west uptowner

3pm: Waiting to start another run of “Revolutions in Therapy” -- a quiet show about personal struggles with ... well probably depression and a search for meaning. That sounds so staid. It's an ambitious piece, conceptually, in that they are trying not to be polished about the show. To be who they are that day: just a couple of people talking, in a vaguely therapeutic context.

I'm enjoying working lights in this way. I don't feel the weight of being a designer on the show, but I have to act like one with the design: watch things, make small adjustments, take the director's notes and turn them into what he wants to see. They want to see. Tweak until there's no time left. It is nice that the show is relatively simple, in its own way – no very intense interplay of front lights to deal with, just a lovely arc of lights that rolls along on auto follows, and some cues to fill in the differences.

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4:30 pm: Wow, we just ran the show and I came pretty close to passing out. We need an audience and I need food and coffee.

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19:01 -- had coffee with dinner. Having another right now. Ready for the show. I LOVE how they give you a little cookie with your coffee here. And not a stodgy bit of shortbread or a cheap chocolate chip number – no, it's always a little flaky pastry of a cookie, in the shape of a pretzel, with a baked-on sugary coating. God love the good life.

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9:30 pm: Just finished the show in Stutttgart: opening night. Great audience, they were with it. Maybe the effort of trying to understand things brought them more fully into staying with the show. They were attentive to nuance. It makes you wonder if back home we have forgotten how to ATTEND to a show – that perhaps we have forgotten that we should bring effort or rigour into spectatorship. We have made attendance of an event into a passive thing.

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inventions:

A sonata of vaccuum cleaners, taps on large windows, and computer fans, backed up by a truck engine and its back-up beep.

A zulu curse on your telephone line.

A rap for soothing a crying baby.

A scottish lullaby about a serial killer in the service of the people.

A yearly meal and drink in celebration of one's defeats.

A bank for investing anger.

A light that does not illuminate the hungry.

# posted by trev @ 5:06 p.m.