A Child Of Atom

At this point I am figuring that the job in PA is a no-go. I'm not sure why, but since I should be several days into the design period at this point and I'm not... well... one has to assume. So, my fabulous several months of not having to worry about job hunting won't be quite as long as I believed. On the plus side finding work right now doesn't seem to be a problem. For instance I spent the last few days in Brooklyn painting miniature buildings for the set of this movie. It's been quite fun actually as it combines two of my favorite things- painting distressed materials and model making. There's a good ten feet of buildings, both sides of the street with a lot of detail. The movie is a stop-motion animation piece so the cameras and the lenses are tiny and will pick up every little piece of information. I can't wait to see! The rest of this week will be spent doing the exact opposite and making giant or oversized replicas of everything from a powder box to a milk carton to a bog of cotton balls. All of this has to be built to the scale of a mouse. Again, kind of fun, don'tcha think?

Several of you have emailed to say that you are having trouble leaving comments for me. Here's the deal: Blogger has been sold to Google. Google has added some new features that you can only use if you merge your Blogger account with your Google account. I have done that.

Here's the wrinkle though: people who have not upgraded their Blogger accounts cannot post comments on blogs that have been upgraded, and vice versa. Blogger has added the option of logging in as "Other" to the comments box so that you can still comment, and you can link your comment to your blog.

So if you are a Blogger user who has not upgraded please use the "Other" option to leave comments for me until Blogger gets all this ironed out! Thanks!

You may have noticed that I've changed templates... well... Blogger changed so I had to as well. Blogger was recently purchased by Google and implemented some nifty new features that I wanted to take advantage of. (Mainly the subject labels) In order to do that I had to change to one of their new templates. The result has been a bit rocky and I apologize for any weirdness you may have experienced. First the flash based flickr badge no longer works, so I had to switch to the far less cool html one that now graces my sidebar. Then I freaked out because my hit counter dropped to almost zero for the last two days until I realized that switching templates stripped out the code for the counter. Today I was looking at some old posts and discovered that one of the new features (backtracking–which shows you if anyone has linked to a specific post) works fine for the current posts but causes the old posts to splash up an html warning, (at least in Safari, the browser I use). If there are any other bugs that I'm not seeing in some other browser please let me know so I can work it out for all our sakes! In the coming days I'll be doing some more site maintenance shifting the stock html of the template into something a nit more... me.

Two pieces of subway sketching new for you:

ITEM! With my return to the city that means a return to sketching, (Finally!!) so look for some new sketches in the next day or two!

ITEM! Earlier this summer I received an email from a gallery in Houston inquiring to see if I would be interested in doing a showing of the sketches. A few days ago it was confirmed that in December the Xnihilo Gallery will be hosting an exhibit of my subway sketches. So if you are in Houston come and see me! I'll be there in person for the opening. The show itself will be up until early January (more specific dates when I know them).

Here I am. In my own bed. In my own apartment. Under my own sheets. I'm incredibly happy to be home, but I'll admit that it's weird. Waiting on the platform for the subway today seemed... odd. As if I was a tourist or something. Part of was that I wasn't wearing my "city drag." My ipod was at home uncharged. My messenger bag was in my apartment full of books I carried home from the forest today. My cell phone was also at home, forgotten because I am out of the habit of needing it after 3 months with no service. On the subway I had no book to read, no book to sketch in, no ipod to listen to... it was an alien experience. I was my summer stock self in my real life world and the fit wasn't right. Tomorrow I go back to the regular world checking for keys, wallet, ipod, cell phone, metro card before I step foot outside the house. Messenger bag full of pens and books over my shoulder. I have a life full of errands to run, and work to catch up on.

I'm so happy to be home.

Okay... I know it's too small. I know it would be impractical. I know that I'd have to move somewhere where I had the land to put it up... but how cool would it be to live here?

Today marks one week until I leave the forest for the last (?) time and return to my life in the city. I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to it in case none of you could tell. Life here has been good, and I've done some good work while I was here this year but I lost some serious momentum when the TD who had been here for most of the season left. The last two shows frustrated me just a touch because the set should be massive but with my extremely limited stage space I wasn't able to achieve that. Maybe in the end that was okay since both shows are about family relations and the stresses of family relations so having them (literally) on top of each other might be an appropriate statement, who knows.

