Sunday, December 19, 2021

OK, OK, OK, It's Been A While

A lot has been happening with me... but little of it theater related, hence the looooong pause between blog posts here.  

(Quick non-theater update: I've driven to Seattle and California and back; stayed with family; celebrated holidays; finished a remodeling; Minecrafted; and read, including the thick doorstop bricks Stephen King's It and the new Diana Gabaldon in the Outlander series, Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone.  Oh and, professionally interesting if personally sad, I got to walk round a newly burned-down home - not mine - and saw first hand what that looks like.  My next "burned-out" set will be more realistic.)

But I've got - still as of this date - a new show to design, To the Breeches! at Stage West in Fort Worth, which opens in June.  And I have been asked to mentor 2-3 set design students this spring.  Fantastic!

There are signs that theater is returning to something more like normal - despite Broadway opening and closing due to covid like a blinking marque lightbulb.  (The Rockettes have had to cancel Christmas shows!).  It is, I guess, heartwarming? to see that not even theater critics have killed off by a mere plague in the playhouses...?  I mean, unkind theater artists might have pictured drama critics gnawing over old bones, fingering brittle old clippings of past reviews, and quietly starving for lack of new shows, but no!  They were only sharpening their teeth on those bones!  Critics yet live!

Washington Post theater critic, Pater Marks, just wrote a STINKER of a review for a new Broadway musical.  I have not seen the show so I have no idea if this review is accurate or fair, I'm only heartened to see that theatrical criticism is even now pawing the ground, er, auditorium carpet, to sink its teeth into its work.  

I'll quote the first couple rabid sentences shall I?

"In the category of bad trips, few Broadway offerings at the moment (thus saving ink for later disembowelings of other shows, see?) can compete with "Flying Over Sunset," the turgid new musical about celebrities on LSD."

"Turgid," in the very first sentence too!  

Then the reviewer compliments set designer Beowulf Borritt and projection designers 59 Productions with "smartly realized" before declaring the show as a whole "an entertainment about as scintillating as an Agriculture Department instructional video on crop irrigation."  (Thereby guaranteeing resentment between the director and the complimented designers.  Sigh.  I suggest Mr. Borritt and the 59 folks print out this review, frame it, then hide it somewhere no one else will ever ever see it except, sometimes, themselves when they need a little boost, as when, say, a future director is being annoying.)

Oh, it goes on...  "tedious," "long-winded and impossibly earnest," "unremarkable score," "lumbering book," "the terrible lyric,"  (he's right there, it IS a terrible lyric, "I am a giant penis rocket ship!"  WT...Heck?).  "With so little plot..." etc. etc. 

You get the idea: 

Theater Criticism Is Back, Baby! 


 

Saturday, September 18, 2021

A Break in the Drought

 It rained the other night.  

Here in a fire-weather parched landscape came a few minutes of rain... creating the rich smell of hot dust meeting raindrops as it turns into damp earth.  There wasn't enough time to rush out to dance in it. but I stuck my head and arms out the window and laughed.

Later that day... my first invitation to design a stage show in what will be two years.


That fertile and heady smell of first rain on dry earth has a name: petrichor.

It's intoxicating.



Saturday, May 8, 2021

Kitchen Dog Fund Raiser Auction


 Celebrate Kitchen Dog Theater's 30th Anniversary (30 = Pearls) - the grittiest theater in Dallas!

Join the auction HERE or donate if you wish!


Friday, May 7, 2021

Coming Soon...

 Once again I'm behind on writing here - but at least this time it's because I been doin' stuff!

(Not theater stuff, don't get overexcited, but stuff at least.)  Latest project is a rag doll mermaid for a young friend of mine.  Lots of Minecraft city building on Illias HERE, some basement plans, and some seriously frustrating Sketchup modeling of a beach house!  (Roof geometries are defeating me.  So from now on I decree "Only Flat Roofs!") 

And now vaccinated, there start to be Out Of The House Adventures!  I can't tell you how welcome these are.  And, pretty soon, I'll report on my big trip to an art museum to see the architectural exhibit there.  Fun times!

 Though there's no theater on my desk at the moment, I do still have an audience:


Bobblehead Bard says "Hi!"


Sunday, April 18, 2021

Olden Times

 I just stumbled across this 2005 NPR story on theater design that featured WaterTower Theatre in Addison.

