Please Call Your Representatives (Again)

Well, they're trying to mess up the internet again.

The FCC plans to change the rules that keep the internet neutral, to let your internet provider or ISP:

1) Charge you more for faster service.  (Meaning poorer or thriftier people get crummier service.  

ADDENDUM: Oops! they do this already, when your service slows after you reach your phone's data cap.  I miss-typed.  But what may now happen is a sort of airline-ification of your internet service... Want streaming?  Extra.  Want access to the cloud?  Extra?  Want knees or oxygen with that?  You get the idea.  Oh, did you want You Tube with your internet?)

What's for sure is that ISPs will:

2)  Charge businesses, websites, and streaming services etc. more to reach you.  (Meaning poorer, newer, start-up, and niche guys can't compete with richer, more established, mainstream ones.  That favorite viral video not on Netflix?  That weird genre comic?  That unpopular opinion?  Sloooooow to loooooad.)

3)  "Fast" and "slow" lanes (AKA decent versus crummy service) add up to de facto censorship.  

Not political censorship necessarily, but, for instance, you might have a bad connection when ordering pizza from Dominos... and a strangely good connection to Pizza Hut.  So you'll start ordering more Pizza Hut.  If your internet provider just happens to get kickbacks from them...?  Pure coincidence!

That's the obviously profitable commercial censorship, that profit motives will determine what you can or cannot see online.  But with all these dark money PACs around it's only a matter of time (think seconds) before some ISP is paid to speed up one political party's ads or trash talk.  Heck, if a Koch Brother or a Soros own a big percent of an internet corp. they might even tilt that scale for free.  Your news and then your political and social views will be warped by what Big Internet Brother wants you to see.

Scary.

The internet is the conduit through which most of our lives now travel - do we want a filter to collect more money for our ISPs clogging it up?  

Polluting it?

So.

Call your representatives in Congress.  Explain this stupidity to them!  Because your protest is the only thing possibly stopping this.  You got less than two days.

Dishonor

A short post.  It's been a while since I've blogged, mostly due to a glut of deadlines and turkey and, well, of pumpkin pie too.  

But today's news requires note:


Someone I know has been fired for sexual harassment.

At this post-Weinstein moment in America some men are now being held to account for long-time bad behavior.  This particular man is - or was - in the DFW theater world.  I've worked with him.  Never saw anything untoward... but then I'm not his target audience, being old enough to be his mother. But lots of stories are bubbling up.  Many young actresses were mistreated.  The accusations seem undeniable.

Why?!

Why do some men use power to harass women or other men or even children in this way?  Are any women creating comparable messes of power and sex?  Why hurt others in such a way?  Why risk career and reputation?  

But then, until now, it just hasn't been much of a risk has it?

For me the most sickening chicken coming home to roost is that, though I never saw or heard a hint of this behavior from this man, I could instantly - instantly! - see it as true.  

Part of me just sighed...   

Sure.  It fits. 

Because the guy had a preening self-regard that just radiated.  I didn't guess at that ego acting out in this way (in hindsight, duh), but I never trusted him to have my back professionally.  Or to act from abstract fairness or such...  He just didn't seem the type.  

But this type?  Well, I would have expected him to be smarter is all.  He is very clever and talented.  Plus big ego.  That I noticed.  If he also had virtue or nobility of character or kindness I never noticed...   

And isn't that a sad and dishonorable thing.  


New Year's Resolution: to live in such a way that, if evil things are ever reported of me, no one says, "Sure.  It fits."

And can that resolution start today please?  In a year when... (picking just the latest outrage), a major political party backs an accused child molester, maybe we all need to start behaving ourselves better.  Agreed?

ADDENDUM:  Is this post fair?  What about presumption of innocence?  The question troubles me.  I haven't met the witnesses or heard the evidence but one theater has and fired him because of it.  Several others have fired him from directing jobs.  Or suspended him from membership until this is investigated.  Am I just piling on?  Yes, I suppose I am.  I believe the women.  The reported facts just sound so likely.  And, knowing the man a little, I just can't put my own experience up in defense.  So...  I hope I'm not being unjust.

ADDENDUM #2:  Having read further into this matter, I am now sure I have been fair... indeed too kind.  

