Tongues

An excerpt of a play by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin. Heard it today and rather liked it.

A voice
A voice comes.
A voice speaks.
A voice he’s never heard.

You are entirely dead.
What is unfinished is forever unfinished.
What has happened has happened.
You are entirely gone from the people.
In  a second he mouns for himself.
For his whole life he mourns.
In the next second hes entirely dead.
In a second he mourns for the others.
For all the others he mourns.
In the next second he’s entirely dead.
In a second he forgets.
All life with the people he forgets.
In the next second he leaves.

His whole body he leaves.
He leaves his whole body behind.

The No-Frills Revue, Final Nights

The No-Frills Revue, being produced by Calvin Theater Company, comes to a close Saturday, 14 Nov. I figured to share some thoughts about it.

The show started out pretty rough. We had one of the most tedious rehearsal processes I have been through, stopping as late as the dress rehearsals mid show to correct issues. Thats just awkward for the techs, who need to see the show to figure out whats going on. The first week of performance was slow and had very little audience. Just not a fun time to work.

Finally, on the 2nd to last night, we finally got a real audience, over 200 people showed up. Took a while, but we probably had the best show so far. At least it looks to end on a high note.

I feel like a lot of the show was kind of poor, some of the funny scenes were just not funny, and a lot of the stuff that was “funny” just wasn’t. I find it really rough to try and work on a show that I really just find poorly done, and this was one of those. However, a lot of the jokes are finally funny, as actors get into their roles and get audience response. So thats working out in our favor.

I feel like I have acquired a slight reputation of being a jackass. However, in this case, I think its needed. No one else is willing to put their foot down and keep people in line, and its got to be done. The utter lack of discipline in the entire group is astounding, people are getting away with stuff that just should never be gotten away with. I feel like this plays into my feeling of the management just not having a spine, but thats kind of a personal opinion. But when we have half naked people out in a lobby area, its just got to stop. Anyhow, this is kind of the theme of the production as of yet. Crazy, unorganized, undiciplined stuff going on.

But thats why they pay us.

The No-Frills Revue

Currently I am ME and Light Board Op for the Calvin Theater Company production of The No Frills Revue, a comedic take of several other popular musicals. During the rehearsal process, I was very concerned about the show, and the potential quality of the final production. However, the first night with a real audience, and the production turned fantastic. The jokes got hit, and even the people we were worried would not like it got in on the laughter. It was a lot of fun. Great luck to the cast for the rest of the show!

Community and Shit

I realized today that I have not posted recently, and that I had a lot on my mind. So here goes the first blog post of the 2009/2010 school year.

I currently live in a duplex with 7 other people. The reasons for this are still unclear to me, but I got in on it, the price was right, and I was ok with the people living there. Turns out, I now live in a “Community”, which I usually interpret to mean the Cherry Hill district that I live in, which incorporates several city blocks. However, the people I live with tend to like the idea of our house being a more exclusive community. Anyhow, I tend to keep to myself, not really interfere, and generally not be a pain in the ass, but also not be too heavily involved, mainly because work is busy, and my activities in the greater community, and with older friends tend to be very important to me. On Sunday, I attended a play with a friend in downtown Grand Rapids. The play was “Performance Art in Front of an Audience Ought to be Entertaining”, and was a work of experimental theater that took place in someone’s flat. I will discuss it more once I get the “Performance Reviews” section of my blog up and running. Anyhow, I had dinner with my friend, which he made, and then we went to the performance, and we stayed for the champagne reception after the performance to discuss the performance with the actors and directors. The entire process took about 5 hours. During that time, I was called by housemates several times informing me that I was missing the community dinner (later discovered to be crappy), and an important meeting (that ended up not taking place). Well and good, except that I had informed everyone what was going on, and no one expressed issues with it before I actually didn’t show up. Which leads to my primary gripe: No one tells me anything.

I figure community living is good. Living with people is a great thing to do. The problems come when people dont bother to actually respect all members of the community equally, and bother to tell them things. I feel like if you have a problem with what I am going to do, and I inform you about it, then let me fucking know. Otherwise, don’t bitch about it. Also, let me know if I am expected to do something, and also expect that I am probably going to be rather unhappy if I had no input on what I am expected to do. Its great if you expect me to clean the kitchen, not so great when you also expect that I clean up your shit in the process. And if you have a problem with my shit somewhere, then tell me about it. I don’t always remember if I left my laundry in the basement, and if its there, let me know so I can do something about it. I feel like my current situation is always me playing catchup to things that I was “informed” of, usually at a meeting or gathering I was not at. I sincerely apologize that working productions in a theater means that I stay at work until midnight and then just want to sleep when I get home, and I also am sorry that I stop by the bar with people I work with on the way home. Its a theater thing, and if you don’t understand it, Im sorry. Its just what we tend to do. And if you really want something done, email me, or at least post a note on my door or something. Don’t just get angry when something does not get done. Im a human too, you know. We all fuck up a lot.

