In Brief...

Busy drawing and thinking here: revisions on [title of show] and first sketches on Exit, Pursued by a Bear.

Mostly thinkin'.

The trick for me with Exit, Pursued by a Bear is that it follows another "kitchen" show.  This kitchen needs to look very different from that kitchen... and yet there I am starting with same thrust stage with the same single upstage wall to line up kitchen cabinets and appliances on and the exact same sink/stove/refrigerator.  Even the same counter peninsula is called for!

Hard to make this kitchen look strikingly different.

(Speaking of a kitchen's "look," I was very pleased to hear that playwright Tom Dudzik , who wrote Miracle on South Division Street, saw a photo of my set and said it "looked just like his grandmother's kitchen.")

Photo courtesy of (I think) Circle Theatre

Up-Dating

Lots of stuff going on:

Se Llama Cristina is open at Kitchen Dog and starting to get good reviews.  (Go see it!)  I'm very happy with the way the set and  lighting and sound interact, especially when the walls I painted become screens for lights, projections, and shadows.

Miracle on South Division Street is a'building.  I delivered paint chips and answers to the carpenters last week; today I go back to Fort Worth to help find furniture and to attend a production meeting.  I hope to find fabric for kitchen curtains to bring along.  Oh!  and my one and only Polish folk art coffee mug.  I really like this script.

MOVIES:  Summer blockbusters are starting.  The latest Star Trek was both fun and disappointing: on the one hand, the actors and writers have the classic characters down and it was a real pleasure to watch 'em, on the other... the movie slid into generic chase-n-crash mode.  (Star ships, cars, transformers, whatever, it zooms till it booms, you've seen it before.)  Afterwards I read a good review that I can't find now which articulated my dissatisfaction - the film has the elements of Star Trek, but misses the point of Star Trek, the peaceful explorers and ambassadors philosophy.  Instead, every dilemma was solved by violence just like in every other space/western/Rambo/whatever summer shoot 'em up.  Someone needs to get a committed pacifist into the writers' room!

See the new Star Trek... but then go home and watch Galaxy Quest.

(Someone unexpected - David Mamet I think? - called Galaxy Quest a perfect movie.)

Oh!  BIG NEWS!
I've picked up a couple shows to design in San Francisco.  Isn't that cool?