The end of the season means that the resident company, the group of younger actors who formed the chorus for the musicals, are gone. The theatre is empty. There's no one at lunch or dinner. Things are much like they were in the first week when no one was here but technicians. That also means that there is no one here to wait tables or work at the cabaret, (the post show song and dance presentation in the bar at the theatre). So, tonight I have my first shift waiting tables in the cabaret. I've worked in the kitchen of the cabaret before, but never waiting tables. I'm sort of looking forward to it. I haven't waited tables in quite a while. Plus I hope to make enough money to pay for my rental car trip home!

After two days of calendar juggling and phone calls between three different theatres and producers I am several steps closer to confirming work for the next few months. This is an exciting process for me. Not too long ago I was convinced that the next year was going to be a rough one and that I'd end up temping or worse in the coming months in order to make things happen financially. One of the two jobs that I spoke about yesterday has been confirmed now, and the second is very close. If that job goes through then I will have enough work confirmed to keep me busy through the new year, 5 new shows and 2 new theatres on my resume. The downside, as I said yesterday is that this also means that I'll be in the city for barely a month before I leave again for a 6 week residency in PA. That's almost half the time that I've been away already. While I love the idea of being outside the city, and working in places other than Manhattan this long residency distresses me a little. Being away from home that long keeps me from restablishing my life there. A month in and then a month or more away means that I can't really date or start new patterns of anything. It's rough, but I want and need the work, so it's what I'll do.

I'm done.

I'm ready to go home.

I'm sick of actors and musicals and mosquitos and sandwiches and no cell reception and no high speed internet and singing right outside my door and not being able to do... anything.

I want to play cards with my friends and eat what I want and ride the subway and sketch and sleep in my own room and wear some different clothes and work with some different people and go to movies when I want and watch TV and... ugh.

I have three weeks left here. The last week will be pretty boring as the last two shows share a set and the only change in between is furniture. I really have nothing to do here, and what i do have left to do... I have very little will to actually do. I'm tired and I just want to be at home. UGH!

I have two very distinct jobs possibilities open to me after this, both of which are well paying, and both of which are outside NYC, a goal that I've had for a while now. One of them though would require a month long residence in the middle of bumfuck Pennsylvania and I'm not sure how much I really want to do that. I just want to be at home for a while.

Soon... soon... soon.

Earlier in the season when my wish to see a bear was fulfilled I realized that I had to upgrade my ultimate "seen it all" moment. After much thought I came to the conclusion that a pirate-monkey riding a cybernetic bear would be the ultimate, and so that's what I started wishing for. Today while perusing the internet I discovered that that dream may not be as far off as you might be thinking.

BEHOLD! Whiplash! The cowboy-monkey!!

My mom is visiting and has brought a veritable BOUNTY of southern delicacies that were a huge hit around the theatre tonight. We started with peaches the size of softballs that were so soft and juicy that they melted in your mouth. You definitely required a good hand-washing after eating one. Then came muscadines. Almost no one else here had ever had one but they became an instant hit and went very quickly. Tomorrow I plan to boil up the 10 lbs of raw peanuts she brought for me and I expect that they will go just as quickly. Also in the treasure trove were Duke's mayonnaise, some pralines and several jars of chow-chow but I plan to keep all of those for myself. I really miss southern food, (as anyone who has read me for any amount of time must know) and this was like manna from the gods. Thanks Mom and Bette for the treats!

I often tell people that reality breaks down around me, that coincidence is too strong a factor in my life and that connections get made in my life that don't get made for other people. Today I have another in a string of examples.

I know three people who live in Las Vegas. One is a stage manager who I met almost 6 years ago working in NC. The other two are a married couple, a director, and a musical director. When my friend Alison moved there a few weeks ago I told her that I'd try to introduce her to my friend the stage manager. (She already knew the other two because we all worked together last summer.) Last night I emailed my friend and gave her a little information about Alison and tried to nudge them a bit closer towards meeting. Today I get the following text message from Alison: "You know my light board op's wife. Small fucking world."

