Director Hayley Finn has wrapped Cook’s script in a contemporary package that is an interesting cross between naturalism and high style. As such, the characters move and interact very unaffectedly in the love scenes between Lilah and Brock, while Susan’s public appearance speeches are done almost entirely in strobe lights, to simulate camera flashes. Finn uses this dichotomy to great effect throughout, relying on strong design to keep the scenes crisp.Robin Vest’s innovative scenic design is a fairly realistic one-bedroom apartment, with some handy flourishes that facilitate the other scenes. When Susan is on an airplane, a small circular picture frame on the wall next to her lights up to simulate an airplane window. Aided by light designer Lucas Benjaminh Krech’s cleverly placed lights, Finn’s team manages to establish different locations very well. Lilah collects old photos, and the walls of her apartment are covered with these framed pictures. Vest and projection designer luckydave create some nice effects by projecting small images, like Brock’s blog or photos taken of Susan, into the frames.
Posts Tagged ‘gsc’
More Fate’s Reviewing
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007Fate’s Pictures
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007Fate’s Imagination
Directed by Hayley Finn
Scenery By Robin Vest
Costumes By Erin Murphy
Sound By Rob Kaplowitz
Projections By luckydave
All photography by Monique Carboni.
Another of Fate’s Reviews
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007Much in this production is elegantly and effectively done. There’s costume designer Erin Murphy’s navy blue power suits and pearls for Donna, Liliah’s come hither silk kimono and Brock’s studied slacker sloppiness. Robin Vest’s scenic design features a wall full of photographic portraits and lightboxes that alternatively create Lilah’s apartment, a New York nocturnal cityscape and a seat on the redeye ready for takeoff. Atmospheric music and original compositions are provided by Robert Kaplowitz and Benjamin Krech’s lighting alternates between cool polar blues for encroaching frigidity and warmer romantic tones that soften the hard edges and crows feet.
Fate’s Reviews
Monday, June 4th, 2007The production values are also first-class, thanks to the work of Robin Vest (scenic design), Lucas Benjamin Krech (lighting), Robert Kaplowitz (sound design/original compositions), Erin Elizabeth Murphy (costumes), and luckydave (projection design). In one of the most arresting special effects I’ve ever seen on stage, the actors’ scrolling lines of dialogue are visible through the picture frames in Lilah’s apartment at key points in the play. There’s also a neat lighting/sound effect whenever Susan is beset by a phalanx of photographers.Fate’s Imagination has its writing flaws, but the author couldn’t ask for a better presentation.
First Preview Tonight
Friday, May 25th, 2007
First Day of Tech
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007We focused the lights last night for Fate’s Imagination. Things went OK. We had a few minor setbacks due to the rental shop sending us the wrong fixtures and pushing the whole lighting load-in back several hours. We have some notes to take care of this morning and should be back on track by the time we have actors on stage at noon.
I got the best Horoscope EVER for a first day of tech:
Your life will be like an action movie today — minus the explosive car chases, of course! But hour after hour will present you with situations that require quick, decisive responses. Today is not a day to mull things over — you have to act, and act fast! Luckily, there is very little danger that you will make any bad decisions today, so don’t be afraid to lead with your intuition (like a true action hero).
Let’s see how that pans out!
Becoming Adele is Open
Saturday, December 16th, 2006Becoming 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
Its all in the timing
Saturday, December 9th, 2006Ah 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.
The way of the Samurai is one of immediacy, and it is best to dash in head long
Friday, December 8th, 2006Nothing 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.
That cloud in the sky, it kind of looks like a horse
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006Tech went well last night. Monday was a little chaotic, but things settled down by Tuesday. We went through Act 2. The lighting for that continued in the naturalistic grounding as the first half. While the day I structured in Act 1 was a stormy and volatile one, Act 2 was much more a clear post-storm kind of day. The first piece was a polyrhythmic drumming section that was accompanied by a ten minute sunrise. I was really pleased with that sunrise, the progression from the saturated colors of dawn to the soft echos of color in the early morning was quite successful.
There is a wonderful simplicity to dance. It affords a poetic mode of visual storytelling and a ‘less is more’ way of thinking. I had two different cloud patterns projected on the sky, one for Act 1 and one for Act 2. It amazes me in dance how effective small subtle changes in the lighting can be. Even the different cloud patterns set a whole different feel to the stage, and of course the actual progression of the sun’s direction on the body of the performers lends a poetic specificity and simplicity that dance demands.
I am about to get started finishing up the light plot for Becoming Adele. The cafe I am sitting in not only has fantastic coffee, but some of the most amazing cranberry muffins I have ever had. Oh, boy! I am a happy camper. I feel like agent Cooper with his cup of coffee in Twin Peaks.
I sent out a preliminary plot to the Master Electrician, so he could begin to estimate cable lengths and so on for the rental order. I think Adele will look very nice. The set we ended up with has a small raised stage surrounded by a big blue sky. Good thing I am flexing those cloud muscles up here in Massachusetts. There will be a lot of them.
Talking with the director we got into a discussion about how Adele (its a one woman show) is very much a New Yorker in that except for brief outbreaks of emotion, she keeps her internal life very much inside. There is a lot going on in the unsaid of the play. It provides fertile ground for the actor to explore everything behind the words. It also gives us a great opportunity to say what is unsaid without speaking. The sky will serve as a major component of this.
It is interesting to me how sometimes in order to keep the focus on the performer we need to concentrate our attention on the space around them. We are not doing a light show here. But there will be significant and dramatic transformations of the space through light as the sky progresses through time along with our story.
The writer sure knows how to make his lighting designer happy. Act 1 takes place near or about sunset. It feels to me just after the sun has fallen, but with a lot of color still in the air. Act 2 is dawn, that cold to warm to cold kind of an early morning. Act 3 is a sunset, but this time we experience the whole thing, from color just filling the sky to the deepening of night.
I have put a lot of new music on my iPod and the random shuffle selection is very different than I have been used to. A lot less jazz, blues and hip-hop and a lot more rock/alternative. It’s fine but not necessarily what I always want to be listening to. I need to readjust playlists or something. That’s what I get for indiscriminately putting my whole music collection on there complete with music I have not listened to in High School. Oh well. There are a few gems that I am glad to have.
