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The only formal theater learnin' I've had was from a teacher who had never heard of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. I'd be behind a theater thread.
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Jun 1, 2009 10:06
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I've done tech, specifically rear-projection for the "garden" outside the house in The Innocents (which sucks, by the way). It was in the school district's fancy new black box, and it was really badly designed, especially the backstage. There was no way to get to the light/sound booth without crossing one of two noisy catwalks above the audience, the backstage walls were shiny white, the floor was expensive tile that you had to take your shoes off to cross (or else you'd sound like a drat horse), all the doors were the big office ones that SLAM shut, there were windows... It was ridiculous. We didn't even have a shop to build sets in, we had to use the auto shop halfway across campus, and then we had administrators breathing down our necks "don't spill any paint don't spill any paint". On the last day someone dropped a giant can of hot pink paint and left it there to dry over the summer.
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Jun 3, 2009 05:40
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What's your repertoire been like lately? Too bad you don't (apparently) do musicals, because Sondheim's Pacific Overtures is fairly modest, staging-wise, and overlooked. If you're going to do a Shakespeare, there's this really great Ask/Tell thread by an English professor who has some amazing insights on several of his works.
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Jul 6, 2009 23:05
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So I guess Pacific Overtures isn't out of the question. Like I said, it's very modest, in the form of Noh theater (or was it Kabuki?). I think the most elaborate effect is a paper fan "tree" that unfolds, though I guess the music could be considered kinda intimidating, though I guess if you have actors who can do the Major-General's Song then it's not a problem (then again getting any audible lyrics out of that third-to-last verse of Please, Hello is impossible anyways).Wolfgang Pauli posted:(and the school administrators almost cancelled it because of a gunshot). Oy, I know this. We had an administrator when we were working at the new blackbox theater who liked to come in and inspect what we were doing. He was like a crackhead in a police station.  What are they doing over there!? Building a set. With hammers!?!? They're insured. What's that!? IT LOOKS DANGEROUS! It's a chandelier. It could fall! It does fall, it's part of the show. What show!?!?!Thankfully he left about a month later.
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Jul 8, 2009 01:27
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So is anyone else nuts about Sondheim? It's driving me crazy that I have nobody to talk to about his works.
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Oct 23, 2009 00:15
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I've been stuck on Merrily We Roll Along for like two weeks now, and it kills me that there was never a libretto published.
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Oct 23, 2009 19:17
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Slashie posted:Not yet!  I hope it's not just the songs, I really want to read the whole play. That's what I've been doing with most of his works, getting the libretto and the cast album from the library and reading them. Made Follies really hard, I had to chart out who was married to who but secretly loved/didn't love who.
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Oct 23, 2009 21:01
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Sondheim's shows do tend to have pretty weak books, I mean, I think Sweeney Todd is his strongest show simply because there's so little talking. Company has the issue of a mediocre ending, Follies is too much of the same thing (bitching), Pacific Overtures is often downright boring, Sunday In The Park's second act simply can't live up to the first (but on the whole it's a really fantastic piece of drama and totally worthy of the Pulitzer), Into The Woods totally crashes in the second act...and all of them have the issue of the writer trying to compete with Sondheim's brilliant songs. I'm not trying to give him a blowjob here, but there's nothing in the book of Pacific Overtures that is half as good as Someone In A Tree.Rashomon posted:I had a gigantic phase where I was really into "Merrily" when I was like 15. The original cast recording is great -- apparently they were all pissed because their show had been panned and closed so fast, and they recorded it the day after closing. So they put all their energy into KILLING the cast recording, and you can tell. In Sondheim & Co. they talk about how they really wanted the album to sound professional and slick, as opposed to rough and amateurish on-stage. Mostly I want to read it out of curiosity ("is it really that bad?"), because you're right, some of those songs are absolutely incredible, particularly Franklin Shepard Inc. (which hurts the play even more, having its most powerful song right there at the front). If you watch the Youtube videos of the original cast (Jason Alexander with hair!) the issues are pretty obvious in that they're all acting pretty badly on a huge set. It might have worked off-Broadway, but you just can't do the "fake amateur" thing in such a huge auditorium, because then it feels like bad actors auditioning. Apparently they've reworked the play a lot over the years but never to any real satisfaction. Would it have to be redone from the ground up? What works and what doesn't?