This was the first time I was interviewed on radio.  A surreal experience.  The interviewer, Bob Mondello, was nice... and about six feet taller than I was.  The  sound stage was tiny - barely two chairs wide - but the microphone was huge - the size of a cantalope.  And I brought a drawing - "for radio?" he asked, but I had some logic actually, I wanted him to understand the design so he could ask better questions, which, afterwards he admitted was helpful.  

I haven't listened to it yet, so listen with me...

Flexible Theater Design and Intimacy Audience

Monday, April 5, 2021

A Fresh Spring Start

Took a walk by a lake today - all fresh breeze, the jingle of boat rigging, glow-fresh green leaves, and the crunchy remains of Easter cascarones underfoot, bits of colored egg shells and confetti.  

I wish you all an equally happy expression of Spring!


In Texas everyone over the age of 16 is now eligible for the vaccine.  Like trying to explain the feeling of Spring, I cannot express the lightness and relief of the vaccination, of knowing you're protected and that you are no longer a danger to others.  I was carrying at least ten pounds of concern around with me all this long year.  

Please, go get the shot - it's the easiest way to lose excess weight that I know of!


Feel the Spring breeze...  

Thursday, April 1, 2021

A Past How-To on Set Building

 I happened across an old web page of mine, a How-To on set building aimed at beginning theater designers and builders: "Theater Set Questions Answered!".  You can check it out HERE on Hub Pages.

I'm starting to read a new (to me) book, Stage Designers in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Christin Essin.  More a history and cultural study than a visual essay, it's very interesting so far...

Other intriguing reading and watching lately: comedian Colin Jost's memoir A Very Punchable Face; David Sedaris's memoir Theft by Finding; essays/demonstrations/rants/performance art? YouTube videos by Karolina Z'ebrowska (for a funny version of a film costume design production meeting watch "Boobs"); and the vid essays of Jacob Geller.  I particularly recommend (to scenic design fans) "The Intimacy of Everday Objects," "Control, Anatomy, and the Legecy of the Haunted House," and also "Art Theft."  But, honestly, they're all great.

If you're missing production meetings, here below is a tiny taste.  (Honestly, I've always been a bit shocked by the blunt talk by costume designers... this is actually kinda... mild.)


Addendum:  How to document a dream - the resin diaramas of Thalasso hobbyer HERE.



Thursday, March 25, 2021

Here's a First

 A second post on the same day?  From Ms-Too-Depressed-To-Blog?  But then I found this quote from playwright Tracy Letts (in the NY Times):

"I can’t do the computer theater, it’s too depressing for me, and I’ve turned down a couple of on-camera jobs because I am just as scared of this virus as I was a year ago. Creatively, I’m lost." ...  "I’m guessing there are some other artists who identify."

THIS.

I identify.

Possibly the Most Covid Day Yet, But in a Good Way

 One day last week I started the day with a wild party!

In Minecraft (so a virtual party), but a party!  We wore party hats, had a bounce house, party favors (rainbow color changing sheep), cake!  Well, we couldn't actually eat the cake (because virtual) but we fed the cake to virtual pandas who could virtually eat the virtual cake.  Other refreshments.  We inaugerated the Palace Ballroom with a dance party!  Real music from virtual jukeboxes and real dancing by virtual parrots!  Minecraft avatars can only sorta bob up and down, but we'll call it "dancing."  And we built a piano... all the stuff you do at parties!  

It was surprisingly fun.

And then I put on my mask and left to get my second shot of the miraculous vaccine.

What could be more happy-pandemic than that?

Switching topics slightly: here's the last of those Minecraft avatar portraits, this time for my guy.



I like the way Bart here is completely unaware that if he succeeds in maiming this kraken-squid that he's going to shipwreck and die...  Also, as a fellow player pointed out, Minecraft squids are non-aggressive creatures in the first place.

This portrait series has been huge fun to do!

The world I'm working in, Illias, started as a pandemic project.  It certainly became an important project for me during thiese last months.  Sanity saving probably.