Am I wrong for thinking that I ought to be filled in on major decisions, and maybe have a bit of input? I was under the impression that as someone living in a house, paying my share of the rent and utilities, then I probably ought to get a say in issues I feel are relevant to me. I don’t want final say, I just want to be able to be heard, and have people respect what I think. If I think your drinking too much, maybe think about how much you drink. If I really feel that I ought not be responsible for your dishes, maybe at least consider that, instead of instantly rebuffing with “Well, its a community, you need to sacrifice”. What are you sacrificing? Are you really trying to help out others, or are you just trying to get shit done for you? I cant know that, thats your issue. And I am really, really sorry, if you get pissed because I am not home at the time and have yet to clean my plate from breakfast off, and then decide to clean it for me. It was nice of you, but I don’t feel like I owe you something because you did that. I would much prefer that you listen next time I say something at a meeting, then all my dishes being done for me. Thats basically it. Treat me like you want to be treated, have some respect for my ideas if you want me to respect yours, and in general try not to be a dick about everything. End Rant.

Work

Today we continued to clear out the Calvin College Fine Arts Center to prepare for its renovation. I actually learned some things today, which surprised me. First off, I learned that there was a lot of stuff that we rarely, if ever, use, and it all got moved. Second, I learned how to back up a vehicle with a trailer on it, which was a pretty new experience for me.

I am not good at backing up vehicles with trailers.

Basically, today was moving a lot of very heavy items on carts to a new facility, and we got a lot more done than I anticipated. There is finally things in our large basement storage space, and the old Fine Arts Center is beginning to look like its ready to be fixed up.

United Methodists and Fun and Shit

The United Methodists came to Calvin today to set up for their Summer 2009 shindig. It is quite a production, with between 800 and 1000 people in attendance. Basically, the setup day was a cluster fuck. When I arrived at work, everything seemed to be collapsing around the heads of the crew that was already there. Apparently, barely anything had been finished, and the pace was going much slower than expected. Added to this the propensity of the conferees to get in the way of any legitimate work going on, and you have a nice recipe for disaster. The major issue appears to be our facility, which for all intents and purposes was never finished correctly. A few of the mic lines were not actually connected properly at a patch bay, and most everything requires extensive tweaking to get to actually work. The first brilliant event that I participated in was the missing of a training session on the SMART classroom. I guess we were supposed to show up or something. Fortunately, nobody did, and it was rescheduled for an hour later. When the people got there to teach a bunch of techies how to use a computer, we were watching youtube and playing music and stuff. Go figure. Next, after wasting our time at a training session, we proceeded to go waste more time trying to get stuff done in the arena itself. Basically, the story of the day was the sound system not working, and me putzing around in the catwalks trying to focus lights on stuff that seemed to never stay in the same place for more than 5 minutes. After I took a dinner break, I discovered that instead of cuing and programing the event, I would be helping a bunch of video people put in their equipment (old pieces of shit), because they didnt want to rent the brand new, HD gear that Calvin has installed. More time wasted. Finally, the video people left (course, the job wasnt done, but who’s counting?), and I figured that I would be able to actually do some real work. False. Stupid choir practice. Once my shift was technically over, I got around to actually programing the lighting system, and making all the things work, including the house lights, which pleased me much. Hopefully, we wont show up in the morning to find a completely different stage set. Would be about par for the course today though.

But then I hung out with Jessie so everything was okay.

Summer

Summer time is here at last in Michigan, and at Calvin College, that means that it is now time for the summer conference season. As a member of the OCCE Summer Crew, I assist with doing Tech for the various conferences that come through the college, usually running Front of House or the Lighting, and in addition setting up staging and exhibit space. The job involves a lot of personal contact with clients, and determining what they need and how to provide it, but it also involves a lot of getting people extension cords and Gaff tape. Most recently, Calvin played host to a men’s retreat type deal, and next week will be hosting the United Methodist Church’s West Michigan meeting. This time of the year is always full of some sort of odd tension, because there is this underlying pressure to get everything just perfect, but it never works out like that. It was sort of like commencement, which was the first major event in the new Van Noord Arena on our campus since it has been finished (with the exception of a concert, but that was a full rental gig). The pressure was on to make the place look nice, but the pressure got to the point that there was more direction than work going on, and things were actually being screwed up because of the pressure. I think that is for me the most difficult part of working here this summer, that there seems to be a lot of pressure applied for no particular reason. It is at the point where I feel like I work better in earplugs than actually listening to people, because I need some space just to think about the event, much less doing it properly. I guess that you cant control that, however. Only how I react to it. I think I have been reacting in the wrong way, however, by kind of ignoring what everyone says about shows. I think i need to work on that, learn to filter better.

