west uptowner

Got to talking about design with Bea. She makes me go philosophical about it sometimes. She pointed out a cue in "Little Dragon" where the set seems to grab all the attention, and the action (which is mostly toned down at that point) onstage is lost. She has a point: it's hard to design anything interesting and fully integrate it unless it's already in the text. A design is an interpretation, and at times it fits roughly over the text of the script -- it demands its own moments, its own pauses. Hopefully the script is open enough to accomodate some play, as it must if the author does not know the exact physical environment in which it will be mounted.

Feels good to have opened this show, though. It's a big set, a fairly demanding lighting design, and I think it pretty much works. Well, that's what I think today. Next week I'll look at it again and find 15 things I want to change.

# posted by trev @ 12:26 p.m. 1 comments

A peaceful pic for a new year. Don't expect much in this world to improve, but I'm curious to see, you know, how bad it's going to get.

Set up an "animated slideshow" today -- a kind of low-tech sequence of stills that capture a little event. This is the third I've put up on flickr, and the first more-or-less documentary style piece.
Check it out at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035627578@N01/sets/71162/

New year's was good. Bea and I partied at Theatre Passe Muraille, then started for home around 2am. We were going to take the streetcar, because it's usually a bit of a party on wheels after midnight Jan.1.... but we didn't want to wait in the cold, so we started walking east on Queen from Bathurst. It was a carnival on the street. Drunks cavorting, a young Serbian womnan weeping loudly into her cellphone, lots of stoopidlee drunk men being assholes to their girlfriends as said girlfriends tried to keep them from being run over in traffic or freezing to the concrete where they decided to sit (on the well-argued principle that "you're not the boss of me")... One guy seemed to be sleeping where he stood until his partner would grab him by the arm to get him to a cab; then he'd get surly and walk on. She finally got a cab (an olympic feat on that night!)-- but the cabbie refused to admit the drunk guy.

Anyway, we were 85% of the way home by the time a streetcar caught up to us, so we thought we might as well finish the journey on foot. Gorgeous, surreal night. I wished I had my camera with me, but then again, some things should just be experienced directly.

# posted by trev @ 7:39 p.m. 0 comments