If you're curious, HERE is a link to Astrophagy's You Tube videos.  And a little taster vid, "Running the Canals of Illias":


In... I almost typed "the real world", but this was, in fact, virtual too, kinda, Kitchen Dog Theater recently produced an online video play Last Ship to Proxima Centari.  (I should have promoted this here earlier - but never mind, check them out to see up-coming theater!)  I wasn't involved with this one, but I enjoyed it and thought it worked pretty well in the online format.  So theater IS continuing in some fashion.  

I did take part in their most recent Craft  episode, to talk about the development and design of the then new play End Times.  Two more episodes coming! May 20th and June 17th.  I really enjoyed being part of the conversation between the playwright, the director, and the designers.  The old video clips of me were strange to watch though: I don't think I said anything particularly dumb, but I did look younger and My Studio Was So Clean!  It was uncanny!

It made me feel homesick for theater.  

But theater is coming back.  And meanwhile there's a Minecraft city to build!


Friday, March 19, 2021

Again With The Portraits

Still amusing myself with Minecraft avatar portraiture... 

Drawings by Clare Floyd DeVries


Thanks to MCXopjesh and redsatchmo#6147 for letting me share these sketches here. (And to the others: Astrophagy, John73x, and Dolphinboy19 for the previous post.)

Don't you love people's nom de internets?  Online tags are always interesting!  

But, once email became mostly a work utility, I noticed all the wilder or ruder tags got very... boring.  Just too embarrassing to explain to employers or grandmas.  So a colorful online personality gets reduced from a weird tag on Reddit to... j.doe57481@bigbiz.com on gmail.  Just sad.


Saturday, March 13, 2021

Getting My Hand Back In

As I'm ramping myself back up towards Efficient and Purposeful, I'm trying to do more drawing.

Today's fun little project was a few portraits - action poses! - of friends' Minecraft avatars:




Inspired by (which is pronounced, "kind-a ripp-ed-off from") the wonderful illustrations that medieval scribes decorated the edges of texts with.  Combined with MC avatar designs, of course.  

Fun!

 

Thursday, March 11, 2021

A Year Besieged

 Today marks a year of Covid-19 in the U.S.

For me that means a year and 2 days ago I returned from a trip to California, getting my elderly mother back home just before the country closed down.  She had been visiting Texas, had accidentally broken an arm just before flying home, and went through the whole painful process of recovering - well, the first stage of hospitals and rehab - all juuuuust before covid.  Thank god.  We didn't know it, but it would be months before she could have repair surgery and recovered from that.  A painful year - with isolation and worry as frosting.

For me it means a year and 5 days since I was in a theater.  Watching an excellent production of Proof at Murphys Creek Theater in Murphys, California.  (I once designed that show and really liked this production's set!)  A year and eighteen days since I watched the last show I designed: Alabaster at Kitchen Dog Theater, Dallas.  I missed its strike while in California, but that show, my last show, closed a year and two days ago.

Haven't stepped on stage since.

Proof - at Plano Repertory Theatre - sketch & design by Clare Floyd DeVries

So what's different in daily life since a year ago?

While drinking coffee in my car (because coffee shops are not a thing for me nowadays) I jotted down the top few examples:

1)  Masks.  After more than half a million dead in this country, our governor has canceled the state's mask requirement.  (Texas ranks 5th most in the country in new infections.)  Yet today I wore a mask in the coffee hut's drive-though line - as did the coffee hut staff - and then drank it in my car.  I was drinking coffee because someone in my family forgot to take masks this morning for work so I met them part way with masks.  Coffee as good-deed-award!  Then, driving home, I saw two friends walking together in a park, both wearing masks.  Take that, Governor Abbott!  Or, as my favorite comment from the mayor of Austin put it: 

 “From the people who brought you no water and no electricity: no masks.”

Among sensible Texans masks are still a thing.

2)  Distancing.  My household is still cautious, Mr. Governor, sir.  Even though, due to our zip code, we have recently had the first of two vaccine shots.  But we are going out more than a year ago.  This week we ate out twice: once at an early, uncrowded hour on the patio of a favorite restaurant and again one evening at a picnic table outside a fish place.  The pizza was great and the sun that day lovely; the oyster po'boy was also good, but darkness fell and a cool breeze sprang up so that meal was hastier.  Still nice to eat food I didn't personally cook. I'm so tired of my own cooking.  Hot French fries!  Ambrosia!

