Here are some pictures of Becoming Adele. None of the big sky/scene transition shots really came out. At least not of the batch that I have seen. So, the first three here are the Act 3 sunset. The next two are from the Act 2 sunrise. And finally, the company shot complete with performer, writer, directors, producers, designers and crew. Enjoy!
Directed by Victor Maog
Scenery by Antje Ellermann
Costumes by Myrna Colley-Lee
Photographs courtesy Ben Strothmann
I just got some pictures from the dress rehearsal of Becoming Adele. Here is the preset look. You can also see me blurry in the middle at the tech table talking to the stage manager. I’ll have more up later tonight or tomorrow. Enjoy!
Photograph courtesy Ben Strothmann
A friend of mine, who is running the light board for Becoming Adele this week, just called to tell me he likes the clouds. When he first saw the show he did not realize that the six light cues were actually long complicated multipart sequences of transforming and evolving color and cloud formations and of course the light on the actor herself. Most of the work I did may be too subtle to be noticed on a first viewing of the piece, but I think that is fine. Consciously noticed or not, I think the level of detail still enhances the experience. It just means I will most likely not get mentioned in the reviews.
So far the reviews are a mixed bag. Here is what I have seen:
NY Times
TheatreMania
Curtain Up
Talkin’ Broadway
Backstage
I think we still have yet to hear from Variety, NYTheatre.com, TimeOut NY, and Villiage Voice. But that is just a guess.
No pictures yet. I am still waiting to get them from the photographer.
I had a meeting with Eduardo Machado this afternoon to talk about a show we are doing in February. Artfuckers looks to be a lot of fun to work on. I have not worked with Eduardo as a director before, only as a producer when I lit Windows. I guess he liked my work enough to want to bring me on board one of his own projects. He sure is a fun person to work with.
His sense of directorial dramaturgy is wonderful. He talked about a few things he is doing with the play that do not impact the writing in the slightest and yet strengthen one key potential weakness in the text. I love the way that a director can augment a text and strengthen it without actually altering the text itself. Especially with new works this is important. To take the text as close to face value as possible. If there are serious problems in the translation from the page to the stage, a director can serve as a valuable editor in that regard and I think their input can be very useful. At the same time there is a degree of integrity of the text-as-written that should and must be maintained.
. . .
Becoming Adele opens tonight. We have been having silly electrical problems on top of the issues at the light hang. But I am sure the Master Electrician will have it all sorted out for tonight.
I am quite pleased with my work on this show, all problems aside. The audience responses during previews have been very favorable and the houses have been quite full, so I have a good feeling about this one. Of course we shall find out what the critics think tomorrow. Its such a strange waiting game.
I have Nutcracker pictures to go through that may get posted before I head out to see the play tonight. If not, you all will have to wait until tomorrow.
What do you do when all your cross light gets hung two feet too far upstage? Rehang it in the correct place, right? Well, not if you are already at budget and a four to six hour work call is not possible. So you make do.
This happened on Becoming Adele. I tried to make it work. I changed a few easy to change things and lit the performer in a different way than I had originally intended. Its fine. I think it looks nice. It is not what I intended, but so it goes sometimes.
The theatre we are in is small enough that a few feet can really effect the whole design. The stage is far too dark downstage, certainly more than it should be. The result is an increased need for frontlight. The overall effect is a form that lacks the full molding and dimensionality that she deserves. Perhaps this is the kind of thing that only a lighting designer would notice, but it still bothers me. There are actually a few specific acting/blocking moments where this issue does become critical and actually impacts the experience of watching the performance. But that’s why we have previews! And notes calls!
The Theatre is so interdependent and when one link in the chain is stretched or broken it can effect a lot more than its own little world. I had to convince the director that he did not need to reblock the show, that our actor would be lit where she needs to be on stage. The frustrating thing about this is it is not a problem I caused. Really no one did. The architecture in the space is odd and one of the lighting pipes got missed when counting so the fifth pipe upstage got mistaken for the fourth. Really, all the lighting equipment is too far upstage, its just that since I was planning on lighting the show primarily via crosslight that it is of so much importance.
The crosslight looks like this when our performer steps downstage.
Deep shadows are cast on the face because the light is not forward enough to fill it in. The result is that I have to crank the frontlight way up to fill in. There is nothing wrong with this approach to lighting the performer, it is simply very different than I had intended. Dramaturgically it is not as strong a choice, but there is little to do. What I mean by that is that it weights the play more towards the presentational side and further from the naturalistic side of the text. Both valid choices, I happen to believe the latter is the stronger of the two.