The accusations, while probably not criminal, are vile and involve very young women - college and perhaps even high school students - who were either under his authority as a director or a mentor or to some degree under his power as one who could recommend or hire actors.  Some he contacted out of the blue using confidential information from head shots!  (Betraying both the women and his employer, DTC...  And what about them, huh?  What did they know?)  Read more HERE at TheaterJones if you need details.

So how was I too kind?  By calling him "Him" not by name:

Lee Trull

Tell you what, disowning a theater company member for disgraceful conduct kinda puts a damper on the holiday party.

Ironbound

Last weekend, last chances to see Ironbound at Kitchen Dog Theater!

Book Report

Nutso busy around here!  (Explaining the lack of posts, sorry.)  

Application Pending is about to open at Circle Theater in Fort Worth.  (Go see the amazing one-woman show... and the bee-youtiful faux painted mahogany paneling.)  Ironbound Techs at Kitchen Dog Theater this weekend.  (Lots of weeds and roadside trash to dress there tomorrow.) And the musical Sister Act  also loads in this weekend at Mainstage Irving - Las Colinas.

But, recently, years ago feels like, I did once get a chance to read for leasure...

Best two books?  

The novel: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.  Really loved it.  It's what you might call a Basic Novel, not any particular genre, no explosions to lead to a sale for a blockbuster movie, just a guy and his life.  I found it funny, moving, true to life, annoying, charming... time well spent.

The non-fiction: Setting the Stage by David Hayes.  A sort of memoir / sort of guide book about set design as a profession, written by a designer on Broadway during the '50s and '60s who, later, taught.  I also found this book funny, moving, true to life, annoying, charming... time well spent. 

I recommend both books!

Good Ol' Days in Scenery

Just happened across this blog post praising the detailed sets of golden age Broadway  HERE.  

At the Ethyl Barrymore Theatre the 1942 set for Three Sisters

I think Broadway still does a kinda nice job though.

And - totally unrelated - the same blogger's earlier post on Houston's The Orange Show HERE.  

A Week in the Life

This week may not be exactly typical, but it's not uncommon either.  A set designer's schedule can go something like this:


Weekend - spend some time preparing for the coming week by finishing one set of construction drawings and starting the next.  Also pulling portfolio photos of work for an up-coming introduction/audition/meeting thingie.

Monday - up at 6:30 a.m.  Breakfast.  Scan and email one (small) set of construction drawings for one show.  (Application Pending at Circle Theater.)  Pull clothes (and even iron!) for the interview.  Have the interview.  Seems to go okay... maybe
I'll get the new show?  While wondering that, finish construction drawings then make a bunch of copies of those other drawings and design sketches for the other show you know you do have.  (Ironbound at Kitchen Dog Theater.)  Grab something out of the refrigerator at random to gobble while doing email one handed, then rush to the first read of Ironbound.
  
A fascinating reading!   Great cast.   Also got to meet for the first time in a while several favorite people from other shows. Snacks and chit-chattery very pleasant.  Production meeting afterwards.  (Have to be shushed at one point.  Scenic talk is too engrossing!)  

Sketchbook doodle during the Ironbound first read-thru

My sketchbook is really a Day Book, where I record whatever I'm 

thinking, reading, or researching about, plus meeting notes and

my earliest design sketches... and occasional grocery lists.

Home at 11:00 p.m.  Eat a sandwich in the bath because that refrigerator grab and snack at the Read-Thru weren't quite enough.  Also a drink.  Nothing better than a hot bath and a cold drink.  And a book.

Tuesday - sleep a little late - 7:30.  Create a model for yet another show so that theater's board of directors can approve the design.  (Sister Act at Mainstage Irving - Las Colinas.)  This involves making yet many more copies of yet more design sketches.  I'm getting to know the owner of the local copy place!  Hopefully I'll also find time to scan and send a director copies of an old 1950s version of "The Story of the Little Red Hen."  (Which makes more sense than it sounds like it would.  Really.)  I have a head start on model building in that I had the forethought to get supplies like foamcore board last week.  

Dinner at home with family, woohoo!  Wonder what I'll cook?

Here's an example of early design sketches - these are trying to

figure out how to make a few wagons (3) multi-task as about

87 different locations in Sister Act.  It is SO HANDY to have a 

sketchbook always on hand.  I buy my purses sized to hold one.

Wednesday - will be, in the evening, the production meeting that goes with that model.  Earlier comes the all-important lunch seminar on the American Disabilities Act which I need as continuing education credit to keep my architectural license current.  Lotso note taking!  

