I've been interviewed for other shows for all kinds of media - mostly print, but also radio and film/TV. Upcoming is my first for Instagram.
We'll see how it goes I guess?
I'll admit I'm nervous to be following the vid of the charming costume designer with the nuclear rats though... HERE
Can I add in a nuclear unicorn?
It seems that, whenever I get engrossed in a thing - an idea or a project - the world suddenly joins me by going along with the theme...
I'm sure that it's a matter of becoming sensitized to a subject and therefore noticing what you'd otherwise overlook. (Like the expectant parent suddenly noticing children everywhere!) Surely the world doesn't start stalking you? But, however it works, I'm being stalked by the subjects of Space and AI.
Well, AI is the subject everywhere right now... As regular, non-tech-first people begin to see and to understand AI's presence everywhere. And its growing threat to jobs, certainly, but more than that. (Threatening jobs is bad enough: no jobs means no money and no health insurance here in the US. And where will young career people get their experience, if AI does all the"easy" work? It's worth worrying about.)
And Space? I'm on quite a reading binge, having just discovered the Liaden Universe series, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. (Only 30 years late!) An excellent, page-turning, many-volumed space opera which I'm really enjoying... in that great "Oh. Is it 2:00 am?" way. Loving it! (I'd suggest starting with Agent of Change HERE.)
On a whim yesterday, one in my household (possibly tired of watching me read?) suggested we go to the matinee of the latest play at Kitchen Dog Theater: Absentee, by Julia Doolittle.
Really, really good! I'll put the blurb at the bottom of the page, if you're curious, but, basically, it's set in space and features AI. Chiming perfectly with my personal theme-of-the-moment. Life is funny that way. This is an excellent production: the script, the acting, and the production values! (I had to turn down designing this show and now I'm so sad. The set, by Brian Woffard, is wonderful! Now I'm having those envious doubts... would I have thought of a set this cool?!) The lighting too and... well, see for yourself. Grab a ticket!
Right now I'm reading two different books.
Both are newly published novels by authors I have never read before. Both books I heard about online.
Lately, at one place and time in my days, I'm reading - slowly - Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer. I'm reading it as a first edition, in hardback, and signed by the author, a luxury I hardly ever splurge on. But the author has a Pulitzer (impressive); the review I read (I forget where) was so enthusiastic; the cover design is so charming (I'm actually babying a dust cover, which I rarely bother with); and the characters, settings, and language are so delicious; that I visit the novel daily in the same way that I ration out a box of fine chocolate bonbons. I savor wonderful flavor and try to make the delight last.
Its Italy is beautiful. Not all that much is happening at Villa Coco, but I've met fascinating characters and I've learned about olive harvesting. Autumn is advancing in lovely description - as the main character says, "I am not the first to comment on the poignant beauty of autumn, or the gold-edged pages of its days."
Highly reccomend.
The second book is different in every way I can think of off hand; I'm enjoying it just as much, but differently. Phantom Signals is, I understand, the first fantasy novel in a series called Code and Stone by M. P. Moorland, an IT engineer who (classic motivation!) wrote the book he wanted to read. I heard about it online. If I'm honest, this may be the only time I have ever had my curiousity roused to the point of actually buying the book by an author's pitch and a book website with a sample chapter. Out of amazement, as much as anything, I bought the ebook to tryout. I'm enjoying it!
A mix of IT and magic? aliens? mysterious weirdness? This modern London seems to be suffering from bugs in its oldest operating program. So far the story is, for me, a compulsive read that kept me up until 2:00 am last night.
In feeling it reminds me very much of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, although the more I poke at that comparison, the more differences I see. I'm only about halfway through my read. I can't allow myself to start again today until I finish a few other things, because I know now I won't be able to stop until I finish the book. (High praise! I love a page-turner.) So this book, for me, is another sort of chocolate experience... something compulsive, like M&Ms maybe? Something to binge on.
Recommend! I hope this first novel is just the first in a loooong successful series.
I also recommend this kind of book juggling.
If you have the mental bandwidth - life can be too hectic for this - it's really satisfying to have a book at hand to suit your mood of the moment. Not just stories either. A thick non-fiction tome or an art book sitting by your armchair to wander through in an idle moment is wonderful too. Over time those moments add up: you may find that you absorbed more of a serious topic than you would have predicted.
My non-fiction go-to at the moment is An Atlas of Imagined Islands, edited by Huw Lewis-Jones. This gorgeously illustrated survey of places that don't exist starts with an illustration of a sky-island by Chris Riddell and a quote from Shakespeare:
I think he will carry this island home in his pocket
and give it to his son for an apple.
And sowing the kernels of it in the sea,
bring forth more islands.
It's been a very rich reading year for me so far...
REALLY?
More than a million Texans have been dropped from the voters' rolls. Please make sure you're not one of them!
And how about all y'all in other states? Be sure. Be very sure.
CHECK NOW
My next show will be a treat!
The playwright specifically calls for the set to be a school children's library... as it might be designed by legendary architect Julia Morgan. The first woman to to be admitted to the architecture program at l'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first female architect licensed in California. Most famous for designing Hurst Castle. (Go check her out at Wikipedia!)
More than that, her buildings are beautiful - designed in a unique blend of 19th century Beaux Arts style mixed with a California sensibility and material palette.