All I can say is... yes, smaller for me than for some it seems.

Here's a little glimpse into what I am doing here and how my job works. This sketch was completed back in April for a meeting with a director. This was the last of several sketches working through the concepts for this show.

About three months later here is the show as it appears onstage, the sketch brought to reality. There were some small changes as you can see, mostly to do with arrangement of platforming. The changes were made because I am using "stock" scenery, stuff that already exists and therefore doesn't impact my budget at all. When I was sketching I had no real idea what sizes and shapes of platforms existed, I just worked of my best guess based on what MOST theatres would have. I also didn't account visually for the band being onstage in my original sketch. I came pretty close though.

I'm in a funk, and I apologize to anyone who normally reads me here that I have allowed this funk to detrimentally affect this blog, but I have.

I'm not sure why I'm in a funk... lots of reasons I suppose.

BFE Michelle is moving away. She already lived 3 hours from me in the hinterlands of CT, but she's leaving me for the city that the Mouse built in Florida. (Otherwise known as Orlando.) I don't begrudge her her success, it's a better job and better opportunities and closer to her family and warmer and her house will probably have a pool, and she can get Duke's mayonnaise whenever she wants... but it still makes me sad.

I continue to walk the line of emotion here at work. The shows are great. We just opened what is arguably the best show I have been a part of here, either this year or last, but personal relationship still elude me. There's no one here that I feel really close to, unlike last year, and that makes me sad.

Work in the rest of the world is also a problem. As a freelancer I always know that there will be dry periods and that there may be months that I will have to eat a lot of PB&Js and ramen, and I also know that I rarely have work lined up more than a few months in advance, but I don't have a heck of a lot on my plate when I get back to the city and the prospect of temping petrifies me, and makes me sad.

The last few days have been punctuated by a nagging dry cough and headaches that I am marking down to the symptoms of some weird summer cold, and being sick always makes me sad.

So, in general... sadness.

Life has continued though. Since blogging last I have been to the city twice, once for pleasure once for business. I have had two job interviews, one of which I got but then had to turn down because of conflict dates, and one of which I didn't get. I floated down the Delware river in a raft. I've seen many bears. Played a lot poker, sometimes winning, most times not. I've seen a movie or two, all of which were bad. I've been downloading and loving season 3 of Project Runway. In spite of myself I've been enjoying Marvel's "Civil War" storyline, even though I want very badly not to. A little of everything, a little of nothing, the way it should be I suppose.

The saddest part is that I must be enjoying my "wallow" somehow because I don't feel much motivation to change it, not that I know how I would change it even if I did.

Hopefully I'll be back on my feet and normal again in a week or two. I promise to try and drop by a bit more often.

One of the pleasures of being ahead of schedule is that we have time to do... nothing. The set for the next show is 80% complete at this point, the remaining 20% being mainly a function of needed some specialized construction materials that had to be specially ordered. Friday was the first day of the build and at approximately 2 p.m. we were finished. We spent the rest of the afternoon debating whether we were going hiking or simply going into town for ice cream. (Ice cream won out.) Saturday we took the day off and set out for a small town about an hour from here that we had passed on the way to the campgrounds. It's one of those artistic mountain towns that relies mainly on tourism so the main street is full of kooky shops and small diners. On the way there we spotted a few yard sales and flea markets that we stopped at, ostensibly props shopping but really just killing time. There were a lot of great finds, a working high 8 camera, a box of about 30 8 tracks (that included the soundtrack to the movie Convoy!), a fleece blanket printed with a portrait of Rocky Balboa... and my personal favorite find a board game called RSVP from the makers of Scrabble.

If you can imagine a cross between Scrabble and Connect Four then you might get close to this game. Each player adds letters one at a time with the goal of spelling words, and blocking your opponent from spelling theirs. The fun comes in the fact that words on the horizontal axis are backwards on your opponent's side. There is some fun strategy involved, especially in waiting out your opponent's moves and stealing their words before they can complete them for themselves. It's not quite as seductive a game as the woman on the box makes it appear to be, but fun nonetheless.