Since my first vaccine shot I made a couple not-absolutely-necessary excursions.  Well, one.  A bookstore.  It wasn't crowded and I wore a mask and didn't touch much, but I didn't feel I had to grab-n'-go either which was wonderful.  Other than that it's just the grocery store once a week.  Two weeks after I get my second shot I'm planning to first, get a haircut! (it's been since, um, September?) and, second, try on blue jeans.  (I've been living in one pair for a year, wearing PJs or my formal black jeans while THE jeans go round and round in the washing machine and dryer.)  

Sadly, I figured out early on that the most patriotic, helpful thing I personally could do for my fellow citizens in this pandemic was to just stay out of the forking way.  I keep virus from spreading and keep stores uncrowded by staying home.  Sigh.  

3)  Stores.  Stores have changed from a year ago.  Our grocery shelves are mostly full again... kinda.  There's toilet paper!  But fewer brands.  That's true of every shelf - fewer brands and some empty spots where a particular item has run out and not yet been restocked.  Or won't be.  Plenty of hand sanitizer and TP... but no rubbing alcohol.  Lots of soup this week (that aisle was stripped bare during Texas' Deep Freeze!), but fewer brands.  Odds of finding your favorite flavor are iffy.  My store has stopped stocking my favorite tea (Twining's Jasmine Green Tea if you're wondering).  Since it's obvious they don't plan on stocking it again, I'm now ordering it online in big boxes.  I think most folks have an item or twenty they just get online now.  I've noticed grocery can aisles are shorter than in the Before Time, whereas prepared or partially prepared (chopped veg or kits and such) have much more supermarket real estate.  (This struck me as funny during our Deep Freeze weeks.  A friend stocked up for upcoming arctic weather... with freezer/refrigerator food.  The power outage surprised her.  Me, with my weather-proof, unpowered cans, was sympathetic.)

4)  Family and Friends.  A year of Zoom and Skype calls, or regular ol' phone calls, of emails, texts, and, oddly paper letters! later, many casual friendships have disappeared, but other relationships persist.  Now and then I'll synchronize making a cup of coffee with a friend and we'll chat and sip, connected by voices over the aether. It kinda works.  An unexpected problem though: when no one goes anywhere or sees anyone... there's less to talk about.  I've heard about one friend's exciting recent activity four times now - and I react like it's new! every time! because it's just so nice to hear their voice.  On the plus side, I've discovered that it really is possible to make new friends online.  (Carefully, obviously, but it's possible and welcome!)

The hard part is when there is a health issue - as with older relatives there necessarily will be.  Travel by air or car between states is difficult and discouraged; some states have quarantines that add expense and delay; and then hospitals mostly do not allow family to visit.  I'm not arguing with these safety rules!  I only point out that they are hurdles.  I know of folks dealing with illnesses, deaths, funerals, and settling estates during this pandemic... the process is even more painful than before.  And, honestly, this is in a family that's been blessedly, lightly touched by covid, losing one person to date, not more.  And also, for the most part, blessedly untouched by the economic fallout too. 

5) Economy and Society.  The economic fallout from covid is very real.  I see it most, personally, in the state of theater, which is Closed. (I'm out of work, yes, but I'm still housed and fed so I'm grateful.  Others?  Not so lucky.)  Theater will come back - with or without me.  Part-reason for my confidence about that is that more covid-relief seems to be finally on its way from Washington.  That will help.  Vaccinations, proceeding faster now, will help too.  Theater can't reopen until the pandemic is controlled.  The greater political situation... well, who knows?  No one, that's who.  But it looks more hopeful than it did a year ago.

So.  A strange year passing.  And, approaching, comes a strange new "normal."

I look forward to it hopefully.


Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Tchotskies

 A few actor colleagues talking over old shows online remembered the set  I designed for I'll Pray For You So Hard which was a densely lived in NYC kitchen.  

Its admirable carpenter (and ditto actor) Drew Wall posted this continuity photo for when the set had to relocate.

I'll Pray For You So Hard by Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Drew Wall

(This difficult relocation was due to Fire Marshall issues.  Dallas stages were getting raided round about then for permitting issues.  This was just after the city-wide raids for fire exit issues at art galleries and months after the exceeding-occupancy raids on party rental spaces that left weeping 15 year old girls watching their quinceaneras kicked out...  I'm all for fire safety!  But there was something going on just then politically I suspect.)