Just found this funny photo... my paint pants and shoes.
An interview with artist Yoshiko Yamamoto, whose woodblock prints amaze me!
I'll include just one of her prints here to give you the idea of her Craftsman / Japanese style:
I've been designing and drawing maps for a series of fantasy books that a friend and I have been writing. Maps are fascinating, and making them is fun.
But a different friend just brought my attention to this amazing art map!
Watch the video. Really. It's long, and it's worth the time. From People Make Games:
"He Won't Stop Building a Map to an Imaginary Place
The enormous, wonderful, ever-changing, gameified, art map of Jerry Gretzinger!
Well, I'm back in town and back in the theater.
While I was away the Stage West production of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine was delayed a week... so I was able to watch the Designer Run yesterday.
Tomorrow I'll be hitting the discount fabric stores along Harry Hines looking for fabric for a seance tablecloth.
Nice to be home!
Today's America?
It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
Brought to my attention by Ron Charles, former book critic for the murdered Washington Post. An interesting take on the recent shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Well, the first draft of the next book is kinda done - mostly done - sorta...
Sssssh.... It's resting.
Which, honestly kills me. I know it's a good idea, necessary even, to let a manuscript rest and cool down a bit before you start working on it again. Just as it is a good idea with any design to walk away for a few days and then come back to it. (That's when that stupid thing smites you in the eye. "How did I not see that?" you exclaim.) Rest is needed.
But.
I hate it.
So I'm moving on to making illustrations.
I've needed to cut back on theater work for the next few months, but I'll be staying busy with other projects. The biggest of these is writing a sequel to a novel that a friend and I co-wrote last year!
A fantasy novel set in the world of Aenoriia.
That's the world I've been showing you in Minecraft form since... well, since I discovered it during covid. Then (also in a break from theater work) I joined an international group of Minecrafters building a fantasy city... now a continent. And now a novel. Or two...
Not quite ready to pull the tarp off of that first novel yet (still tinkering under its hood), but pretty soon now, once I've formatted the ebook, and built the website, and solved a fussy little technical glitch... (You know those stripey scanner codes on the backs of books? Eeeevil little things!)
But.
Today I'm working on the map for Book 2, so, as a teaser, here is the map from Book 1,
AKA
Ptolith in the Time of Rain
If you want to see / learn more about Aenoriia, check out these sites:
Art and life sometimes come uncomfortably close.
Sitting through the Designer Run of Kitchen Dog Theater's new play, Dream Hou$e, was...
was weird was what it was.
The premise is that two sisters who recently lost their mother and inherited the long-time family home agree to let a reality TV show rennovate it for sale.
The IRL is that two designers who recently lost their mothers and have/had to deal with the family home watched and tried to seem all professional an' stuff. (Basically, not weep all over the rest of the design team.)
Sometimes theater hits too close to the bone.
I have a visceral memory of watching another play called The Marriage of Betty & Boo, decades ago when I was very pregnant. I have no remembrance of what happened in that play - except that every couple minutes (it seemed like) Betty would have another miscarraige and the actors would bounce a rubber baby doll off the stage. That I remember.
(The other couple, who had picked the play, apologized to the pregnant lady all the way home.)
And I know of at least one person who saw I play I designed, Natural Shocks, who told me later that it had shown her that she needed to get out of bad relationship.
It's not just safely sitting in a plush theater seat where this happens either...
On a trip to Europe once, when I happened to be in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, actually, on a free day with nothing planned... I got a call from a theater asking whether I was interested in designing The Diary of Anne Frank?
What are the odds of that?
Of course I said yes. And, suddenly, the day had a plan: visit Anne Frank's house, or rather, the warehouse where her family hid during WWII. Which I had intended not to see. Because wimp.
So I toured the Frank's hiding place and felt all the things I had intended not to feel... But, because I was viewing this site professionally, I had just that little bit of distance that allowed me to be touched but not... well, blubber in public.
The other night, watching that Designer Run? I wrapped myself in professionalism. I took notes and, when the actresses cut too close to the bone, I sketched a random sketch.
Dream Hou$e, Kitchen Dog Theater, playing now!
Well THAT month rushed by!
Since the New Year, two shows (and a wicked lingering cough)...
Now on stage: Pompeii!! at Kitchen Dog Theater in our new home!
And Arsenic and Old Lace at Pocket Sandwich Theatre
Some recent advice I'm trying out: ask yourself in the morning what the best thing was about yesterday.
My yesterday was pretty good, so lots to choose from. But my fav moment was probably when I was painting and aging planks for decks for the set of Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming Pompeii!! (opening Feb. 12th!) and I got to hand our TD a cheeseborough. (In highly technical language, this thingie is a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector.)
I finally got an answer to a long-nagging question:
"Why are these called cheeseboroughs?"
Apparently, the word "Cheeseborough" is, or was, often stamped right across the thingie. And, as it was much easier to ask for it by that moniker than to ask for "a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector" that became its nickname. But the nickname also has a nickname... to Americans "cheeseborough" easily morphs to "cheeseburger" then to "burger."
So in a theater you'll occasionally hear a lighting guy call out, "Hand me a burger!"
PS Ha! But why is it stamped "Cheeseborough" you ask? Apparently that's the name of the area of England and the foundry that makes 'em.
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 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.
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!
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