Insanity 101 (abridged)

Once again, I ended up with regular life getting totally and completely derailed by the needs of a play.  This time, it was the scenery and a portion of the props for Completely Hollywood (Abridged) that sort of took everything in my life and put it on the back burner for two weeks.  When people say that I seem so busy based on things I post online, I always say that that is the way it is when I have a reasonable amount of challenge going on.  When things are really out of hand, you won't hear from me.  I've spent the past week recovering from the previous two.

Yes, It was just about three weeks ago that Scott and I moved two loads of flats from Chameleon's hard storage to the rehearsal space for some overhauling.  There was a little construction and a lot of planning and painting and it turns out, curtain sewing to do before they were ready for opening last week.

The process on this set was highly dubious and consisted of a lot of "Well, what they really need is a place to hide their many props and costumes and get from one side of the stage to the other." And a little "What if a grand old movie theater and Brave New Workshop Student Union had a love child?"  Esentially, they needed wings and a proscenium in the black box.  And I did a floorplan, and then I changed it based on the walls that we pulled and then I changed it again based on....well, incubation, I guess.  And further thoughts about sight lines.  And then you can't just put up plain old walls so what should be on them?  And as I worked, it all kind of came to me in a weird sort of process of discovery.  Which is not how it's supposed to happen, but thank goodness it did happen that way because otherwise...no set, I guess.

The paint proved to be problematic - far more translucent than I had anticipated, it took multiple coats and finally a texturizing treatment with an additional color and improvised technique before I was ready to add the gold accents to the walls.

Ultimately, I am pretty happy with the result, even as I realize that what I built was essentially...yes, a bare stage.  All I ever design is bare stages!  And that's OK if a bare stage is pretty much what is called for.  And if the stage that we've got just isn't the stage that the show requires.

In the meantime, things did not completely fall apart on the home-front.  Huge Kudos and Mega-thanks to Andrew for keeping everyone fed, on-task with homework and on time for bed, and Scott for excellence in kid-juggling and a little bit of bailing me out on the set that tried to take over the world and picking up dinner more than once as well. And the kids for...well, patience with me in my highly distracted and, honestly pretty grumpy condition.

It's just a few more days until we take it all down and put it away and then jump in with both feet to the next couple of shows.

P.S.  Yes, we still have boxes.  No, they don't really bother me at this point.  Doom!

P.P.S.  I recently took Bailey to Trader Joe's with me.  As we were shopping, I found myself saying more than once, "Better get two."  Which, I realized, is a phrase I frequently say to myself when grocery shopping these days.