Start the New Year Right...

If you're interested in theater (you are reading this!), maybe this is the year to really get involved?  If a designer, then to Design; if an actor, to Act; if a theater buff, then to Do Theatre.  

If you like New Year's Resolutions, here are few respectful suggestions:

1)  Go to a theater.  Go on - you know those folks loooove an audience!  Buy a ticket.  Have fun.  

2)  Help a local theater.

This last suggestion can be as easy as buying tickets to a local performance and, if you enjoy it, telling your friends.  Get the word out!  Tweet, text, email, smoke-signals, whatever it takes.  Help make theater a important part of Our Time.  

Helping can be as simple as buying tickets or donating a little money - theater troupes always, always, always need cash.  And it's that time o' year, right? 

But helping can also be as life-enriching as donating a few hours to help somehow - to send out mailers or to build or strike a set.  But beware! because you may accidentally make a few friends... gradually become part of a theater company as crew, cast, staff, or volunteer... discover your own talents... and expand into an art form that slowly, insidiously, lets your own creative, playful, intellectual self Out of Its Box.  

(You know that Box.)  

This year, set yourself free...

image courtesy of wpclipart.com

(What to) Coloring Book!

One of my favorite theatrical/architectural presents this season is a book:

PANTONE: The Twentieth Century in Color

Photo from Felt & Wire's interview with the authors

Authors Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker lead the Reader through the changing color schemes of the just-past century, explaining some of the influences, reasons, and technical developments behind changes in color preferences.  Beautifully illustrated.  And always, on the right-hand edge of the page, there's a palette of PANTONE colors keyed to the illustrations and period under discussion.

Incredibly helpful for designers.

PANTONE takes us decade by decade through the colors of fashion and design, from the gentle pastels of ladies' dresses circa 1900, through the psychedelic brights of the 1960s and the dreaded Avocado Green era of the 1970s, and on to the end of the millennium.  What I found most fascinating was the many contradictory color palettes of the 1990s: the Martha Stewart somehow-nostalgic shades; the Anime-bright-pastels; the Zen-like greens and neutrals; the African and Latin inspired hues; and the look-at-me-I'm-conspicuously-consuming! rich tones of the '90s.

I wish they'd go back and make a matching book for the 1800s.

Then for the 1700s.

If you're a designer who ever deals with historic periods - or someone inspired by color - you're going to enjoy this book!  It's a must-have for theater designers I think.

HERE's a good interview with the authors at the bookish website Felt & Wire.  And HERE's an interview with the publisher about the design and making of the book.

Into the New Year

Time to get ready.

Time to fill in play-opening dates in my 2013 calendar.  Time to clear off my desk (there's wrapping paper scraps on it and... is that a recipe for beef brisket?).  Time to reorganize my whole work area, to put the colored pencils back in their drawers, to send up-date emails, to clear the decks for the new shows of the coming New Year.

Among my preparations...

Research for Aphra Behn's play The Lucky Chance for Echo Theatre.  Because we're changing the play's setting to the Swinging London of the 1960s.

Image from "Andy Warhol Pop Politics" at the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research

White Christmas!

Believed public domain photo

Theater may not pause long for the Christmas holiday, but in Dallas (where we're not much used to freezing weather) it may sometimes reschedule for snow.  This a.m.'s meeting - 50 miles away - was postponed until tomorrow when the roads should be clearer.

Wahoo!  Snow day today!

Yesterday... 

The snow started in the afternoon.  And it gave us a Perfect Christmas Moment: all the gathered friends looking out over our table - laden with wine glasses, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, Southern greens - as outside the dining room window we watched dusk gently settling and fat, white Christmas snowflakes fluttering... turning the everyday world glowingly, sparklingly, Magical.

A Merry Holiday Season to you too, Gentle Reader!

Reading a New Script to Design For

Sometimes you read to the very last line and think...

Huh?

Imperfect Studios

Sitting here in my studio-in-exile (a temporary move due to house guests and cold weather), I've been mulling over what makes a good working space, a great studio...