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Oct 29, 2009 06:32
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Rashomon posted:I could go into a lot of detail Please do! (I'm hijacking this thread and taking it to Cuba.) Rashomon posted:...but the main issue is pretty much that Frank is an rear end in a top hat when you meet him, so it takes until halfway through the show until you sympathize with him or understand where he's coming from. (For those who are unfamiliar, the show runs backwards in time). Also, the plot lines are rather thin and have never been satisfactorily addressed -- basically it consists of "Frank is a sellout!" "No I'm not!" "But you said you'd never give up your dreams!" It gets preachy at times, when it's coherent at all. Really great score though -- "Opening Doors," "Our Time," "Franklin Shepard Inc.," "Not A Day Goes By." Really good overture too, if you like that sort of thing. Do you think even more rewrites would save it, or would it have to be done from the ground up? I've also heard of it being performed chronologically and, apparently, in an "Annie Hall" fashion, where it goes back and forth. It sounds like the same problem Follies has, except Follies gets a foot ahead with the Loveland sequence. Definitely great songs, though. Raul Esparza is pretty good at this. Rashomon posted:Here, here is a "Merrily" present for you: Wow, it's even worse in color!  Rashomon posted:The problem with most Sondheim shows is they get dominated by him because he IS a great songwriter, and he was such a force of nature in his heyday (70s-80s). So the shows end up being all about the great Sondheim songs, and not so much about the SHOW being a good piece of theater. Even something as good as "A Little Night Music" has a very flimsy book -- particularly Henrik and Anne are pretty badly written. (Charlotte is terrific, though). "Sweeney Todd" is really well constructed and definitely the best of his shows, and even the other FANTASTIC shows of his that I adore ("Sunday...", "Into The Woods," "Company," and "Follies") have flaws. I'm also actually a "Pacific Overtures" fan, but it's very weird and sort of bad in certain ways. I actually liked the Roundabout revival, too. Pacific Overtures has some amazing songs but some very awkward book segments. Most of Sondheim's other shows can get from song to song fairly well (or at least a well as they can) but with this it just kind of stumbles along until the orchestra starts up again. I really don't know of any musicals that give just as much weight to the book as the songs that aren't Sondheim shows, and I think in some respects the slack that's given in "dramatic weight" is taken up by sheer creativity. But then again, how many people want to see something like Pacific Overtures, particularly considering the Disneyland climate of modern Broadway?
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Oct 31, 2009 19:36
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:It's not like you can't put casters on a tree and roll it out onto a stage for that one song. That's pretty much what they did (ugh why does that not have a release). I've always thought Pacific Overtures would work really well in a black box, probably thrust, because it requires that kind of intimacy. Or maybe I'm horribly wrong. One of the issues with Pacific Overtures is finding the right balance between Western and Eastern instruments in the orchestra. The OBC gets the second half right, the 2004 revival nails the first half, but the former is too brassy in the first half and the latter is too skeletal in the second. But then again, it's the lush Western orchestrations that make Chrysanthemum Tea, Poems, and There Is No Other Way so beautiful on the OBC. I guess the answer is to sit there with the orchestra and remove the Western instruments one by one for each song until equilibrium, or something.
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Nov 6, 2009 04:37
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'night Mother comes to mind, but that's a two-female no-male play. Miss Julie (ooh do that one) is two females, one male. I guess you could sexually invert Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice. Here's a list, here's one of all-female casts, here's one with the limit of one male and any female (so you'll get a lot of one-man shows)...the Dramatists Play Service playfinder is a good place to start. edit: So is the 2004 revival recording of Assassins really crappy? It's the only one I've got and either I just don't like the music or it's just a bad version. Why is Guiteau played so gay? Of course I take the same issue with the 2004 revival recording of Pacific Overtures in that most of the singing is really...what, overwrought? It sounds goofy, like they're cut songs from Seussical or something. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Nov 7, 2009 |
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Nov 7, 2009 05:06
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Anyone know anything about The Exonerated? I'm supposed to be crewing it in a couple months. Also, apparently Sondheim's started writing his two-volume autobiography.
