Popination Meditation

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Stanley Beer Hall.

Whenever I end up scheduled to do things in unusual places, I bring up Google maps before I go, and I look for what pubs I can possibly Popinate to around the unfamiliar area after whatever task I’m assigned is complete. The other week, I found myself in a grungy part of Aurora again, and lo! to my very great surprise, I found a beer hall nearby that’s nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced before.

What was I doing in Aurora? Well, I’ve been hired to manage the choreography and coordination of not only the fights for a play over at Vintage Theatre, but also the intimacy bits and several sequences of yoga. I remember the director when we first chatted about the play and her concept for it, she expressed amazed gratitude that she found one expert in all 3 of these things to come in and work with her and them.

So how these rehearsals often go (and this is true for when I man just the fights, too) is: I go in and do a full-cast workshop on basic skills that will be used most in the choreography that I then bring in later. This can mean I’ll teach a basic unarmed combat and safe falling seminar, or I’ll do a session on consent and steps to work with intimacy moments, or the like. This time, I led the cast through a basic yoga class, then we worked with spatial awareness, energy work, interpersonal engagement, and that kind of thing. This last sounds kind of vague and woo-woo, but it’s a lot clearer when you’re going through the exercises themselves. What that second set of stuff was for is to help the all-male cast to begin creating the electric tension of intimacy between them that would play a huge factor in many of the conflicts through the play’s story arc, including the culminating fight.

Only a very small sliver of what was in front of me, and behind, and around the corner, and…

Stanley? I hardly know he…

But a rehearsal isn’t a pub! But actually, neither was this, really. Holy shit what even is this, is it a mall or an enormous food court or? Silly me, after rehearsal I mentioned to the guys I was going to find a place called: Stanley Beer Hall, I think? and they were like oh yeah the Stanley marketplace? and I was like, I guess? 

So one of the actors gave me a brief 3-minute ride down a very straight street and dropped me off at …I mean it looked like a giant shopping mall, but it was instead a vast food court. There were ice cream boutiques, BBQ joints, little restaurants, and I guess, mall-like, there were a couple amusement-type places too, like a virtual experience area, and. But this place was vast, and in back was an almost equally vast park and play area, attached to the enormous back patio of the beer hall, called Stanley. I had no idea that’s what I was in for, when I innocently poked that red pin in my Google Maps that morning. I stumbled in by what I learned later was a back door, and wandered around, wondering where I could sit and how to get a beer off of one of these walls. I’d never been to a self-serve beer hall before.

Also wine and cocktails, as you can see here.

Once I found my long way to the actual front door, I was coached by an amiable young server as to how the whole place is set up. Here’s how the process works: you give your card to the front desk, who swipes it and then gives you in turn a little white card with Stanley scrolled across it. Then, you can look at a menu and go find where that tap is, and you put the white Stanley card in a little slot above the tap, after which you can place your glass under the tap and pour it to your desires. I was gobsmacked—it showed me, with a little ticking number on the screen, how much money I was pouring into my glass (the menu’s prices were by the ounce, not the glass). I felt like I was gassing myself up like a car. It was wild.

No, but seriously—this place is HUGE. All set up with long picnic tables and the outdoor part even bigger than the indoor, part roofed, part open to the sun. There were so many kids running around, between the families sitting near the low-fenced border between the park area and the seating area. Which. Yeah. If I were a young parent? I’d do this too. And the place was full up, inside and out—I was amazed at the spectacle, and after the intensive rehearsal I’d led for the last two and a half hours before, all I could do was find a good IPA, fill my glass (less $ than it would have been had I ordered a pint someplace else), plop my yoga mat down on the bench next to me, and take it all in. Breathing in, breathing out. Sipping in, and nibbling on a Caesar salad that was perfectly okay. 

I mean, It’s fun, but. 

After an afternoon full of energy harnessing, acting exercises, and yoga, and then navigating this giant beer hall? I’m exhausted. 

Next rehearsal, I’ll find someplace smaller.