Back-N-Forthing

One aspect of designing and building a theater set - or any other design field with a "client" - is the on-going negotiation that goes on throughout the whole process.  At the moment on the The Frequency of Death! build, one of the questions being negotiated is whether sound booth doors have "glass" (or Plexiglass TM) in them.

At stake are issues of realism in the set (glass looks realer and what's more, actors won't accidentally put their hands through it... which looks unreal) plus adding a little variety in gloss (a whole world as flat paint gets dull) versus the possibility that glass will reflect lights and create a problem.  Glare can be a BIG problem.  As an example, look at this photo of a very cool glass stage - see that white reflection?

Photo of glass stage borrowed from Made-in-China.com  Cool, huh?

The solution I'm proposing right now - 'cause the builder needs to build right now - is that we use the plexi, but make it easily removable.

Designer's Life -The Secret

This! is the reason artists accept serious underpayment, that inventors keep tinkering in their basements, or guys who work in commercial laundries go home to their own laundry rooms to type novels...

The  joy! when things fall into place, the plot thickens, the painting coalesces, the inspired metaphor falls from... the air?... the muse?... from who-knows-where? onto blank paper.

Frabjious Days.


Progress on my project.  (I'll tell you what it is later - don't want to jinx it.)  Meanwhile: Callooh!  Callay!

(The guy in the commercial laundry?  Stephen King in the early days.  Read his On Writing.  "Frabjous"?  Read Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.)