OK, OK, OK, It's Been A While

A lot has been happening with me... but little of it theater related, hence the looooong pause between blog posts here.  

(Quick non-theater update: I've driven to Seattle and California and back; stayed with family; celebrated holidays; finished a remodeling; Minecrafted; and read, including the thick doorstop bricks Stephen King's It and the new Diana Gabaldon in the Outlander series, Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone.  Oh and, professionally interesting if personally sad, I got to walk round a newly burned-down home - not mine - and saw first hand what that looks like.  My next "burned-out" set will be more realistic.)

But I've got - still as of this date - a new show to design, To the Breeches! at Stage West in Fort Worth, which opens in June.  And I have been asked to mentor 2-3 set design students this spring.  Fantastic!

There are signs that theater is returning to something more like normal - despite Broadway opening and closing due to covid like a blinking marque lightbulb.  (The Rockettes have had to cancel Christmas shows!).  It is, I guess, heartwarming? to see that not even theater critics have killed off by a mere plague in the playhouses...?  I mean, unkind theater artists might have pictured drama critics gnawing over old bones, fingering brittle old clippings of past reviews, and quietly starving for lack of new shows, but no!  They were only sharpening their teeth on those bones!  Critics yet live!

Washington Post theater critic, Pater Marks, just wrote a STINKER of a review for a new Broadway musical.  I have not seen the show so I have no idea if this review is accurate or fair, I'm only heartened to see that theatrical criticism is even now pawing the ground, er, auditorium carpet, to sink its teeth into its work.  

I'll quote the first couple rabid sentences shall I?

"In the category of bad trips, few Broadway offerings at the moment (thus saving ink for later disembowelings of other shows, see?) can compete with "Flying Over Sunset," the turgid new musical about celebrities on LSD."

"Turgid," in the very first sentence too!  

Then the reviewer compliments set designer Beowulf Borritt and projection designers 59 Productions with "smartly realized" before declaring the show as a whole "an entertainment about as scintillating as an Agriculture Department instructional video on crop irrigation."  (Thereby guaranteeing resentment between the director and the complimented designers.  Sigh.  I suggest Mr. Borritt and the 59 folks print out this review, frame it, then hide it somewhere no one else will ever ever see it except, sometimes, themselves when they need a little boost, as when, say, a future director is being annoying.)

Oh, it goes on...  "tedious," "long-winded and impossibly earnest," "unremarkable score," "lumbering book," "the terrible lyric,"  (he's right there, it IS a terrible lyric, "I am a giant penis rocket ship!"  WT...Heck?).  "With so little plot..." etc. etc. 

You get the idea: 

Theater Criticism Is Back, Baby! 

 

A Break in the Drought

 It rained the other night.  

Here in a fire-weather parched landscape came a few minutes of rain... creating the rich smell of hot dust meeting raindrops as it turns into damp earth.  There wasn't enough time to rush out to dance in it. but I stuck my head and arms out the window and laughed.

Later that day... my first invitation to design a stage show in what will be two years.

That fertile and heady smell of first rain on dry earth has a name: petrichor.

It's intoxicating.

Kitchen Dog Fund Raiser Auction

 Celebrate Kitchen Dog Theater's 30th Anniversary (30 = Pearls) - the grittiest theater in Dallas!

Join the auction HERE or donate if you wish!

Coming Soon...

 Once again I'm behind on writing here - but at least this time it's because I been doin' stuff!

(Not theater stuff, don't get overexcited, but stuff at least.)  Latest project is a rag doll mermaid for a young friend of mine.  Lots of Minecraft city building on Illias HERE, some basement plans, and some seriously frustrating Sketchup modeling of a beach house!  (Roof geometries are defeating me.  So from now on I decree "Only Flat Roofs!") 

And now vaccinated, there start to be Out Of The House Adventures!  I can't tell you how welcome these are.  And, pretty soon, I'll report on my big trip to an art museum to see the architectural exhibit there.  Fun times!

 Though there's no theater on my desk at the moment, I do still have an audience:

Bobblehead Bard says "Hi!"

Olden Times

 I just stumbled across this 2005 NPR story on theater design that featured WaterTower Theatre in Addison.

This was the first time I was interviewed on radio.  A surreal experience.  The interviewer, Bob Mondello, was nice... and about six feet taller than I was.  The  sound stage was tiny - barely two chairs wide - but the microphone was huge - the size of a cantalope.  And I brought a drawing - "for radio?" he asked, but I had some logic actually, I wanted him to understand the design so he could ask better questions, which, afterwards he admitted was helpful.  

I haven't listened to it yet, so listen with me...

Flexible Theater Design and Intimacy Audience

A Fresh Spring Start

Took a walk by a lake today - all fresh breeze, the jingle of boat rigging, glow-fresh green leaves, and the crunchy remains of Easter cascarones underfoot, bits of colored egg shells and confetti.  

I wish you all an equally happy expression of Spring!

In Texas everyone over the age of 16 is now eligible for the vaccine.  Like trying to explain the feeling of Spring, I cannot express the lightness and relief of the vaccination, of knowing you're protected and that you are no longer a danger to others.  I was carrying at least ten pounds of concern around with me all this long year.  

Please, go get the shot - it's the easiest way to lose excess weight that I know of!

Feel the Spring breeze...  

A Past How-To on Set Building

 I happened across an old web page of mine, a How-To on set building aimed at beginning theater designers and builders: "Theater Set Questions Answered!".  You can check it out HERE on Hub Pages.

I'm starting to read a new (to me) book, Stage Designers in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Christin Essin.  More a history and cultural study than a visual essay, it's very interesting so far...

Other intriguing reading and watching lately: comedian Colin Jost's memoir A Very Punchable Face; David Sedaris's memoir Theft by Finding; essays/demonstrations/rants/performance art? YouTube videos by Karolina Z'ebrowska (for a funny version of a film costume design production meeting watch "Boobs"); and the vid essays of Jacob Geller.  I particularly recommend (to scenic design fans) "The Intimacy of Everday Objects," "Control, Anatomy, and the Legecy of the Haunted House," and also "Art Theft."  But, honestly, they're all great.

If you're missing production meetings, here below is a tiny taste.  (Honestly, I've always been a bit shocked by the blunt talk by costume designers... this is actually kinda... mild.)

Addendum:  How to document a dream - the resin diaramas of Thalasso hobbyer HERE.

Here's a First

 A second post on the same day?  From Ms-Too-Depressed-To-Blog?  But then I found this quote from playwright Tracy Letts (in the NY Times):

"I can’t do the computer theater, it’s too depressing for me, and I’ve turned down a couple of on-camera jobs because I am just as scared of this virus as I was a year ago. Creatively, I’m lost." ...  "I’m guessing there are some other artists who identify."

THIS.

I identify.