimate celebration for his majesty, the Sultan Qaboos. We are working with a fabulous and experienced crew incuding director and designer of the show, Steve Boyd, with the charting and mass choreography team of Bryn Walters, Gina Martinez, Rocky Smith, Nathan Wright, Nikos Lagousakos, Fadi Mobayed, Wael Mowad and the wonderful Soha Frem.
We are slowly adjusting to the heat and humidity and have worked hard to learn some Arabic. There are looks of astonishment when the kids realise you are speaking to them in Arabic. They love being our language teachers as we teach them their moves. We have also found the local people to be so friendly and welcoming. Jane and I got stranded on a median strip the other day and these two local women stopped and insisted on ‘rescuing us’ and drove us back to the hotel! 
There are 7 weeks to get this show rehearsed, with a crazy schedule to fit in several hundred schools into rehearsals for 12 different segments. The segments that we are working on include formations that celebrate the local history, culture and achievements of Oman over the last 40 years. In the final segment we have all 12, 000 cast members together in a beautiful flower formation, where the boys and girls have to be separated by ‘moats’ of at least 2 metres. This is fine in theory but when the boys get adrenalin-fueled and keen to impress their peers the temptation to transgress these moats was all to tempting…not a good look to the Omani officials in some of the rehearsals. By show time however, the presence of His Majesty will be enough to curb these tendencies!
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