Back to the tchotskies...

The official term is "set dressing" and, for certain shows, it can be the heart of the design.  For this show it was all about convincing the audience that this space was real, real lived-in, and deteriorating under the pressure... pretty much a metaphor for the whole father-daughter relationship onstage.


(This deterioration thankfully allowed me to disguise the corner of the set where I botched the wallpaper as wrinkled due to a "water leak," which ruse I amplified by dripping dirty paint water and, if I remember right, some cold Starbucks that was just sitting around.)

Other sets, other sorts of set dressing - whether bare, or just ordinary, or hoarder-level, as in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, for which I special ordered Tatos potato crisps... just to scatter the empty packages around.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Kitchen Dog Theater 

In case you're wondering, I can do sparely dressed too...


Radiant Vermin, also at Kitchen Dog Theater



Saturday, March 6, 2021

New Leaf Turned

 Another fresh green blog post!  Woohoo!

I thought I'd show you this theater work in Sketchup - a (complicated!) 3D model for the old version of that hypnosis show.  Done in a steampunk style, which is rather fun to design!



(This is a not-quite-complete model.)  Note that the central 'droid face was... interesting... to learn to draw.  I have to say that this project is improving my Sketchup skills!

For this particular client the 3D model is essential - 2D drawings just don't communicate well for them.  And, though a physical model would also work, they prefer computer graphics stylistically and, since there have been more changes than with some shows, now, for this job, I prefer CAD too!  It is somewhat easier to modify.  (Mind you, the weird way these CAD models can stretch like taffy while making changes needs a little adjusting to... after the first freakout!)

I did say my Sketchup skills were improving, yes?


Friday, March 5, 2021

Clearly, I'm Not Going to Get Anything Done Today

 At least I'll finish a blog post!

Not sure what to do with this blog.  It's dedicated to theater set design, with off-shoots into literature and other arts, but not much theater is happening nowadays.

Hence the loooong pause between posts.

To be honest, I've felt depressed and unproductive much of this past year.  A weird, difficult year.  (Mine has been easier than for many - for which I'm thankful.)  But my Blog, like myself, lost its impetus.  

What to do?  Not sure.  For now, I'll just write when - like today - something nudges me.  

So here a few theater design adjacent thoughts:

1) The controversy about that Nazi-symbol-shaped stage at CPAC.  

I think the design was deliberate.  As a set designer I know coincidences happen (I once designed a perfectly innocent sofa one reviewer saw as... something less innocent, ha!).  But I don't believe it here.  Two reasons: first, the awkward "sandtrap" drop offs the stage shape created were a hazard for people on stage and an extra expense... why?  Second and decisive to me, that triangle of red carpet upstage center was what turned the stage shape into the drawn-in-blue-carpet symbol.  That was deliberate. If that bit of red carpet was accidental then why on earth, once the design was questioned, wasn't it replaced with blue?  Quick, easy, defuses the resemblance.  The hotel should have insisted.  The CPAC organizers should have insisted.  THE DESIGNER should have insisted.  I, myself, would have painted that triangle blue myself once I realized!

2)  My own recent non-Nazi design energies have been going into a Minecraft city building project, Illias, The Alabaster Citadel.  You can see videos HERE at Astrophagy MC on You Tube.


It's been a real designer-sanity-saver, a great pleasure, and an unexpected bit of human-contact in my otherwise hermit-y daily life.  Here are a few snapshots...








Various neighborhoods where I've been building (above) and a secret grotto (below):



All images courtesy of Astro and his shaders.  I appreciate him letting me play in his sandbox!

3)  Otherwise?  I'm sketching on a potential hypnosis show and a real life basement remodel and beach house.  Slow progress - mostly mood induced, honestly.  Though Texas' Deep Freeze slowed everyone down.  (Strangely hard to draw in an unpowered, below freezing studio.  Who'd a' guessed?)

4)  But Spring is coming!  The power is back on.  My pipes didn't burst.  The pandemic is... well, improving from terrible and vaccines are now a thing.  Hope for improvement!  (If our idiot governor's repeal of all covid control measures doesn't ruin that hope.  Seriously?)  