Perfection ain't it.

I just happened across a lovely expression of this sentiment in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones :

"If you want a room to write in, just get a room. Don't make a big production out of it. If it doesn't leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing... It's hard to sit in an exquisite space and rub across our imperfections which writing brings up."

She continues with, "It is natural in our studios to find," then goes on a lovely rift about the detritus of creation in her own writing room - including cold cups of black tea and open books.  In my own temp. studio at this moment there is: her book, open; a used-up check book; a bottle of Elmer's glue; filled sketchbooks; and a cardboard fan of the kind that southern funeral parlors used to give out, except this one is courtesy of a golf tournament and has an insurance gecko's green, big-eyed face on it.

Believed public domain gecko.

Writing Down the Bones is worthwhile, an excellent writing and creativity book.  I recommend it.  Possibly a good present for writer-type friends?  (More writerly gift-book suggestions HERE.  Or theater/architecture/designer gift suggestions HERE.)

Holiday Prep

What with cookies, cards, present wrapping, house guests, and holiday parties there hasn't been much blogging going on...

But fear not!  Theater is still happening.

Currently I'm reading the script for The Lucky Chance by Aphra Behn for Echo Theatre (first design meeting this evening) and designing for The God of Carnage at Circle Theatre (drawings due Friday, first meeting with builders bright and early on the day after Christmas).  And last night I had two simultaneous parties for two simultaneous theaters!  (Good training for the important set designer skill of Omnipresence.)

Tenniel's illustration (public domain) mightily messed with

Film Fest - The Hobbit

This is a film I've been waiting for...

Really, really enjoyed it!

But the reviews I've seen (the other reviews, you know, the professional reviews) are kind of strange. Most of them talk about how much money the film is making (tons, but who cares?) or about its new filming technology (more frames per minute, do I care?) or about its length (three hours or just-long-enough), but few are talking about the actual, you know, storytelling.

I approach this film as a loooong-time fan of J.R. R. Tolkien's work, as someone who read the Lord of the Rings every year at about this time of year for many years and read The Hobbit many times; heck!  I've read LotR out-loud twice.  I've watched the films oooooh... a couple times maybe.  (Cough, cough.)  Anyway, it's difficult for me to imagine meeting Middle Earth for the very first time by way of this Hobbit film.  Best guess?  I expect that for first-timers Peter Jackson's The Hobbit would be a fair intro: "fair" in that it has a beautifully rendered Middle Earth atmosphere and characters - casting and performances are great - and the story is well told, enriched by judicious borrowings from the appendixes of LotR which gives it a more adult tone than the book and helps to yoke it to the established film-world of its sequel.  I cannot imagine how anyone could do a better job of a Hobbit movie.  And Martin Freeman is perfect as Bilbo.

I still think having The Hobbit read aloud to you as a little kid has to be the very best introduction.  After that, I'd suggest, in due time, reading The Lord of the Rings silently to yourself.  Then see the films in order.

This may be the film that separates the sheep from the goats as far as the film audience goes.

Those who merely liked the Lord of the Rings films, or who loved them only for an appealing actor or for the cinematography or the battle scenes or something, but did not fall in love with Middle Earth itself... well, this Hobbit (while having charming actors) doesn't have the rising-star power of the first installment of LotR.  And The Hobbit, like the book it comes from, has a more episodic structure which - plus filling in of the background for the later Lord of the Rings films - makes this film slower paced.

Middle Earth fans will love this.  Casual movie-goers maybe not so much.

Personally?  I loved this movie and can't wait to see the next installments.  Or to see it again.

This great map of Middle Earth is public domain - courtesy of one wiki to rule them all

Favorite parts for me (Spoiler free) were seeing Hobbiton again; meeting Radigast the Brown; the dwarves' dinner party at Bag End; Bilbo's riddle game with Gollum; seeing Rivendell and Galadrial again; the ending...  Revisiting Middle Earth!

A highly detailed review HERE.