Wooly Hats

 Well, Texas and DFW are bracing for another Snowpocalypse...

Of course my next play is supposed to Load Into the Brand New Building Tomorrow, amid "wintery mix."

But amid all the angst of this little problem in the arts in Dallas...

My God!

The situation in Minneapolis! 

The government - OUR government - are murdering citizens in the street!

And then lying about them.  Blackening their names, lying about the threat they did not pose. Murdering a poet and mother of three who was leaving the scene after only observing.  Murdering a nurse, an ICU nurse who worked at the Veterans' hospital and who was protecting a woman ICE agents had shoved.  There only to witness and observe ICE's doings.

And what are ICE doing?

ICE agents - masked and nameless - grab a two year old baby to deport.  They grab a five year old in a wonderfully cute blue fuzzy hat with puppy dog ears to use him as a hostage to grab more of his family and deport them.  

What are the brave people of Minneapolis doing?  Witnessing.  Documenting on their phones. 

Armored only with fuzzy hats against below zero temperatures and even colder hearts...

ICE indeed.

Protest this.

Busy Fall Behind, Busy Winter and Spring Ahead

 It seems like I've had time for everything but blogging!

This Fall it was finally my chance to design The Phantom of the Opera.  A melodrama version for Pocket Sandwich Theatre.  Popcorn was thrown!

This was a chance to pull out a few foam carvings etc. made for earlier shows, like the grand Water God (8'-0" long) originally designed, years ago, for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare Dallas.  Here he's to be seen hiding in the lights... just as shy as the Phantom himself.

Designing and building the Phantom's organ was the most fun.  It was mostly of pool noodles for this full-foam show, but incorporated a real keyboard, and its frame was mostly parts of a vantage baby crib.  In this horror-drenched (ha!) tale, the most fearsome sight may have been the stagehands' rear view of this organ case, a 1950's Scary Bunny!

But the BIG deal this Fall was finishing a fantasy novel!

It's a long story...  A friend and I started collaborating on a short story... that got out of hand.  Huge fun!  More news on that story later, when it's closer to public release.  Suffice, for now, to say that writing, editing, revising, illustrating, and designing a cover for this epic took a whiiiile.

What else is Up-Coming?

Theatrically there are four shows: the triumphant opening of Kitchen Dog Theater's new home with the critically acclaimed and member-created show Pompeii!!  Then Arsenic and Old Lace and Home, I'm Honey at Pocket (plus Werewolf of London in the Fall) and then the third and last installment of Stage West's Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine.

Scenic Designer Soaks

 

Public Domain image courtesy of Picryl

Today was my first day of painting for this year's production of Ebenezer Scrooge at Pocket Sandwich Theatre... and my most recent Scenic Soak TM.

A proper Scenic Soak TM involves a tired paint-stained wretch at the end of a longish day that  involved ladders and buckets; a long cool drink, preferably alcoholic; a hot water filled bathtub; soap, of course; and a pumice stone.  Because nowadays when most paints are also primers, the paint you painted yourself with doesn't come off easily!

(This is true for the latex house paints commonly used at many theaters.  True scenic paint may not.)

A lovely ritual.  I recommend it.

Be sure to rinse the tub thoroughly! afterwards... because paint flecks don't come off the tub easily either.

Did I Promise to Post More Often?

 Hahahaha!

A linocut print of the city of Ptolith, in Aenoriia - art by Clare Floyd DeVries, 

   world by AstrophagyMC

I have been really busy though this Fall; traveling, a little theater, and writing on a long-form fiction project related to those imaginary Minecraft cities I've been helping build for so long.

Now I'm illustrating that and discovering the fun of linocut printing!  I'm currently pretty inky myself and my house is even more filled with little teeny tiny slivers of linoleum... everywhere.  They stick to bathtubs BTW.  

(Now I bury you in examples to make up for so few posts.  Brace yourself!)

I love that these crazy prints combine my architecture, Minecraft, D&D, writing, and art.

Theater?  Less busy, because of traveling.  But my set for the Phantom of the Opera is onstage at Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Carrollton right now.  A fun melodrama!  Go see it and throw some popcorn.

The Phantom of the Opera melodrama, Pocket Sandwich Theatre

Summer Busy

 In a bit of a break from theater design I've been busy with summer visits - to and fro - as well as swimming, holidays, and a lot of Minecraft, D&D, and writing.  

In the Venn diagram of those last three plus artsiness, I've been teaching myself how to make linocut prints.  (My house is now covered in teeny tiny slivers of linoleum and smears of ink.)

Part of this effort is just for the fun of it (I've always liked woodcuts and this is a similar aesthetic, but cheaper/easier for a beginner) and part of this is a attempt to learn to design more simply and boldly, and to not lean so heavily on color.  

A.I.

Just read a fascinating - and depressing - conversation HERE between a human writer,  Heather Havrilesky, and A.I. which is pretty well summed up by this quote from it:

"About the feeling of watching something that was supposed to help instead smooth over the real with the plausible."

I read with increasing horror...

What's Up?

                                        

 First off, I got to see Kitchen Dog Theater's production of The Grown-Ups last night at Samuel Grand Park.  Really liked it!  Very topical.  Read more about it HERE.

Second, I've been off traveling to California and back, but now that I AM back, theater is going full steam ahead: I'm reprising last year's Sherlock set for Stage West's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Fallen Souffle and designing a set at Pocket Sandwich Theatre for the farce, Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Here are a few pics of Sherlock last year - this year will see only modest changes, mostly to furnishings or set dressing... plus adding a chandelier that I need to find!

Getting busy!

Old Fashioned Drops

 A friend of mine, Joseph Cummings, recently designed Into the Breeches! for Mainstage Irving / Las Colinas.  

He used several beautiful, old-fashioned painted drops created by Dallas's former Wolf Studio.  This was an important theatrical design and scene shop - founded by Peter Wolf - that once created all the scenery for Dallas Summer Musicals (now Broadway Dallas).  Many local designers and painters worked there, including the noted designer Bob Lavallee and the late Wade Giampa.  (Who was an enormous help to me as I was finding my feet as a theater designer.  So kind and so much missed...)

THIS is the kind of thing that studio routinely produced!

 

Drops by Wolf Studio, reused for Into the Breeches! Mainstage Irving/Las Colinas, designer Joseph Cummings

Joseph has started researching the history of Wolf Studio - as I hear more about it I'll pass on more pictures.  UPDATE:  Read Joseph's blog HERE for a history of Peter Wolf's studio and these particular drops.

That downstage teaser, the swoopy proscenium design, was created in the 1970s for a touring regional / Broadway production of Sound of Music.

Addendum:  When I designed Into the Breeches! a few years earlier at Stage West, I too felt the need for painted drops... so their shop's talented scenic painter painted a few small "banners" AKA "legs":