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Jan 27, 2010 21:09
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Slashie posted:It's one of those boring-rear end staged-reading plays. Unless your production makes a lot of changes it's probably the easiest thing to crew ever. So I'm crewing it now, and it's pretty dull to listen to over and over. I'm working the flies, and since there's only two real moves (scrim out at the beginning, then a few things bunched together [all in one call, which I didn't know the first time we ran through it and caused a commotion]) I do basically nothing for almost ninety minutes. But the flying makes up for the boredom, and I've been reading plays off of the theater shelf (there are a good four, five hundred). Read Amadeus today, gave it an A+. But they don't have Merrily...
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Mar 3, 2010 10:08
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So far I've actually managed to read about one play per performance. Amadeus: The film is different enough to be a completely different entity. Shaffer's play is funny, sad, and totally, utterly captivating. In the opening blurb it mentions that people were lining up around the block at six in the morning to try to get whatever same-day tickets they could for it a couple weeks after the London premiere, and it's really easy to see why. Amadeus is one of the most marvellosly crafted, titillating, and scandalous plays I've read in a while. Salieri's fate is impossibly, gorgeously ironic, Mozart's degeneration is twice as heartbreaking, and the show is written to run together, which it does, like a weird, unpleasant dream. I gave it an A+ and that's why. California Suite: I'm really not sure how I feel about Neil Simon. The Odd Couple was pretty funny, I liked The Out-Of-Towners, and his humor has a certain edge, but it always feels almost too "airy", like he's pumping up the situation with a lot of words. In California Suite we get a divorced couple arguing about their unseen daughter, a businessman who finds himself in bed with a drunkenly passed-out woman (and his wife is in the elevator), an agitated British actress who is up for an Oscar for a lovely comedy and her gay husband, and a fight between two vacationing couples. A lot of it is terribly funny (and I really got a kick out of the big deal everyone makes about California, reminded me of the Los Angeles segment of Annie Hall), but it feels like there's not much behind the comedy. You laugh, you go home, you go to sleep, you make coffee, oh yeah you saw a play what was it about I dunno pass the pepper. B Equus: Another Shaffer, not quite as good as Amadeus this time but quite close. My issue with it is that it occasionally feels sort of ham-handed, the "playwright who doesn't know anything about psychiatry writes a play about psychiatry" feel. I don't know if Shaffer does, or if it's just outdated in general (the field of psychiatry has shifted a hell of a lot in the last thirty years), but its handling bugged me. Of course, Shaffer knew next to nothing about the real case, and most of the play is really, really, really good, and he went on to write a confabulatory play about Salieri killing Mozart, but those little bumps do damage. A- Don't Drink The Water: Woody Allen writes a farce. For the most part it feels like it could have been written by just about anyone, and Allen's touches are pretty sparse. It's funny in places, and I'm sure with good actors and quick timing it'd be hysterical on-stage, but it feels outdated (it's about the Cold War, and the structure is a by-the-numbers 60s farce that sometimes is above-average) and kind of flat. B- Deathtrap: Like Sleuth, but more self-referential. It is interesting how it parallels itself through most of the play, but this gimmick doesn't quite save it from feeling like every other twisty 70s murder-thriller (I didn't like Sleuth, either). I will admit that I couldn't put it down, and I'm sure that seeing it live enhances the suspense (and occasional comedy), but it just doesn't quite work for me. Of course, reading a thriller play isn't quite the same as seeing one ("He is interrupted by a hand strangling his neck" just doesn't pack much of a punch) so it gets a nice little... B It's fun reading plays.
