At the request of some of my followers, this weeks photo is from the archival photo call for 42nd Street.  It is rather apropos as lately I have mentioned working on the show in a number of blog posts.  Also, we are going into the closing weekend today, so if you count tonight’s show there are only three performances left.

Beth Glover as Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street

This is one of my favorite images from the shoot and from the show.  The scene is the “Shadow Waltz” where Dorothy (an older actress who was hired to be the “star” of Pretty Lady) “auditions” for the part.  The lyrics of the song talk about shadows on the wall so she plays with shadow puppets as well as later going on to a big shadow-play dance number.

I also think that this image has some fun artistic merit as well.  I try to get some more “artsy” shots when I can, as opposed to just standing in the center of the house and shooting the scenes.  This was not the easiest subject to get close to on account of the angles of the lights for the shadows.  I had to work pretty hard to not get my own shadow in the shots (no one wants to see my shadow anyway).

So, now I am counting down the days to get ready for my photo excursion in Moab and hopefully will bring you a few fresh images!  For now though, as always, comments, questions and critiques are welcome!

Our production of 42nd Street opens tomorrow.  That marks the final opening night of the 2009-2010 season here at the theatre.  It is really amazing how it feels like we just started, and yet we have been at it for almost nine months.  As usual, the weeks leading up to this opening (like this week) have been completely chaotic.  I think by the time the curtain falls on Friday night and we head out to the opening night party I will have clocked more overtime hours than regular hours this week.  All things considered this is not a bad thing aside from the fact that I am amazingly tired and I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with Ruth, who just had her wisdom teeth out and could use some TLC.

Even though things will really slow down after Friday, I think this is the time of year where it feels like things will go really fast.  There are a lot of things that are going to happen in the next month.  We of course will have the performances of the show, but we won’t have to be working on the next show (this is nice).  Ruth will be heading off to London for six weeks soon.  I have my photo workshop in Moab, then at some point I have to arrive on the East Coast in time for my sister’s college graduation (I still have to get a plane ticket).  After that I head off to camp where I will reconnect with Ruth.  It’ll all happen pretty fast, it is crazy.

The fun thing about winding down the season at the theatre is that we can start to look ahead to next season.  Next season we are taking on some big challenges and we are switching things up.  We will be producing eight shows instead of our usual seven.  There were a lot of factors that went into this decision.  First of all, we lost the rights to Spamalot on account of the fact that there will be a non-equity (AEA is the actor’s union) touring company in town for a three day engagement.  To me, this seems like the kind of thing that someone at the licensing company gets fired over.  I mean, we would make them a lot more money, but whatever.

So, in lieu of having that big name show to close our season, the powers that be decided that we would assume the risk of doing an eighth show as opposed to having to cut back on budgets and possibly salaries.  We won’t be getting raises (for the second year in a row) but we will get an extra 5-ish weeks of work.  In theory, the season that they have planned should be a pretty good seller, and I certainly can’t argue with the extra work as in those weeks I will make more money than summer camp.  One of the other ways that the theatre will save some money is that one of the shows will be a co-production with Indiana Repertory Theatre.

Hopefully by now you are wondering what the heck those eight shows we are planning to do will be.  Well, guess what, I am going to tell you.  Though I don’t think that the information officially goes public until tomorrow, I am sure that plenty of people know because most of our staff and crew can’t keep their mouths shut anyway.  So, here it is, the 2010-2011 season line up for the Pioneer Theatre Company:

• Hamlet
• Dracula (to play over Halloween)
• White Christmas (to play during the Christmas season)
• Black Comedy
• In (a brand new play, this will be the first performance)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (the co-pro with IRT)
• Sunset Boulevard
• Rent

So, I bet those of you who read my earlier post about possible shows are wondering why we are doing White Christmas when no one really wanted to do it.  There are two reasons for that.  One is that a Christmas show generally sells well at that time of year.  The second reason is that since we have added Rent to the season, we figure that we balance out the edgy show with the classic.  Hopefully all the theories are correct and we have some shows that sell!  It will really be interesting to start the season with a straight play in stead of a musical next season though!

