Dress Rehearsal

Today is Cue-to-Cue for In the Next Room, when the light and sound designers and the stage crew - who move scenery or make it snow - practice all their parts, timing them to the actors' work.  Set Designers (who, inevitably just want to paint stuff) are mostly in the way.

But this evening is Dress Rehearsal, when the actors, in full costume (mostly), run through the entire show without all the morning's interruptions.  It's a chance to see what the whole production looks and sounds like, and what the timing is like.  The set designer needs to be there, taking reams of notes, and making a punch-list of To-Do items... to finally get this sucker finished!

photo believed public domain

Film Fest - Twofer

Two very different films:  One Day and Source Code.

About as different as possible in style, intent, audience... yet these two films share their most basic premise, the longing to rework the past, to have done things differently.

Source Code is a sci-fi jump-back-in-time-to-avert-the-disaster flick.  I'm not sure the logic actually stands up to much scrutiny.  Though the film has pretensions to a "think" piece, it's really just there to blow up the train (a lot).  The film's title is irritatingly pointless.  But the hero is likable and heroic, the girl appealing, the egotistical and ruthless military(ish) superior properly e & r, and the sympathetic-ally dependable... what more do you expect of a summery action movie?

One Day, on the other hand is an art house flick.  Nicely photographed, well cast and acted, thoughtful.  Good.  But I think it was actually hurt a bit - at the box office certainly - by its art-house aspirations.  These led the filmmakers to, I think, over-emphasize the unlikable aspects of the hero until, well, you didn't much like him.  Also to take the female lead's character one step too far, to too dark and serious an ending... at least for popular taste.  But the film's ending is lovely and almoooost redeems those choices; though I liked the film quite a lot and find it recurring to me - I wanted to love it.

Maybe it's appropriate to these films' deepest theme - a wish to change what's done - I wish I could go back and tweak both films for the better.  (My better any way!)

Dry Tech

Today, being a Saturday, is Dry Tech day for In the Next Room.

This is the day lighting and sound designers work with the director and stage manager - inventing, explaining, experimenting, applying design ideas to the rhythms of the play and... well, seeing what works.  For weeks or longer, these designers have thought through the challenges of the play and assembled ideas, light fixtures, sounds, or music.  They create paperwork - plans locating lighting instruments and notes until they create a Paper Tech - basically taking the script and written charts of what sound or light ought to occur where, then talking through this with the director.  (Simple shows may not have a formal Paper Tech.).

The Dry Tech ("dry" because no actors yet - think "hard" and "soft"-ware, right?  Theater has "wet" and "dry" techs, though it sorta sounds more polite to say Dry Tech and Cue-to-Cue.  No one wants to call actors all wet.)  Where was I?  Ah!  Dry Tech is the time to take those ideas that work on paper and see if they actually work 3D in time and space.  So the lighting designer plays with colored lights and - even more important - with transitions and timing.  The sound designer's job is similar.  Then toss in practicing with the snow machines or moving scenery or whatever other technical fun has to happen on-stage.

Tomorrow will be Cue-to-Cue (Wet Tech!) with actors onstage.  All technical aspects of the show become integrated with the text: actors speak dialogue, open and close doors, walk from one pool of light to another... and spend hours waiting for the next tech moment.  The different parts of a production become a Whole.

Here are links to earlier posts on Tech:  Set Designer's Life - Tech  and an on-line site on Hell Week (AKA Tech).

Dino Goodies

The TV studio for Barney (the purple or fuschia dinosaur) is being vacated and Everything Must Go!

I had fun there yesterday, poking through the props and set pieces.  In fact, my carpenters collected one of Barney's trainstation/clubhouse hanging lamps to become our Doctor's office lamp.  I didn't get anything as useful, but I sure had fun!

The sale continues through Saturday - but go soon, they're selling out fast.

Set Designer's Day - Paintin' the Stage

Today - in a couple minutes actually - I dash off to start painting the stage floor for In The Next Room.

The Doctor's office will be wood planks (ably played by slices of plywood), but the rest of the 200 acres or so of stage will be its own warped self with stage makeup by me, painting faux stone slabs.  Ever noticed how huuuuuge a stage is?  Get a bucket of paint and a roller on a pole and I promise you'll notice!

This painting-a-floor pic is borrowed from "How to Paint a Floor" at Young House Love

Squidoo "Lenses"

These are websites hosted by Squidoo, a well-run place to create small websites about some enthusiasm you have... and maybe make a little money too.   I've had fun making mostly set design and theater pages.  (If you're interested in going on-line, I can recommend this Squid-y community.)

And two of my sites won awards!  Purple Stars.  You betcha cool.

Check out these winners:  Surviving Home Remodeling and Three Ways to Improve Your Theater Set

The Last Brick!

Yesterday I carved and painted the last foam brick!  Wahoo!

Film Fest - Hamlet

David Tennant's Hamlet.  Amazing.

This latest BBC/Royal Shakespeare version of Shakespeare's Hamlet is very good.  I like the restraint and relative lack of Directoral "interpretation": except for paranoid business with video cameras and a vaguely Fascist flavor to the costumes and sets, the play is given to us straight.  (A little judicious snipping of text.)   Settings are somber and simple, making Branagh's version look like a Rococco cream puff.

Good acting all round.  For once, relationships between the Prince and Rosencranz and Guildenstern make sense: you could see Hamlet first glad to see friends, then doubtful, then disgusted.  I actually noticed Horatio and came to like him - the only level headed man at Court, the only one Hamlet trusted.  Ophelia is an actress' nightmare - what do you do with that girl?  Here she seems genuinely frenzied... but I still don't "get" her.  (I don't think costumes helped, she seemed always to be flat footed, bare footed, in a draggled cotton shift... maybe I just missed the usual airy-fairy treatment.)  Pelonius was a miracle of irritating pomposity slipping into senility.  The Queen is as mutton-headed as usual, but her interactions with Hamlet felt real.  This mother/son pair made the 1990 Mel Gibson/Glen Close pairing seem like the Disco version.  (Scenically, the broken mirror in the "rat-behind-the-arras" scene was well used then and later.)  The wicked Uncle, usurper King is very fine.

But the jewel is Tennant's Hamlet.  As an on-screen presence, Tennant has intelligence, a glint of manic humor, and the rubbery face of a great comedian... all making Hamlet's pretense of madness seem a plausible choice for the character and his antics believable.  (Dr. Who maybe helped.)  Hamlet still dithers until you want to smack him 'longside the head, but that's the Bard's doing.

I really loved Tennant's take on the "To be or not to be" soliloquy.  (You Tube clip here.)