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Mar 7, 2010 11:19
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Black Comedy: Peter Shaffer's British class-system farce. It's a really vicious play, with nasty characters and awful things happening, and a properly unpleasant ending. Things get hosed up, and it's great. What makes it work is probably the nastiness of the characters. None of these people are people you'd want to spend ten minutes with, probably. The main character is a backstabbing cheat, his fiancee says things like "sexipegs" and talks about "daddy", her "daddy" is a crazy military man, the neighbor across the hall turns out to be halfway to looney-land, so on and so forth. The play's gimmick is that it takes place during a blackout, but the stage lights are up full blast when the lights are "out", which means we get to watch the characters stumble around blindly. This, of course, is where the "class-system" part comes in, as the characters desperately try to remain civil, polite, and in their place; at one point three characters awkwardly carry on a cocktail conversation, each pointed in the wrong direction. It's pretty good. However, it's also terribly dated, and frankly I couldn't imagine this being played as anything but a 60s period piece. But that's fine. It's a very funny 60s period piece, and it works in that restriction. The bigger problem, I think, is the same problem that I have with 70s twisty mysteries, and that's simply that the "farce" genre has been exhausted. Everyone is familiar with the booby traps that snare the characters in Black Comedy. There is nothing in this play that hasn't shown up in, say, Friends or Three's Company. It seems to depend entirely on the actors' ability to play physical comedy, which is a good and bad thing: with great actors, I can only imagine that Black Comedy is gut-bustingly hysterical, but with bad actors it can only crumble. B+/A-
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Mar 11, 2010 09:09
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Three last plays (The Exonerated is over): Plaza Suite: Far better than California. Simon has a really interesting way with words, the idea being that people tend to talk a lot without saying much, and then he puts characters in situations where they have to communicate (or they don't and everything collapses), and when he's really good his writing has a pretty sharp edge that elevates it above your normal wordy farce. California fails because the humor is bland and the characters are limp, but Plaza succeeds because the characters really pop out and the humor stings. I can't remember who said it but there's a great quote about Company that goes something like "We wanted people to laugh their heads off for two hours then go home and not be able to sleep", and two of the three short plays here hit that pretty hard. The one that misses is the final (shortest) play, which suffers from a worn-out plot (parents fret about soon-to-be-wed offspring's cold feet) and a too-neat punchline that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the show, but the slapstick is pretty good and much of the writing is really excellent. It seems like an odd arrangement, but I'm sure it pleases the audience. A-/B+ Nine: Meh. Wandering music, iffy plot. I guess it could be fun live, and certainly the videos I've seen of the original production are spirited, but it lacks cohesion. I haven't seen the recent film adaptation (yet), but Ebert describes the songs as "boilerplate", which is really fitting. Occasionally there are flashes of inspiration, mostly when the music takes an Italian bent, but for the most part it sounds like just about any subpar musical out there. The text is okay, usually serving to get to the next song and making a framework of references to Fellini's film. There are some good ideas, though, mostly in presentation; the white-tile spa setting with a blue sky background, the orchestra of women (this show could make a great use of a revolve), white-on-black. It's just too airy. The book expects the music to bear the brunt of the show and vice versa. Maybe I'm spoiled by Sondheim. C The Royal Hunt Of The Sun: I'll preface this by saying that it took me two full performances to read this and I don't think I've even begun to scratch the surface. It's similar to Amadeus and Equus in that the subject matter is fairly extraordinary (the Spanish rape of the Inca empire), and that he loads the play up with all kinds of issues. Shaffer manages to cover life, death, wealth, happiness, socialism (and I guess you could read it as communism), evil, greed, religion, it's insane. It's extraordinary. I loved every word of it. The Incas are set up as this mystical empire, and when we finally get there every word of it is true. They really do have gold coming out of their ears. There's a fantastic passage describing a golden garden, made of gold. Trees of gold, fruit of gold, golden butterflies hanging on silver threads. A golden family of llamas. The Spaniards whisk it all away, but suffer greatly for it. Like Amadeus and Equus, we're lead by the narrator from the future, though the temporal play isn't as inventive as it is in Amadeus (where elderly Salieri tells the audience, from his own time, how the audience will eventually, after waiting in the netherworld and eventually being born, know the joys of Mozart), but it is necessary as a framing device. There's also some really great staging with a huge golden sun that opens up to reveal the royal court (the petals are eventually ripped off and melted down, leaving a dead black metal frame) and a curtain of blood that signifies the massacre of a thousand. The Royal Hunt Of The Sun is a solid gold cornucopia of arresting concepts and intriguing ideas, a bombastic fable, and a generally all-around stunning piece of art. A+