Last year’s work

Of all the work that I did in the past school year, only 2 shows really stand out to me as being really well done. The first was Mates of State when they came to Calvin in 2008, and the second is Rangeela 2009. Part of this has been that I have been working more as a head electrician rather than a lighting designer, but also because I tend to work on pretty limited shows, such as orchestra concerts at my school. Not a lot of activity. Anyhow, a few photos from the Archives, and some thoughts on them

Mates of State

This show came to Calvin sometime during the fall semester, and I really enjoyed both working on it and the music itself. The concert had a really small amount of people on the stage (3) compared to what we normally run (4-10), so I had a lot more freedom to use tight lighting areas and lots of different effects. I also got to use a lot more colors than would normally be permitted for a show, just because of the small area. I tried to play with the qualities of the light using diffusion and templates, as well as the direction, focusing a lot on low backlight and low sidelight. I tend to favor these positions because they emphasize the physical nature of the performers, and offer many dramatic options. Overall, this show was a great success, and was a hella lot of fun to work on. The show was also well received among the College community.

Rangeela 2009

This show is the College’s annual “multi-cultural” variety show. It is an interesting blend of ethnic-inspired acts and traditional performance styles, usually put on by a broad collective of students from across the world. In addition, this is probably one of the most heavily designed shows of the year, with some acts having as many as 12 parts to them. One of the primary challenges to doing a show like this is that there is a lot of variation among acts, as we move from the night outside of a Chinese palace to an African mine to the American Plains. In addition, many performers want their act to look a specific way, and this usually results in a huge rig being thrown up. I hate huge rigs. Ill hang dozens of lights with the best of them, but I dislike having huge amounts of stuff up for one act and one act only. Thus for me, the major challenge was unifying all of the acts into a common idea and theme, while avoiding any specific pattern or allowing one color or idea to dominate. The show worked very well at not being too choppy, or making odd and confusing flows between the various acts, while still maintaining the individuality of each performance itself. This show was very well received by the college community and the Rangeela organization as well.

Mates of State Photo

A photo of the Mates of State concert that I did in 2008

Scenic Design

I had a great chuckle today in my Scenic Design class. One of my colleagues, who will be called “jim” for anonymity’s sake, is generally considered to be the class dumb ass. Jim has several issues with his design work, the largest of which is his over-reliance on strange metaphors and over-the-top imagery. The play that we were assigned to design a set for was The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov. The main assignment was to stage the play as a comedy, as Chekhov originally intended for it to be staged. Clever readers will realize that this is kind of difficult, and that the production usually results in melodramatic and depressing productions, not the least of which is the blatant tragedy that takes place pretty much the entire time. Anyhow, Jim actually had a decent idea (not very comedic, but at least a solid design) when he decided to put the entire play on a giant tree round. Hella lot better than my idea of a children’s play room, but thats beside the point

So the first major laugh occurred in the choice of venue. With the venue choice open, Jim had stuck this circle in a proscenium arch theater for the initial set of roughs. Floor visibility would be provided by raking the stage. Anyone who has designed anything for the theater before will know that this is an utterly ridiculous plan, seeing as the natural venue for a large tree round to sit in is an arena style theater (go figure, it fits in the theater with seats all around the stage. With a round platform. Never would have thunk). Fortunately, the class was able to convince the poor soul that the Arena was a good place to go, and the black box theater on campus was happily chosen.

So this is actually turning out really well at this point, I kind of wish I had though of it. So just to convince me I was glad I was blessed with different synapses in my brain than Jim, He insisted on putting these gigantic sail things over the set, which flew in and out and did all kinds of crazy shit. Actually not too bad, but kind of silly in a space with no fly space and a grid that is about 20′ off the deck. Whatever tho, its all good. I could buy that, but what Jim added next was just absurd. After the sails flew up and revealed the stage, sawdust and leaves would pour from drop boxes into the sails. This would then be dumped in various fashions twords the end of the play. The first hint that this was going down that road marked “Dead End” at 2 in the morning during a rainstorm was that the sawdust would be “trickled” out, or somehow released in a small steady stream. This was supposed to represent the felling of the Cherry Orchard. In case the huge tree round wasnt obvious enough.

To further the indignity of the theatrical art, Jim proceeded to detail an outrageous plan to have various rings of the tree to light up to symbolize various events in the life of the family. What the fuck. I mean, WHAT THE FUCK. Just use a baseball bat to beat the audience senseless with unclear metaphors. This is a classic story of a design with too much thinking going into it, and not enough practical though. Jim, congratulations on the best design fucked up in our class.