All things considered, the coming season should prove to be a very fun season.  There are a lot of dark shows on the line-up, but they are good shows.  I really hope that Rent does well so that we can prove that we can sell the edgy shows in this demographic.  I also think that it will help bring in some younger audiences.

It also sounds like I will be taking on some additional responsibilities at the theatre next season as our resident sound designer is leaving.  I won’t be going into sound, but he did some other odd jobs like help manage our website and maintain some of our computers, like our ticketing server.  I am happy to take on these jobs, and there is a little kick in pay for it, so it should be good for everyone.  It will give me something to do on the days that I wonder what to do with myself.  Hopefully next season there won’t be many of those days on account of having more shows!

So that is where we are.  Winding down to the end of the season.  In general, things are looking good for next year, which is great.  If any of my readers happen to be in the SLC area next year, give a shout and I can see about getting you in to a show!

This is just going to be a photo post because i don’t have the brainpower for anything else.  it was also pretty funny at focus tonight.  Our lighting designer, KH, decided to get out the hardhat and tools and we decided that he looked a little like Bob the Builder.  Check it out!

K the Builder photo 1

K the Builder with tools!

This is what happens when it gets late into a focus call!

I was introduced to the Vectorial Elevation Project by Jim from Jim On Light.  The project is an interactive art installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.  As a lighting professional I have to say that it is pretty darn impressive piece of art and engineering to be able to make something like this work.  The installation consists of twenty 10KW Syncrolite moving lights that are connected to a DMX controller which is fed information from their servers which are driven by Google Earth.

If you head over to their website you can design your own lighting look using a Google Earth interface.  You can point the lights almost however you want.  The system prevents you from shining the lights at nearby buildings and into airplane flight paths.  The interface it pretty straight-forward, just select the lights you want and point there where you want.  Then you submit your design into the system and when your design is displayed they photograph it and post it on a web-page for you.  You can also watch a live feed of the display on their site.

So, I figured I would try it out and I designed a display dedicated to my small blog following.  Here are a couple images, the first is a rendering of my design and the second is what it actually looked like last night.

IceWolf's Display Rendering

IceWolf's Live Show

If you want to see more vantage points of my display you can at this webpage.  If you go build your own display after reading this, please post a link back here so that I can see!  Now go have fun and create some art!

Seeing as I work in theatre, it seems only logical to have a day to blog about what is going on in the theatre world. Since the theatre world is my world it follows that often times this may turn out to really be a kind of weekly wrap up of my life in the theatre. Hopefully I will find a way to make it not always just about me (but in the end it always is anyway, right?).

This week we have been focusing for our upcoming production of Twelve Angry Men. Working with Jeff, our current designer is always fun and easy. This is also a small show which is nice. Jeff is generally a quiet easy going guy and we just get things done. This is a good thing because I have had a little bit of turnover on my crew for this show as I have a bunch of people who are leaving for various reasons and new people coming in.

The way that I run my department here I tend to bring people in and just put them through a trial by fire. I can’t do this with people who have no training, but when I get people who know what they are doing, it is right to work with them! So, I have to give a hearty pat on the back to my newest crew member, K, who spent almost 5 hours in a focus chair on Tuesday night, her second day working for me. I think for that then maybe pizza and a beer are in order!

In general I think that I have to give my whole crew a hearty pat on the back for their work on this show. It was smaller, but we are really doing much better as a whole unit. This show was hung really fast. Five hours might actually be a record for us. Everything was done neatly and safely and looks pretty which is something that I have been striving for. Aside from a couple lamp burnouts and burn up lamp bases, we are in pretty darn good shape. It may even be time to take the whole crew out for pizza, I’ll have to think about it.

Beyond all that, everything is pretty much business as usual here. Publicity photos for Twelve Angry Men went well on Tuesday evening and are now available from my website. I finally got around to shipping off the wireless dimmers to be fixed and retrofitted after forgetting about it for a month. Apparently I am supposed to see if they screwed up on my taxes this year in terms of how much was withheld on account of other people seem to have had issues. I know, it is exciting.

Come back next week as I am going to see Avenue Q this weekend and will probably post some thoughts!