Its frustrating because I keep watching the show and see these problems with the lighting and begin to kick myself for overlooking something, and then I remember what the problem is. And I have to remind myself, I did not draft the lights wrong, and while they were hung in the wrong place it is not really the fault of the electricians. The drawing I received of the space did not indicate this odd architectural issue that set off this whole fiasco.
I just hope that this is one of those issues that in the end is not noticeable by the audience. The work behind the play should be invisible. By that I mean the experience of watching the play should be effortless. One should not spend their time wondering “oh look honey she sure seems dark” unless of course that is the point. The audience should experience the play and all its emotions and journeys as the creative team intended, not as fate dictates.
We have a few notes to take care of before Monday’s preview that should clean the whole thing up. The problem will be solved, I just wish it had never been there in the first place. But then, as the Buddhists say “there’s always something.”
Nutcracker, Becoming Adele, and Waiting for Godot all perform today. Three shows in Manhattan. That kind of trips me out.
Next year is beginning to shape up nicely. It has been so chaotic with dates moving and rights and funding disappearing then reappearing that I am only now getting a handle on what things look like. At the end of January I will begin working on a commercial Off-Broadway play Last Word written by Oren Safdie and directed by Alex Lippard. Alex and I met at the theatre a few days ago along with the producer, GM and set designer to do a bit of a site survey. As that gears up to go into previews I will remounting Mother GOOSE!.
February has the official opening of Last Word. Then a small play called Operation Ajax produced by The Butane Group. This is a great piece of political theater addressing the issues surrounding the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in favor of the Shah, all of course leading to the Iranian revolution and an Islamic Fundamentalist state.
This will be followed by Artfuckers at Theatre for a New City, directed, but not written, by Eduardo Machado. The play was written by Michael Domitrovich. It centers around the New York art and fashion scene. The play, given the characters, could easily fall into the “poor little rich kid” trap, but rather brilliantly does not. It looks to be a lot of fun. It is rather complex design-wise for all involved and should prove an interesting challenge. The costume designer is my friend Oana Botez-Ban who I have worked with a number of times before. I always have fun working on shows with her. Her costumes are so fun to light!
March looks to be dance month as I have three different dance shows penciled in for the month. There are still a number of things up in the air so of course some of this is subject to change, but it looks to be a nice winter by all counts.
Becoming Adele had its first preview today. The show is now open. It plays at the Clurman.
Tickets available at TicketCentral
Written by Eric Houston
Directed by Victor Maog
Featuring Kimberly Stern
Scenery by Antje Ellerman
Costumes by Myrna Colley-Lee
Sound by Elizabeth Rhodes
I know things have been a bit quiet over here, but I have been quite busy. Monday was load-in for Becoming Adele. Focus was Tuesday evening and then this morning we finished up a few odds and ends. We have an invited dress tomorrow night and then our first preview is Friday. The show is in good shape, which is nice since our first press has to come a lot earlier than we would have liked. But things seem to be progressing nicely.
Today the sound designer for Adele mentioned that this will be her 30th show this year. I reacted with a bit of shock until I realized that it will be my 24th. I guess the round number threw me. Still, 30 is a lot of plays to do in one year.
The set for Adele is backed with a big lovely blue sky. I am having a lot of fun manipulating clouds on the sky as we progress through various times of day. I have quite a few lights to deal with the various cloud scenarios, but it does not seem like enough. The more I do on the sky, the more it becomes clear just how layered a simple cloud is. The sky is so complex, I feel I could explore it for years and never get bored.
I had a meeting during my dinner break with the producer, director, GM and set designer for a small Off-Broadway play I will be lighting near the end of January. The play is called Last Word and will be directed by Alex Lippard who I have worked with before on Sake with the Haiku Geisha and Cupid and Psyche
This Friday is a bit wacky. The plot for Nutcracker got changed around this week, so I have to go in and restore our plot before the weekend shows. All this of course before a rehearsal for Adele.
And of course being the insane person that I am, I lit a conceptual Godot. I never actually saw a full run through. In fact I only saw part of act 1. But with that play that’s like seeing part of both acts. I will actually not have a chance to see it. We lit it without actors. A rather surreal experience, but somehow appropriate for that play.
I am eating the most awesome pumpkin pie right now that my girlfriend made right before she went out of town for a few days. The texture is just right and it has a lovely ginger kick to it that I really enjoy.