(My sketchbook is interesting lately: notes and sketches on several shows; ditto from my jury duty... sad sketches; ditto on an imaginary planet I'm designing just for fun; plus nice serious architectural ADA notes to balance out the frivolities.)

Thursday - a coffee-klatch with a fellow designer to look forward to.  

Friday - By now I need to have answered all the questions generated by my flurry of drawings - which may mean MORE drawings! - and have every show sorta settled for the weekend.  

Will I make it?

North Texas Giving Day

A chance to support the arts in North Texas... with a little extra ooomph!

Kind people have pledged extra money to multiply your own kindness.  Now, there are lots of worthy groups, but I'd like call to your especial attention to theater in general and Kitchen Dog Theater in particular.

Your help is gratefully appreciated!

I Love Theater People

Harvey sent 4 feet of water through Sara Hames' house, leaving her family to build a barricade by her curb made of wet debris and ruin... 

So her family called their musical theater friends and they put on Les Harveyables:

Even if your barn is flooded you can still put on the show!

Not More Politics!

Sorry, it's the times we live in.

The latest upset?  President Trump ending the DACA program which protected those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and who have lived their whole lives here.  

These "Dreamers" have clean background checks; they're going to school; they fight in our military; they work hard; they start businesses; they even die trying to help flood victims in Houston.  They are good Americans.  They just don't have a stamp in a passport.

I believe strongly that we should let them stay in their home country - the United States.

Since I'm having printer problems and can't mail my postcards to my legislators yet, please feel free to print n' send this one to your own.  

Please print and mail:  4" x 6" is legal postcard size

Or, if you're not into snail-mail, call your representative and senator.  Demand that they finally pass the Dream Act.

Sometimes we just have to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

Tech: Lighting Color Fun

Tech Day is mostly for lighting and sound.  

Set is (you hope) nearly finished.  (Or maybe it's not.)  And Tech - or Technical Rehearsal - is a day to push scenic elements around, to roll wagons, and slam doors and generally make sure that the physical elements of the production are working.  Actors are there - their participation vital! - but they're usually bored out of their skulls at the stops and starts and sheer tedium of it all.

Meanwhile, it's wildly exciting verging on panicked for stage management and designers.  Especially for sound and lighting.  (Costume is madly finishing things for the costume parade and Dress rehearsals coming soon.  Basically, you don't want costumes on stage yet: the paint isn't all dry.)

Here's what lighting was up to at yesterday's Tech for Echo Theater's production of Ruined.

I'm loving the colors glowing through the slats of Mama's Bar!

(Thanks to the eagle-eyed company members who spotted their neighbor's old fence out on the curb for the trash!  Great weathered texture.)  The rest of the set?  Well, someday soon I'll actually have all the scenic painting done.  Fingers crossed...

Flooded!

Latest bad news from the Houston / Harvey floods...

This flood's in Brisbane in 1800ish... but you get the idea.  Public domain image

The lower level of the Alley Theater is soup.  

Expensive damage and their prop collection ruined.  Read more HERE.

Theater Design Catch-Up Day!

What with one thing or another (hurricanes, politics, jury duty, etc.) this blog has gotten a little behind on, you know, theater!

So here's a grab bag of images, in no particular order:

King o' the Moon at Circle Theater - sketch

Two shows back... King o' the Moon at Circle Theater.  A fun one for me because it was larger and more detailed than I often get to design for this small basement thrust stage and because the carpenters and (new) scenic painter did a terrific job!

Notice the brick: that wire-cut effect (vertical lines, see 'em?), all pure paintery.

King o' the Moon at Circle Theater - rehearsal photo

I think this next show was right before that show (or after? this season anyway).  Rasheeda Speaks  is set in a surgeon's reception area - another uber realist set.  With those fun hip-waiting-room-of-today colors.

Rasheeda Speaks at Circle Theater - sketch

Rasheeda Speaks at Circle Theater - rehearsal photo

This next is an oooold project, an indie film shot here in Dallas.  Sometimes photos just float to the top of the internet, ya know?  

This shows the kitchen of the condo where we shot... and where most of the cast and film crew lived during filming.  I painted and accessorized that kitchen, I set dressed it, I sealed it off with tape and a huge "HOT SET!!!" sign... and still I cleaned up after everyone's lunches (and breakfasts) over and over and over again.  Like being House Mom at an extended teenage boy sleep-over.