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Mar 17, 2010 05:17
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Practical Demon posted:Like the reviews, Magic Hate Ball. Was in Amadeus recently, and definitely agree with the review. It's too bad the production was overwrought in a few places, and didn't quite get the flow of the script down as it should have. The writing really speeds along in that one. The "lightbox" was a really interesting idea. I think it'd be hard to manage Amadeus without believably ostentatious period clothes and furniture. What kind of problems, specifically, did the production have? The Pillowman posted:I'd recommend seeing Nine only for Marion Cotillard. The plot is just as jumbled and Daniel Day-Lewis isn't likeable enough to pull the show together. Costumes as always are beautiful. Rob Marshall's an interesting director, and I guess it's nice to have someone bringing Broadway to the cinema. I've got a major interest in film, so whenever I read/see a play I've always got that background noise of "how could this play out on screen", and Nine definitely seems like it'd make a spectacle. There are some musicals that just wouldn't translate, I think, including several of Sondheim's (Company, especially, as it relies on being sort of amorphous in presentation). It's odd that they've never done a film of Les Miserables.
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Mar 17, 2010 08:53
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Slashie posted:It's one of those boring-rear end staged-reading plays. Unless your production makes a lot of changes it's probably the easiest thing to crew ever. I know this was a little while ago, but I found out recently that our production did make a lot of changes. It wasn't a hard show to crew, at least backstage (we had 334 cues, most of them lights) but there was quite a bit going on and it was actually very active, which I hear is quite different from how it was originally staged (reading from music stands). Actually, it got a little hectic for me backstage towards the end when I had like six really heavy things to fly in and out really, really slowly. Edit: A production photo from Merrily We Roll Along that would be boring and completely forgettable if it were not for the fact that that's Jason Alexander on the right:  ...apparently Jason Alexander was a stud. I had no idea. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Apr 11, 2010 |
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Apr 11, 2010 05:07
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I still haven't been able to actually read or see it so I have to go off of what other people tell me and vague summaries. It seems like if someone were to take it and give it an overhaul it could really work, though you're right about the basic subject matter (apparently the book was particularly bad). That's what they were trying to overcome in their casting young adults and doing a "high school" set (literally, it was made up to look like a high school gymnasium) which is kind of a good idea but not quite, though it might have worked if they hadn't been so literal about it (it looked like crap). Of course, the stupid thing's seen like four makeovers so maybe it's just a bad show but I'm a romanticist. There's just something about the music that says "I'm awesome", particularly the orchestrations (that gnawing electric keyboard in Franklin Shepard Inc., the way Rich And Happy explodes in the final quarter, the arrangements surrounding the last performance of The Hills Of Tomorrow). It's too drat good to be a curious flop. Sondheim's music always has the best orchestrations, at least on the original cast recordings when the orchestra was huge because you get all these wonderful things that pop up and out at you when you least expect them. That's what, to me, separates Sondheim's music from the music of so many other Broadway composers. There's nothing simplistic about it whatsoever, the vocal melody and the score are always working together to form counterpoints and harmonies and there's always so much buried in what, in too many other shows, is just the background noise for the singer. Basically what I'm saying is "omg stephen sondheim". Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 11, 2010 |
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Apr 11, 2010 17:41
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I think that that's a good point, and would give the show a huge boost. From what I know, by the way, that's Young Frank crediting Charley during the Hills reprise. If we were to return to the present to properly acknowledge that Frank regrets what he's done, then there would not only be a conclusion but a rounder, more sympathetic main character. Our Time could certainly serve as a vehicle to return to the present: Young Frank is replaced by Old Frank and he comes downstage alone singing Our Time, and watches the Hills reprise from the side of the stage. Or something, I'm just freely hypothesizing but you have a really good point.