Ah the Nutcracker! Here I am with week two, my friend Ben called the show yesterday while I was still in Williamstown. Stagemanaging a ballet is a rather calm way to spend the time between tech week and tech week. The dance show in Williamstown was really more of a dance-theatre piece bordering on a musical. Much more involved of a production than I was originally led to believe. But it was a lot of fun to work on so I am happy with it.
I like the reflection of the Apple Logo from my laptop on the booth window
We load-in Becoming Adele on Monday. The light hang is rather simple. After various cuts and reworkings we ended up with quite a small, but versatile lightplot. Well, I suppose I should not speak yet. I’ll let you know how it works out in a week or so. The proof as they say is in the pudding.
Working on a children’s ballet and a very presentational dance(musical) piece has made me really miss working on modern pieces. There is an austerity to a lot of modern dance work that I really miss. By virtue of it being the medium of dance, the work is poetic and has a kind of playfulness that theatre rarely if ever has. But it is still of a wholly other order of work than where my real passion lays. I enjoy it. I enjoy it quite a bit, but it does not feel “me” if that makes any sense.
I have something on the horizon for next summer that looks very promising, so I am looking forward to that. Although given the radical changes that have gone on in January and February of 2007 I am really hesitant to talk much beyond shows I am in or about to be in tech for. I have had four shows dematerialize for a variety of reasons in January alone. Budgetary issues, performance rights, and schedule conflicts have made it so I currently have only one show opening in January. I have a second one that I will be teching to open early February, but the month feels a bit slow. Especially since at one point it was looking like I would have four or five shows opening that month.
February is equally complicated and it looks like a project just moved, thus potentially causing a conflict I had not foreseen. I am hoping there is a way to work it out, but after the madness of January I am a bit skeptical. The absurdity of it all is that I have a fair amount of time open in both January and February, but these shows keep getting scheduled on top of one another. It’s nice to be popular, but really, can you people please sort out your openings a little better?!?
Well, we have the second show of the day in just a few minutes, so I should get ready.
Nothing like a nice glass of single malt to end a week of tech. Wow today was something! The show went well from my end. I had to adjust the timing on a few sections that keep changing their pacing, but the show was essentially done yesterday. I had a great time. The people up here are a lot of fun. Williamstown is a nice little town to visit. Really anywhere I can get a good cup of coffee is just fine by me, and the coffee here is fantastic. Barring inclement weather, I will be heading back to New York tomorrow morning.
While the dress rehearsal was easy the rest of the day was quite and effort. The bids for Becoming Adele went out and came in and had to be adjusted and what an effort it was. The Master Electrician’s email went down and/or his computer crashed( I only remember that mild chaos ensued), so that added a level of complexity to an otherwise simple procedure.
We got everything settled, but it ended up with me redesigning the show several times in my head and half on paper(computer) to get it together. I have to get the plot redrafted tomorrow, but that can be done on the train, and then printed when I arrive in New York. And we load in Monday. Yikes!
Adele is actually in very good shape. Fortunately I have a rather strong idea of how the lighting will work with this piece so a lot of the struggle today was making sure I was keeping the integrity of the design idea while I made rather drastic cuts to our initial order. I think it will be a rather handsome show, but it will take a little more work and deliberation in tech than if we had the full range of equipment that I originally planned on. In the end, we only cut about 15% from the design, but I need to sleep on it before I can really see where the dust has settled.
Getting out of New York City has been really nice. It’s not just being out of the city as much as it is working outside the city. Being as busy as I am I often miss out on a lot of the benefits of being in a place like New York. I don’t really have the time to go out dancing or to museums nearly as much as I would like. It can be frustrating when it is all THERE, and yet I can not get to it.
There is a calmness to the pace of everything up here that I really enjoy. I might go a little stir crazy were I here too long, but it has been a wonderful break from the madness of New York City this week. Six performances of Nutcracker this weekend and then we load in to The Clurman for Adele on Monday. Focus is scheduled for Tuesday evening. I think we preview on Friday. I could look at my calendar but I am tired.
I have a bit of a break at the end of December. I am considering doing a meditation workshop in early January. That would be nice. I find it important to keep that introspective spiritual side of my Self in some degree of shape as I traverse this business heavy life that I find myself in. So much of my time is spent negotiating rental bids or contracts that it can become easy to get caught up in the materialism of the whole thing and lose sight of of the being part of human being.
Yes I am from Northern California. Get over it.
And now I go to sleep.
