Tech Weekend and Scenic Painting

Things are getting busy, scenic-ly.

Yesterday I helped finish base painting on Broadway Our Way.  Theoretically set designers have a scenic artist to "finish" paint their sets (meaning the cool techniques, faux finishes, and/or fool-the-eye stuff) plus painters or carpenters to do the base painting before that.

In the real world of real theaters, base painting tends to be a carpenter job and scenic painting is done by - flip a coin - either a scenic painter or the designer, depending on what talent and money is available.  I paint my own sets about half the time and almost always paint something, if only some furniture.  Since Broadway is coming up on Tech and there's still raw wood, I pitched in...  which means my "real" painting hasn't happened yet.  I'm not too panicked though, as panels are finally going up on the framework and beads have been found, so the set may actually (touch wood) get finished before Thursday's first audience.  More painting today - Tech tomorrow.

Friday night Date Night?  A production meeting on Marvin's Room.  Sigh.

The Traveling Lady closes Sunday!  Catch it fast.

Set Design Day

The last few days have been full of hands-on set design stuff.

Wednesday I was at Broadway Our Way's theater, painting giant circles on a curved wall, using the old trick of chalk tied on a string taped to the wall: pivot that chalk and - voila! - perfect(ish) circle.  I pogo-ed up and down with the lift to reach the tops of the circles.  Painting them took time as did setting locations for hanging a few more cut-out versions, which meant sitting way back in the auditorium shouting, "Six inches toward centerstage!" to the poor guy then in the lift, as he tied knots.

Yesterday my Apprentice came over.  We looked over his latest project and upholstered a bench seat for Marvin's Room and traced out flamingos on bright pink felt.  (I love the weird jobs theater hands out.)  We also made an emergency bead-curtain-run.  After Broadway's TD searched much of town, the beads came from a funny Mom-n-Pop dollar store near me.  I had to take what they had in stock, rather than my first choice color, but we'll spray paint 'em, so that's okay.

flamingo image by Audubon, public domain I believe

Where Are the Books?

I'm going through a reading drought.  The library is being remodeled so large parts are shut off and what's left is over-crowded with people, under-crowded with books.  Plus, as I chose my books, I had one of those days when no book pleased me and the few I did pick faded when I got them home.  Ever have that happen?  The jacket blurb sounds promising, the first page or two reads well, but when you really start reading... you lose interest.  This time it was a slim novel that had been a runner up for a National Book Award; the first 30 pages were well written, obviously, with an interesting main character and situation... until the curse of literary fiction set in.  Nothing happened.  Nothing continued to happen for the next 100 pages.  After that, well, I got interrupted and set the book down, it sat on the bathroom counter for a week...  Eventually even I took the hint that I'd never go back to it.

Instead I'm rereading old Terry Pratchett's for the 100th time.  (Mort at the moment - about Death's apprentice.)

Film Fest - Disturbing

I think that's the best single word description of the film Never Let Me Go: disturbing.

It starts out all British boarding school and grows slowly... mysterious... then slowly, creepingly, gets horrifying and sad and disturbing.  This one may haunt me a little.  A subtle love story set in not-quite-our-world.  One that's wind-swept, rumor-filled, and very very cold.  Scariest quote, "We had the answer to a question no one was asking."

I strongly recommend this film - but whether you'll like it?  I'm not sure I do.  But I'm glad I saw it.

Panel Discussion

Last night I was in the McKinney Arts Center for a panel discussion on technical theater.  Talking to a group of  mostly teen-aged theater enthusiasts, the aim was to make sure they knew that Acting was not the only way - or the "best" way - to do theater.  That the tech world has at least as much importance and, well, fun, as the acting world.

Certainly the discussion was fun.  We all talked in a lively back-and-forth way - with a jump start from some well thought-out questions from both the moderator and the audience.  Afterwards we talked with those folks with particular interest or questions.  I took a couple models and others brought drawings which we showed to those interested after the talk.  I showed off Alice.  Met some really nice, and interested folks.

The we got a tour of the building.  The Arts Center was originally the county courthouse built, I'd guess, in the late 1800s as a Victorian French pile (mansard roofs etc.), remodeled in the 1920s (scrape off the mansards!), then empty for decades before being refreshed in the late 1990s or thereabouts.  Now the old courtroom on the second floor, with its original wood witness and jury boxes etc, is still an occasional night court, but there is also a stage (quite high, it fits over some of those boxes) which is home to a orchestra and to theater productions, who all have to get out of each others' way.  A challenging venue!  But a fascinating historic room with some interesting detail - including a U shaped balcony and some handsome plaster work.

In this photo, the old mansards came to the horizontal stone string course just below the parapet - which was added in the '20s (the brick doesn't quite match).

McKinney Arts Center image courtesy of Scrappin' Bunnies / Young Actors Guild

Squidoo-ing

I've been experimenting with Squidoo (a hosting site I guess you'd call it?).  Anyway, I just had an article there ranked 100% which is kinda cool.  Since my Mom's 'fridge is too far away, I thought I'd tape it up here for y'all to see:

"3 Ways to Improve Your Theater Set"

Next Coke you get out of the 'fridge, take a look.

Anyone interested in trying out Squidoo?

Set Designer's Life

A nutsy day today.

I'll leave soon to go paint the floor of the revolve at the Kalita Humpreys.  My knees are stiff today unfortunately - considering I need to stand and paint for four hours or so - but it's a real thrill to work on a Frank Lloyd Wright stage.  Though, come to think of it, the revolve wasn't there originally nor, really, much of the present stage and FLW never even saw the building completed...  nevertheless there are funny 30 degree twisted stairs he definitely designed and there's a feeling of FLW looking over your shoulder now and then.  (When there's more time I'll tell the FLW elevator stories.)  It's a cool but, honestly, a confusing building - a rat's maze backstage.

After that, a race northward to be part of a theatrical panel discussion for the Young Actors' Guild in McKinney.  Carrying models and drawings with me.

Movie Mania

The Film Fest gets busy.

At the movie theater I just saw The Conspirator.  Good, griping historical drama about the Civil War trial (not a fair trial, but a trial) of Mrs.Surratt as a conspirator in the plot to assassinate Lincoln.  Full of good actors, it's worth seeing.

At home I re-watched Deep Impact, the apocalyptic-crashing-asteroid flick with a very young Elijah Wood.  My favorite of this genre, because it seems to care more about people than special effects destruction - though when that does come, it's impressive.  Also at the home theater recently, the next couple installments of Battlestar Galactica - which often confuses me, but always fascinates.  And The Fabulous Baker Boys, one of my all-time favorite films.  Beautifully written and directed by Steve Kloves, really well acted (the Bridges brothers as brothers: "Do that again and I'll hit you..."  "You hit me!"  "I told you I'd hit you.").  Beautifully filmed with moody, jazzy, sultry music...  Worth seeing just for Michelle Pfeiffer singing "Making Whoopie."  But it's "My Funny Valentine" at the end that gets me.