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Apr 11, 2010 21:59
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I made these for the iconized album art thread:    They're so cute. 
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May 4, 2010 09:09
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I've always favored the "skeleton" pumpkin, though that probably wouldn't fly in some productions. Depends on how the overall show is done. Also yeah, Pacific Overtures is totally awesome. I blind-bought it from a 50-cent bin at the local record store, it had a full-sized lyrics book with pictures and a plot outline. It was the first time I'd actually sat down and done nothing but listen to a record. Blew me the gently caress away. It's nice that it's at least on tape, too, even if it's not in great condition. poo poo, I've never even seen a proper picture of the original Company set.
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Jun 1, 2010 02:20
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That's a good point about Sondheim, that he writes for the show. I love the OBCs, too, because he was working very directly with the show and so you get vocal choices that fit the role. I hate when a song is all about how great some chick can belt, just as much as I hate when a show has scenery that's just scenery (Wicked gets a hit from both categories), and if you listen to the OBCs you'll get a lot of character, but without the great-voice-pop-star front. I mean, most of Pacific Overtures is like that, as well as Follies, and with A Little Night Music you get stylized old-fashioned accents, or the genuine-sounding dirty old men who populate A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. It's fantastic, but it's lost in a lot of the revivals (the recent Night Music has some absurd singing). Then again Sondheim approves of the revivals, so either he's getting on or it was someone else's influence in the first place. And Sunday is just an incredible show in every respect. Why selfish? Franz is at least half wrong... Edit: I will say that the recent revival of Night Music uses its small orchestra really well in some places, becoming a quintet or a music box, but then you get to songs like A Weekend In The Country and it's just crushed not only under the company's voices but the song itself. Wolfgang Pauli posted:What area you work in, Hate Ball? Just going to community college, so the pumpkin thing is theoretical. I hate it when they try to make a cardboard pumpkin, because that means they're going the wrong way with the wrong materials. A production with no money would probably be better off suggesting things, which is where the pumpkin "skeleton" comes in. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jun 1, 2010 |
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Jun 1, 2010 21:29
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This probably isn't as exciting for most of you as it is for me, but here's a nice big photograph of Boris Aronson's set for Company: And- oh my, now it's a nightclub!  And in color, too!  I'm so happy that this exists.
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Nov 17, 2010 20:12
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I actually just finished watching that earlier, and I kinda warmed up to it (I hated it the first time), but it still feels too much like "Company In Concert", though maybe that's just my affinity for period atmosphere speaking. For a couple weeks I've been focused on Company and I'd never seen the whole set before, and it is nice to look at, though people are so much bigger nowadays (case in point, the slabs of meat starring in Mad Men) that it would probably look kind of spindly if re-used. At the very least, though, it would be an interesting thing to have on-stage. A lot of Company makes more sense when you look at that set, particularly The Little Things (Joanne walking above, looking down) and Poor Baby (the lifted "apartments"), and the sudden elevator movement during the long "looooooove" in the opening number (a long note held because that's how long it took everyone to get down to Bobby) must've been pretty marvelous.