Tomorrow I'm headed into the city for a brief trip to do a little sight seeing, run a few errands, and have a job interview for a show that is being produced when I get back into the city. It will be good to be away from the woods briefly and back in civilization.

The rain finally subsided a few weeks ago. Things dried out considerably, dropping to the normal summertime levels of a few showers here and there. This week was the first week that the temperature reached any considerable high, getting into the low 90's in the afternoon. Weeks of wet followed by warm temps means one thing though: MOSQUITOS. They are everywhere. Large ones, small ones, the mean buzzy kind that seem to derive pleasure from whining around your ears. Bug spray doesn't seem to deter them, citronella candles don't seem to bother them, and everyone is going nuts.

This summer's theme seems to be pests: mosquitos, bears (which still visit regularly), and non-equity actors.

As of 8 p.m. last night the third show of the season is open and playing to thunderous applause.... though I'm not sure why. This is by far the best selling show of the season so far, outstripping the previous show by huge percentages even though the previous show is smarter, funnier, sexier and better acted. The current show features a dozen small girls, (one of whom wears a curly red wig if you need a hint as to what the show might be) who run about the stage gleefully screeching songs. It's a fine show I suppose. The adults and most of the girls manage to act the show very well, the one purely adult number in the show is especially fun, and the design side looks great, (of course! but I mainly meant that the costumes were good, not just my stuff) I just don't understand why the show is so damned popular. I'd be willing to chalk it up to the relatives of the various girls buying out the house, except that every year about this time the theatre runs a survey in the programs asking the patrons to choose from a list of potential shows for next season. The winners so far this year: Cats, Funny Girl, and Oklahoma. Times like this really make me question why I do this job. Oklahoma at least has some sentimental value and a bit of charm, but the other two? Ugh. ESPECIALLY Cats. No one will ever successfully explain to me why that show is so stinking popular.

Tomorrow I start work on number 4, which is a unit set, (meaning that there are no set changes or big scenic shifts) so I estimate that it will be built by Monday, a full week ahead of schedule. That's good actually because it means that I can go into the next show with some spare time because it is the bear of the season. I'll need all the spare time I can muster to get it done I believe.

It's funny how everything here is the same, and nothing is as well. I am coming close to the halfway point of my time here this year and I finally feel like I am settled in. When I first arrived it felt as if I had been here all year really and that the last nine months in NYC hadn't happened at all. Then a few days later when things started getting rolling it felt like I was in a completely new place with no connection to last year.

First off very few people from last year returned, mostly the designers, and almost none of the staff. On the other hand a few people from two years ago returned, so an interesting dichotomy has been established between those of us who were here last year and ran things one way, and those who were here in years previous and ran things differently. Some of the changes from last year work, some didn't. The knowledge of previous years has made my work more efficient. It's been a balancing act. The work itself is about the same with the exception of the props person who makes the props produced last year look like they were made by a third grader.

The actors are the same way: the few returnees remember last year when most of the resident company liked each other at least, and got along well with the tech staff to boot. This year's group is surly and catty and not at all interested in much of anything outside their small musical theatre world. There are actors in the resident company who have not spoken a single word to me in the 6 weeks that we have been here. There are even a small handful that I am not 100% clear on their names. The talent levels in the resident company are also odd. Last year there was clearly a strong talent for either dance or singing in everyone. It was pretty clearly who was who in a brief time. This year no one seems to be very strong in either direction, and everyone seems pretty mediocre at both. Perhaps that is because this year was chosen on different purposes. Last year we just needed a generic chorus this year we specifically require a certain number of Asians, a certain number of black males and females, etc. in order to cast the shows properly, so the criteria for hiring is changed. There are of course a few standouts who will clearly have a career ahead of them, don't get me wrong. I just feel last year's cast was stronger all around.

In the end I'm happy to be back. I'm creating better, stronger designs because I have a better feel for the time limitations, and how to use the stock. I've also designed the entire season in a way that means pieces from every show will end up somewhere else later. At the end of the build period for the next show in fact the scenery for the final musical will be about 80% complete because pieces from every previous show will be doubling in. There are also all the fringe benefits of being in the woods, cooler weather than in the city, a break from concrete for a while... but I still can't help pining a bit for a "better" time past.