With this outward improvement my mood too is brightening.  I'll plant tomatoes again - those were entertaining.  I'll start to drawing a little faster and when my "What's The Point?" meter resets, I'll start in again on the revisions and expansions to my set design book, Alice Through the Proscenium.  (Meanwhile the First Ed. is available HERE at Lulu.com.)

5)  Also meanwhile, lunch is still a nice thing and I'm going to go eat mine in the sunshine.

Then draw.







Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Studio Organization

 Not quite Spring yet here, but waaaaaay past time to clean up my studio.

I just took a "Before" picture, but I won't publish it until I have an "After" to mitigate the horror.  Let this Piranesi prison stand in for my mess temporarily...


Giovanni Battista Piranesi - his "Prison" series - Wikimedia

 




Thursday, January 21, 2021

Inauguration

The days before and absolutely after violent insurrection in the Capitol! felt like carrying a teacup, a precious, antique see-the-light-through-it porcelain teacup, a teacup that your grandmother treasured, a teacup that traveled by ox cart across the prairie from the East to California, a delicate, cracked, heirloom teacup cradled in your hands... as you walk through a dark room filled with random chairs and scatter rugs and black cats toward the safe kitchen light in a doorway...  Just an awful fragile feeling.  


Yesterday's inauguration makes all kinds of new, good things possible.

Just like this public domain teacup image is ready for anything!


Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Well, That was... Exciting?

 Let's just hope the crazy gets toned down once the presidents switch out, huh?

Meanwhile: a cool architecture project, "super adobe" domes in Hormuz by ZAV Architects  HERE.

What have I been up to?  Starting (finally! because I find armed insurrection distracting, don't you?) to revise the 3D model for an in-the-future show I'm working on.  Since the design has changed, I think it's okay to publish the old version here.


Other than this, there's no theater on my board... except a sketch for reorganizing a theater's closet.  Seriously.  But I am deep into Masterclass videos, currently watching David Mamet and most recently finishing writers Malcom Gladwell, Margaret Atwood, and David Sedaris as well as artist Jeff Koons.  I am learning A LOT.  

A little reading too: I'm half way through Michelle Obama's Becoming which is as interesting as I kept hearing people say.  And I finished Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote the great Station Eleven.  Love that book!  The new one is very good... but doesn't, somehow, resonate with me as much as her earlier dystopian pandemic novel.  I'm also going, day by day, through Lin-Manuel Miranda's book (illustrated by Jonny Sun) of tweets, Gmorning, Gnight.  Which, as I hoped and planned, are helping raise my mood.

Mood.  

That's my biggest challenge lately.  The cumulative effect of the past year has rather dampened my usual cheery optimism and (sporadically) bustling work ethic.  A little cabin-fevered.  Kinda depressed.  Actually.  

But Spring cometh.

Meanwhile, I'm building a mood-protecto buttress of good books and films (and bi-weekly virtual/distanced Movie Night hurrah!) and, you know, making myself take walks and wash dishes and Do Work and stuff.  I hope you all are being careful and cheerful-as-possible too.

Movie Night films so far?  Desperately Seeking Susan, Office SpaceBig Trouble in Little China, Kung Fu Hustle, and up-coming, Love and Death.



Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Catch-Up Post

 What, you ask, have I been up to in that long blank period when I wasn't posting here?

Sadly, it wasn't theater.  Theater is shut.  

But it did include a lot of Minecraft building - a sanity-saving outlet for design energy this past year.  And here's a You Tube vid to prove it:



The server is hosted by Astrophagy who recruited four others (so far) to help him build a city he first imagined in a D&D game.  I love turning story into settings so, you know, perfect!  And I've been building a lot on another friend's server too - I'll post a few pictures later.

Other adventures include a strange and wonderfully Outside-of-My-House! driving trip to the west coast back in October/November.  Travel now... well, I wouldn't travel now... but those few months ago the virus was in a bit of a lull and we were very very careful.  Fantastic!  We safely saw family and got some work done on a remodel and just generally enjoyed the out-of-houseness of it all - before returning to lock the house door behind us again, basically.  The trip feels like year ago already.  Quiet holidays.  

Back to quarantine.  It's getting very bad in Dallas.

I do have a few small projects to finish and a big writing project - the second edition of Alice Through the Proscenium to get back to.  

Waiting for spring...  Can you believe my confused tomato plant has three tiny tomatoes on it?