Ciao a film by Yen Tan

To round out the Old Projects theme, here's my only TV game show design.

Whatta Ya Think?! a TV show

After Charlottesville

Dallas has a park in Uptown that's named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

I've always liked this park.

It's beautiful.  In the spring azaleas bloom.  All year round there are trees and grass, a handsome building (loosely modeled on Lee's Arlington) and a fine bronze equestrian statue of Lee and an adjutant.  I like equestrian statues.  To a designer it sits especially nicely on the site. Plus the granite steps at its base are a good place to eat a sandwich.

General Lee is an fascinating historical figure: a great and still-studied general; a traitor who chose the Confederacy over the Union; and a slave owner who freed his slaves during the Civil War... although once I researched that fact, it turns out that he did so only because it was required by his father-in-law's will.  Complicated and ugly history.

Even before Charlottesville this was a controversial park and statue.

Before Charlottesville I would have suggested that hiding history is a mistake - better that the statue be left as it is but with context added, and not just that doomed adjutant and a few informative plaques.  I'd like to call in a brilliant artist like Kara Walker to add that context physically, perhaps adding bronze silhouettes in her style spiraling out from the original bronze.  Silhouettes of... slaves and those slaves made to dig trenches for the Confederate Army, of wounded soldiers of both armies, of lynching, of civil rights protesters and Dr. King, of Black Lives Matter and the Dallas police who were killed, and now, sadly, of Charlottesville.  There is also a local artist who might add projections to this ensemble, turning Lee and these contextual bronze cut-outs into screens for the continuing story of race in America.

I think that could turn a memorial of Jim Crow Dallas into a living, growing, and perhaps important art work pointing toward an America that lives up to its promise.

But now?

I'm afraid even great art might become only a magnet for alt.right, neo-Nazi, and the KKK.

I do wish we could keep just the horses.  Horses are innocent.

A mock-up of what the Lee statue might become... 

(After the art of Kara Walker.  If you haven't seen it, you MUST.  Powerful, powerful stuff.)

Whatever eventually becomes of Dallas' bronze Lee, his sidekick, and their beautiful horses, we citizens must now make perfectly clear:

Bigotry is wrong.  It betrays the soul of America.  

We reject it.

Anyone or any group that advocates bias or violence against anyone because of their race, color, religion, origin, gender or sexuality is unAmerican.  

ADDENDUM #1: Obviously, we need to change the name of the park back to its original one, Oak Lawn Park.

ADDENDUM #2:  Another suggestion for unwanted but historic statues, plant them together in a park like the Russians have... read the BoingBoing post HERE.

ADDENDUM # 3:  Complicated issue isn't it?  But I think a consensus is emerging that the confederate monuments should be removed.  Here are Stonewall Jackson's descendants' views, from an open letter to the Mayor of Richmond, Virginia :

"They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display."

ADDENDUM # 4:  This has been a pretty serious discussion - here's the flippant one:

ADDENDUM # 5:  Well, Dallas' General Lee statue is gone... removed to storage somewhere until, eventually, it goes to a museum.  

Let's let Lee himself have the last word.  When asked in 1869 whether there should be monuments at Gettysburg he answered:

"I think it wiser... not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavor to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

This Country

“this country—this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, restless, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, good, and magnificent country....  

What have we to lose by trying to work together to find those solutions? We’re not getting done much apart.”   Sen. John McCain

If you haven't watched Senator John McCain's heartfelt speech, you should.  HERE   

He's speaking to the Senate, but we should all apply his cry for bipartisanship to all our lives: talk to each other!  listen!  be open and work together to help each other and our country.

Battle for Net Neutrality

Call your representatives please.  Tell 'em you like your internet neutral!

Need more info?  Listen to comic John Oliver  HERE.

And, of course, you can only watch that video because we HAVE net neutrality... otherwise mine would be a   very   slow    lane    indeed.

Two Things...

Two completely unrelated things:

First:

Whenever you're shopping on Amazon, please consider using the Amazon Smile page HERE where you can select Kitchen Dog Theater as recipient of free money! (Amazon donates 0.5% of qualified purchases.)  

Please and Thank You!  We're saving to fix up our future Dog House so we appreciate every penny.

Second:

A lovely and timely quote from Henry David Thoreau...

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion...

till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place which we can call reality and say, 

"This is and no mistake."

