wilnap

Things started off a little slowly in Indiana. The advance work was very good, but I didn’t do it. Michael Mazzola was there to help me learn the show. It took them a while to get the color and gobos right and when we finally did get to focusing the guy in the bucket was pretty slow. It was the kind of crew where all the guys are very very nice. They were personable, polite, happy to be there and interested in their jobs, but without a hotshot ringer to be seen. The reminded me of a crew from the south. That is with the exception of EJ the master electrician. EJ is sharp, fast, funny and has his own espresso maker in the booth. He’s a real quality of life guy and had brew pubs to suggest in our next stop from his motorcycle sojouring. It was great to work with him, but because he is the house person he feels like he should be on the deck and all the rest of the electrics crew is overhire. They don’t have a remote, so while he is stuck in the house the guys on deck bumble around wondering if there is black wrap in the house and where the top hats are.

But once the focus was done were were dealing primary with EJ so things were fine.  The schedule is quite generous with 12 hours to focus, 8 hours to tech and then a dress rehearsal. Liz is fun to work with. She really concentrates on the performers, but did stop by the tech table occasionally with a thought or observation.

Bloomington was pretty mediocre as far as a college town goes, at least what I saw of it.

The performance was quite good but we had a phantom light stay on during a black out. From the house it was not terrible, but it threw the dancers off.

It was plenty of time to get the show undercontrol and ready to do it by myself.I think that I must have worked with Michael when the company come through Jacob’s Pillow in ’95. He’s affable and fun and had a baby moments after we arrived at the hotel. Or his wife did, she went into labor as she drove him to the airport. What a world we’re in.

There was a very windy day just past. Outside the gate is filled with random newspaper trash that needs to be cleaned up. In the garden part of  the magnolia tree was blown down. The tree had two distinct shoots and one was completely knocked over into Ray’s yard. Yesterday I choose to ignore the situation, but today I had to check it out. It was surprisingly large, it shouldn’t have been surprising considering it was fully half the tree.  I stood there for a few minutes trying to decide if I could handle it. Gradually an approach formed itself in my mind.

I whacked off as many small branches as necessary to make the whole thing able to be dragged over the fence that separates the properties. Then I pulled, lifted and dragged it till the majority was in our yard. Then I took a hand saw and trimmed it all back to the major stump. It was a long process beginning with breaking the smallest shoots (some with the youngest buds) then working back towards the trunk finishing off the thicker branches with the saw.

After all was pruned and nothing was left but the trunch I got out the circular saw. Of course this is not the ideal tool for the job, but it was what was at hand. I had forgotten that the last time I had used this saw I was making a plunge cut on Jane’s desk when the saw recoiled on me and cut straight through its own cord. I guess I had finished the cuts I needed to make at the time because I had just wound the cable around the thing and put it back on where it belongs. So before I could continue I had to rewire the saw which quick and easy.

Then I was out there whacking up the trunk into 2 foot logs. It went very quickly, the whole process took less than two hours. I have to say I was not sure that I would be able to do the job on my own at all. But once I started it went quickly and without the usual snafus and changes of course most projects are prone to. In fact I pictured in my mind someone in a window of some nearby brownstone looking out at me sizing up the situation and saying to them self “He’ll never be able to do that on his own” and then being proven wrong when not only did I do the whole thing by myself but that it was a quick and painless job.

I can only be satisfied that I was watching myself from my own mind’s window.

It’s about 1:40am again. We’re always up late. working, working, watching a little bit of television. Then finally into the bed for some reading and sleeping.

We always feel a little guilty about sleeping as late as we do. Considering what time we go to be and that it’s all work from rising to sleeping I can’t really be too hard on myself or my baby.

I finished two theaters today. Milan and Amsterdam. Both modern theaters. Rather clean and uncomplicated. It’s a little funny dealing with these lighting bridges downstage everywhere, I always feel like I’ve got to push everything way upstage. I’m a bit paranoid about getting too far away from the audience.

In the end I get over it and err on the side of a nice layout.

I’ve got the trip to Illinois with Liz Lerman coming up. I called Brad Hepburn a few days ago to see if he wants to come by. Kind of self destructive, I know, but if I’m in the neigborhood I can’t see why not. Brad hasn’t called back yet, It is a 2 1/2 hour drive, so it might be a bit much.  I wonder how work is going for him out there. The president went to some town in Indiana where the unemployment rate had shot up from 5% to 15% in one year. Yikes!

I wonder if I can post day posts with this thing. I’d like to write about the past as if I started bloggin in 1984 or earlier.

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We were driving around Durham and I knew what I wanted; a lawn mower.

I figured it was possible to find a used reel lawn mower there. We passed a dilapidated what house with every manner of thing hanging off the front porch. I suppose there must have been a sign somewhere that stated it was an “antiques”  store. But it was really every kind of worn out rick-rack you might find in a southern home.

We went in there, I think that it was Jane, I and Aaron? We were met by a southern guy. When I asked if he had any of those old style lawn mowers he said follow me out back. Behind the house was a totally overgrown lawn and two chained up dogs. Who immediately started to bark at me when we came out. The proprietor said “I’ll hold the dogs you look in that tuft of grass over there.” I went over and dug around in a completely overgrown pile of metal objects until I came upon what felt like a handle. I pulled it up and sure enough it was a reel push style lawn mover. “$25 dollars” he said. We stuffed it into the car and returned to the venue.

When we got there I mowed the area around the dock. I worked pretty well. I think there is a photo.

This was the first performance day at ADF. We were premiering a revival of Native Green, a lovely bucolic piece. But what I really remember was that we were performing Way Station a piece with large sculptures by artist Robert Long. They were quite large, when we went over seas they required their own container. But we just fit them into a Janco trailer to go to Durham.

The stage of Paige auditorium is quite small although the hall has a ton of seats. So we arranged to leave the truck trailer at the loading dock which was right off stage right, not 15′ from the SR edge of the proscenium. We were also doing RainForest which has a ton of helium filled balloons by Andy Wahrhol. The stage had storage room for neither the balloons nor the sculptures. So we stored them in the trailer. But because of the show order we had to first put the Sculpture on the stage and leave the balloons in the trailer, then put both the balloons and the sculptures in the trailer and lastly put the balloons on the stage. So the first intermission was a process of pulling the balloons out of the trailer, putting them aside on the stage, then putting the sculptures in the nose of the trailer then putting the balloons back on the trailer ready to be placed during the second intermission.

Way Station

We had a plan for this. But what we didn’t plan for was that Merce would be sitting on the stage in his red folding chair in the place where we planned to park the balloons. It turned out there really was nowhere else we could easily put them and Merce found it difficult at his age to get in and out of the chair. So, with his permission, we piled the balloons all around him, basically burying him as we loaded the sculptures and then unburied him as we put the balloons back in the trailer. RainForest

The Cunningham Company was traveling from Seattle to Portland. But for some reason the production team had wrangled a mini-van and were traveling separate from the group. I’m sure that I was myself, Jane, Aaron and Betty but there was at least one dancer with us. I think that it was Jeannie Steele.

It was a raining and unimpressive day. But just before we reached Portland we went off 5 and up into the Mt. St. Helen’s area. We stopped and the visitor center and got the background. Then we drove further up into the mountains. The scale of it was truly unbelievable. whole valleys had been filled with sludge. Entire mountains all the trees had been mowed over like that had broken by a massive giant.

When we got to Portland we could see the Mt. St. Helens from the top floor of the hotel.

This is in the Past, Like from a ghost.