Pen Award-Winner!

Wonderful!

Se Llama Cristina, a play by Octavio Solis which Kitchen Dog Theater produced last year (and I got to set design) has just won the prestigious Pen Literary Award for Drama!

Se Llama Cristina by Octavio Solis

This photo by Matt Mrozek shows actors Vanessa DeSilvio, Israel Lopez and the shadow of Jeremy Schwartz.  

Also my set... "mine" meaning many, many people's actually.  Christie Vela directed.

The American Room

Just a fast snippet on the topic of the anthropology of interior design.

HERE's a fascinating little piece on that off-white All-American room you see in all those You Tube vids.

Saddening, really, all those bland, bland suburban rooms.  I suppose I should put one onstage, but it'd be too boring to stare at for two hours.  (The article mentions that problem in passing, actually.)  Here's the closest I've come lately to that vanilla room - for Se Llama Cristina at Kitchen Dog Theater.

Se Llama Cristina, Kitchen Dog Theater, sorry, I'm not sure of the photographer.

Miscellany

A few short catch-up posts:

1)  I've been doing some traveling lately.  New York City (read about it HERE) and - a quite different trip - to San Marcos and San Antonio this last weekend.

I haven't visited the old Aquarena Springs in San Marcos since I was a kid on a field trip.  The mermaids are gone now and so is the diving pig; I'm rather sad about that.  But, having now seen the de-kitsched springs... I have to agree that under the university's new management, the natural beauty of these springs and their historic, ecological, and geological importance are better revealed.  Diving pigs do distract even from Spanish gold and Clovis spear points.  Clovis! 12,000 years old, give or take.  This site has seen human habitation for as long as humans have been in North America and is home to several unique animal species.

The water is wonderfully clear.  Glass bottomed boats remain a perfect way to peer down into the depth and see the water weeds, the fish and turtles, and the magically bubbling waters from the Edwards aquifer.  (More info HERE.)

I can't figure out if this photo is public domain or not, it seems to be a city (therefore our tax -dollars-at-work) photo so i believe it is. Found HERE.  Please , dear copyright-holder, let me know if you want this removed.

2)  From San Marcos to San Antonio.  A very relaxed trip with no agenda except to wander the Riverwalk and visit the Market.  I can remember this way back when there were actual farmers at the market - nowadays it's mostly Mexican arts and crafts and blatantly touristy... yet there are some wonderful things if you look.  Every visit is different: the best things this time were gorgeous Talavera pottery and the wooden masks.  Plus Mi Tierra's pralines!

3)  Books:  My favorite reads lately are the latest in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series - set in 1830s New Orleans, though this book, The Shirt on His Back, travels to the Rockies, and Neil Gaiman's evocative new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Both very good - completely different experiences.  As usual with Gaiman's work, it's indescribable, you simply have to read it.



4)  I'm reading a new play, Detroit.
5)  The strike for Se Llama Cristina was yesterday.  I got to sit under the raised floor and help remove cross-bracing which was kinda fun.  Pizza and painting the stage floor black... the end of another show.

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?