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Nov 17, 2010 23:08
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I got ahold of an audio recording of the 2002 Kennedy Center production of Merrily We Roll Along (it was really easy to find, too; why didn't I think of that before?). It's not bad, though maybe I'm just so thrilled to be able to hear the show in its entirety that I don't want it to be less than spectacular, which it is. Furth's dialogue is incredibly witty and the acting is fantastic ("Oh, no...now I'm not going to be invited back...") but it suffers not necessarily from its structure (it's better in that regard than the original play, and I liked how well they adapted some of the elements, e.g., the answering machine guy) but from a lack of closure. At the end the feeling is kind of like, okay, so he was happy and optimistic once but now his life is in the shitter, despite all his wealth, so what? Frank does have an epiphany in the first scene about how much he hates his life, or at least he's able to verbalize it, so it feels like there should be some kind of denouement; despite it playing backwards and thus having a solid "end", it still feels wrong chronologically. It's like the end of Gypsy; you have Rose's Turn, which could definitely be the show's climactic end, but then Arthur Laurents puts in that reconciliation. My first vague idea was to have Charlie on-stage before the overture, typing at his desk; his phone rings, he picks it up, answers "Hi, this is Charlie", or something to that effect. A look of recognition passes over his face: "Frank..." Then the lights go out and the overture bursts from the pit. That would probably just confuse the audience, though. I don't know why I think about these things for so long when I could be pursuing other more productive activities Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Dec 8, 2010 |
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Dec 8, 2010 06:52
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FleshColoredBeard posted:I know this is late, but during the time you posted this the community college I currently go to was doing it as well. I wasn't crewing it but I did go to see a performance and thought it was such a massive set but it worked out well. Though it would have been a better theater experience if it wasn't for these meddling teenagers that sat next to me. Cool! What'd they do? We had two "wings" of doorways, three on one side, two on the other, that at first were closed downstage and crammed the early action down there onto the apron. Upstage was a large prison tower with a door and a little window up top for a searchlight. As the play went on the wings opened inwards (usually pretty clumsily) and eventually the tower lifted out and the stage was completely open.
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Dec 30, 2010 10:25
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Crap away! Are you an active theater student there/here? This is awesome. edit: also how did the show look? Obviously I never got to see it but I've always been curious how well those final moments played out. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Dec 31, 2010 |
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Dec 31, 2010 01:05
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I was the fly-puller and so I never really got an opportunity to watch it. I take it you know Chris and Chuck and Debbie. Taking any classes next semester? I'll be doing scenic design with Chris (took his stagecraft class last spring, building sets etc) and playwriting with Chuck. This is so cool.
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Dec 31, 2010 03:35
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Like a black box? Flies are really fun to work with, so that kind of sucks. I guess you work mostly with multipurpose/modular sets and roll-ons?
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Jan 2, 2011 01:15
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Julia Jordan's Nightswim might be up your alley.
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Feb 26, 2011 05:51
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Agh, I have to write a critique of a play I didn't like, with scenery I thought was mediocre, for both my playwriting professor, who wrote the play, and my scenic design professor, who designed the play.
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Mar 11, 2011 10:08
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They both said a negative critique is just fine, but it's still a little daunting.
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Mar 11, 2011 19:44
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That's pretty unprofessional, even for a community college. I'm probably going to be more lenient on Chris because I know the budget is impossibly lovely right now and it's hard to make a set look like a Vegas show with zero dollars (the portal was great, though, too bad there weren't just a bunch of those and screw everything else), but I was doing a lot of cringing over Chuck's script. The lyric "He can't afford to miss/Is it really worth the risk?" actually made me kind of sad because it was like, come on, Chuck, you're better than that.
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Mar 11, 2011 20:00
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We got a pretty precise list of topics to cover, but yes, I know the goal (a Vegas show theme) and it didn't really hit the mark.
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Mar 12, 2011 08:49
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I honestly had trouble picking him out, and I'll second the showgirl's headdresses, they were very Seussian.
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Mar 22, 2011 09:01
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I kinda wish I'd seen the show twice, just for both Cheryls (the understudy was hilarious), but on the other hand I really didn't want to have to sit through it more than once.
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Mar 25, 2011 22:33
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Wow, the set for the new Broadway revival of How To Succeed... is kind of monolithic and scary:  
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Mar 28, 2011 18:31
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I just finished making my first white model today, I didn't expect it to be such a relaxing, entertaining activity. I almost want to show you guys out of pride but I'm afraid I'd get booed. I also want to make more more more
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Apr 10, 2011 09:16
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 21:16 |
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You know, a stage version of Eternal Sunshine could actually be really fun.
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Jul 9, 2011 03:17
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