Back from the Beach

After a chock-full-o'-design spring and a refreshing beach vacation on Galveston Island...

Ah!  Hot shrimp gumbo, ice cold beer, and warm Gulf waters!

A view of Galveston beach at the turn of the last century by P.H. Rose, Wikimedia 

But now I'm back.  To Dallas.  To work.  To blogging.

While opening ten shows in five months this spring I did rather let the blogging thing slide, but I'll do better now.  At least until my (very faint) tan fades and the work schedule warms up.

Before getting back to Theatre... a beach book recommendation:  the brilliant graphic novel from the internet blog-comic by Sydney Padua:

The Thrilling Adventures of 

Lovelace and Babbage*

The (mostly) True Story of the First Computer

Review to follow, but why wait?  Buy it HERE, now.  

(That's The Author, by the way, struggling with her day job to find time to write.)

Design Subtleties

There's an online steampunk comic I follow, 2D Goggles: Or the Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.  The latest blog entry has a great discussion of some of the subtleties of visual design.

Talking about drawing her heroes, artist Sydney Padua explains how she developed a "look" for Babbage (based on the real Victorian inventor) that combines the blocky and the flame-like (fitting his volcanic nature) which contrasts with his partner Lovelace (based on the real-world's first computer programmer), drawn with more ethereal, curved-lines.  Padua shows how this idea influences even the drawing of their hands.

This is thoughtful design that her readers (or our theater audiences) seldom consciously notice - but which can be subconsciously very powerful.  Whether a line is straight or curved, a mass light or heavy, can have emotional impact...  The audience doesn't know why.  Or even that it's been manipulated.  It's like the way lighting works or the way a film's musical underscoring can move you to tears.

Dare to be subtle!

Image borrowed from the conclusion of "The Organist" by 2D Goggles/Sydney Padua. Start reading it HERE

Authorial, um, Authority?

As all this blogging may have hinted (foreshadowing!) that I now and then write.  Non fiction, like Alice.  Now and then I even commit fiction.  But as any of you, Gentle readers, who have tried your hand at fiction know... authors are supposed to be authorities within their own books - all that "omniscient narration" - but still characters fight back.

My favorite steam-punk web-comic recently had a post about that: 2D Goggles OR The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.  (Based on real 19th C persons, mixing science, math, mayhem, and monkeys.)

image borrowed from 2D Goggles by Sydney Padua

The great detective novelist Dorothy Sayers also talks about the free-will of characters in her Mind of the Maker.  She believed in authorial authority.  "Too much attention should not be paid to those writers who say (holding one the while with a fixed and hypnotic gaze): 'I don't really invent the plot, you know - I just let the characters come into my mind and let them take charge of it.'  Writers who work this way do not, as a matter of brutal fact, usually produce very good books."  Read one of hers.  Murder Must Advertise is a great Golden Age mystery, starring her detective Lord Peter Wimsey.