Isn't that a wonderful image?  

Courtesy of PublicDomainPicture.net

Anyone who's ever sat on a riverbank wriggling their toes in the green-y mud down to the cool, water-smoothed limestone below, you know how reassuring that solid, non-slip footing is.

Today - when life and especially politics! - seem especially slimy with opinion and lies... well, a fact that's an actual FACT is a comfort.  I believe strongly that at this moment it is our civic duty to wriggle down through the muck to find truth.  

Then to act on that.

The surface under our feet is shifting at this moment - rules for healthcare, the environment, the internet, education, immigration, trade, foreign wars and relations - all  changing.  We need to let our legislators know what we need and want RIGHT NOW.  

We each need to figure out what truth we stand on.

(Thanks to Chris Tucker's review of the new Thoreau biography for reminding me of this Walden quote.  Time to reread that book... and to look for that new bio: Thoreau: a Life by Laura Dassow Walls.)

Color Names

Finding good names for colors is a vital skill for paint companies, but it's hard.  

I understand that, years ago, the endless torment of trying to decide whether to call that beige-y pink "Baby's Face Pink" or "Seashell Blush" drove one company to throw up its hands.  (Corporations are legally people, people generally have hands, ergo corporations have hands.)  They decided to just give colors numbers!  Briefly.  Because, turns out, #346-A7 doesn't sell as well as "Rhapsodic Red."

It's a problem.

Well, check out this post at Ars Technica on using artificial intelligence to take over the job...   HERE  Humans ain't outa work yet.

My favorite AI generated names might be "Cremper Viulet" or "Kold Of Tale" - which would make great fairy tale character names.  "Blue Child" (a pink) is a another favorite.  But "Copper Panty?" ...bet that name sells!

Believed public domain image - found HERE with others!

On the subject of corporations as people... one of my trusty art and set dressing supply sources, Hobby Lobby, has just been caught illegally buying Iraqi antiquities, with the money possibly funding Islamic terrorists.  This confused me because, um, why?  New selections in Home Decor?  Or in... Ceramics?  But it seems they're starting a Biblical museum.

Sigh.

I've been trying to overlook Hobby Lobby's no-workers-here-get-birth-control-'cause-religion stand on the theory that workers can quit (theoretically) if that offends them.  But I feel pretty strongly about knowingly fueling the stolen art market.  Plus, you know, terrorists.

So... 

Guess Michaels will be getting most of my business now.  

(Can't believe this, but I just took time to read Michaels' "Code of Business Conduct and Ethics" and to check their Better Business rating!  They sound good.  In fact, their "Code" seems admirable in content, presentation, and concrete examples.  I'll hope they follow it.) 

Theater doesn't just talk about ethics, it requires 'em.

Color Wheel

Going through some old files, I found this sketch for a class on interior design that I taught ages ago...

How'd That Turn Out?

Thought you might like a few pics of the completed Native Gardens set:

Native Gardens at WaterTower Theater - photo Gary DeVries

Native Gardens at WaterTower Theater - photo Gary DeVries

Native Gardens at WaterTower Theater - photo Gary DeVries

That's real dirt people, and (mostly) real plants.  A heroic job by the set-build crew!

Arts and Healthcare

One of the hazards of relatively bad pay (and artists mostly earn low pay!) is that it comes - if it comes at all - it comes with relatively bad healthcare too.

Whatever your politics, you need healthcare.

This is the week to talk to your U.S. Senator to remind them how important your health is.

A very young Statue of Liberty

(Well... a very young protester merged with that goddess for online anonymity)

I messed with her charming face and the background... but couldn't improve her sign.

Speak up!

I'm not kidding about the importance of good health - and the healthcare that helps preserve that blessing.  A good friend, a theater designer, died prematurely because he couldn't afford insurance and so went to the doctor much too late.

So.

Take care of yourself.  Find insurance you can afford (through a spouse's employer maybe? or the ACA while it lasts).  Eat well.  Sleep.  And don't fall off that ladder while you're "exercising"!

Cool

A fascinating explanation about creating coooool....

The MAYA design theory by Raymond Loewy at The Atlantic HERE.

car design by Raymond Loewy - public domain from the Library of Congress

Color War!

Wired has the best write-up I've seen on the feud between artists Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple over the rights to the blackest BLACK and the pinkest PINK. 

HERE.

Public domain image from Publicdomainpictures.net