Inauguration Day

Well, Donald Trump gets sworn in today.

Yesterday's political-news leak was that his proposed budget cuts spending for the Arts and Humanities to $ 0.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports that Brian Darling, a former Heritage Foundation staffer now a Paul Ryan aide, said about this budget:

"The Trump Administration needs to reform and cut spending dramatically, and 

targeting waste like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be a good first step ..."

Sure, every civilization up till today has created its Great Public Art - pyramids, Versailles, operas, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Bolshoi Ballet, Muppets - art that survives its era and glorifies it.  Historically, it is Art that makes a civilization remembered as great.  

Or remembered at all.

But that junk's all "waste" so why should the United States of America spend a nickel?

Sistine-Trump

public domain image messed with

ADDENDUM:
The Washington Post has a good article on the stupidity of this "budget" idea HERE.

Addendum #2:
Need the dollars and cents?  According to the NEA, the arts adds $700 billion - that's $700,000,000,000 - to the American economy every year and employs 5 million Americans.  For comparison, the oil and gas industry (as best I can figure out) employs around 2.1 million workers - less than half!

Watch a nice NEA film:

A Valentines Present

It's wonderful when a show turns out as well as you hoped...

Fun House Theatre and Film's production of Romeo & Juliet is exactly that!

Buy tickets immediately.

Fun House Theatre and Film's production of Romeo and Juliet

photo Chuck Marcelo

My part, the set, turned out well.  But the kids'!  This is a lovely version of Shakespeare's classic romantic tragedy... particularly poignant because, for once, the leads are nearly the age of the characters.

This is not a review (how could I write one?  I'm head over heels into this production and this group of kids and adults) but I can say that all the actors did well, with several performances I think that could step onstage among any troupe of adults and hold their own, that the physicals like the sword fights are unexpectedly exciting and real-looking and the balcony climb touchingly youthfully exuberant.

On top of that, the production elements like the costumes were very effective.  I can't tell you how often a relatively rich theater has told me that they can't afford to do the Bard in period... yet this underfunded kids' troupe managed it beautifully.  (So there!)  These aren't accurate Elizabethan clothes, but rather suggestive ones.  Except for maybe one hat, they work great.  Color-coding the two rival houses works well at clarifying the action both for the children in the audience and for the adults.  I liked the live classical-music underscoring.

And speaking of effective on a low budget...  Our set, I just realized,  cost about 1/100th of the set presently onstage at the Dallas Theater Center.  Okay, that stage is twice as big and that musical has, I don't know, 20? times the number of settings...  Still a pretty good bang-for-buck bonus for this R&J.

A snapshot of Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet

Photo by... Alexandra Bonifield maybe?

In getting this show up and finished I've gotten behind in my blogging, but I promise to post construction photos and better "finished" photos in the next few days.

Thanks! to all my helpers - carpenters, painters, and faithful drudges - who make things possible.

Compare and Contrast

Here is an interesting comparison between the same show - Phantom of the Opera - produced at a mega-high budget and at a pittance of that (though still quite high for a High School musical). Photos on the Stage Design by Joseph blog.