USITT Cosplay?

One of my students tweeted the other day how he had completed his USITT conference registration and that now he was investigating the cosplay possibilities.  People don't do cosplay for the USITT conference, but that doesn't mean it is automatically a no go.

I thought about it some and in my mind there's some fun to be had here.  I posed the question "What would be appropriate USITT cosplay?" to my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, the Stagecraft mailing list, and Controlbooth.com - and now my blog.

Right off the top I had the thought that people could dress up as some of the more colorful USITT characters.

Maybe Loren Schreiber:

or Bill Sapsis:

or Randy Davidson:

I did think it might be really cool for someone to do something riffing on the IATSE bug:

That it has five spokes has just always seemed like arms, legs, and a head.  Might be a cool costume.

I started to get responses online.  One of them was "famous playwrights."  Ok, how about William Shakespeare?

Can't wait to see what else comes in from the hive mind.

Then I started thinking there could be something to do off of regular USITT exhibitors.  How about TOM CAT or ROSE BRAND, or CROSBY?  Those could be cool.

Also, I think some of the coolest cosplay projects are where a group does a whole team like the JLA or the Avengers.  Then I thought that even some of the things I had already come up with could be part of a league.  Maybe a group would do...

... The Long Reach Long Riders.  That would include many of the more colorful individuals.  Or maybe a group could be...

...Team PLASA, made up of a bunch of the regular exhibitors.

Now all we need are people that can come up with the outfits - and people willing to wear them.  Watch this space for other ideas as they come in.

Rubber Bullets?

The other day the President made a speech about guns and talked about four groups of people: hunters, target shooters, collectors, and people looking for protection in their homes.  That got me wondering if maybe non-lethal ammunition should have a significant part of the conversation about gun control.

See, it seems to me that only one of those groups really needs lethal ammo.

Think about it.  Collectors don't really need ammo at all, but if part of collecting is popping off a few rounds now and then, there's no reason those rounds have to be lethal.  Target shooters by definition are not trying to kill something, so non-lethal ammo would seem to be absolutely appropriate in that case.  People trying to defend their homes really only need something that will turn an assailant away or put them down long enough to subdue.  Rubber bullets ought to be able to fill that bill.

Hunters.  Hunters do need lethal ammunition.

Although, thinking about it, maybe non-lethal ammunition would be a boon to hunting.  Maybe using that type of ammo would enable a "catch and release" mentality for much of hunting like we often have for fishing.

But that would be a conversation for another day.

So lets say hunters do need lethal ammunition.  Isn't it likely that we could put a reasonable cap on the number of rounds per day.  I haven't been hunting, but let's say for argument that a responsible hunter can get by on 10 rounds/day and that a typical hunter is a weekend hunter needing two days of ammo between trips to refit.  Would it be unreasonable to require purchasers to present a hunting license at the point of purchase for ammunition and limit ammo purchases to 20 rounds at a time?  The next time you came to buy ammo you would have to sign off on a statement saying when and where you had fired the ammo you previously purchased.

Hard to kill dozens of people with hundreds of rounds if you can only possess 20 rounds at a time.

There are of course dozens of possible objections to this sort of thing, but I also think there would be dozens of corresponding adjustments.  Target shooters will say that the ballistic characteristics of rubber bullets are too different from standard ammunition.  So maybe Shooting Ranges would have to have a different type of access, and maybe you could have as much ammo as you wanted at a range, but you could only leave a range with the same 20 round cap and license requirement.  Hunters will say that there are people that go on longer excursions between refits and that there are actually subsistence hunters both of whom need more than 20 rounds available.  So there would need to be classes of permit for outfitters and subsistence hunters.

We keep hearing about types of guns and about the number of rounds that can go into a single clip, but there hasn't been much discussion about ammunition.  I wonder why.

What's Next?

So I've been watching Lance Armstrong on Oprah, listening to him talk about how all those times he said he didn't cheat that he was cheating and I'm thinking about how this makes me feel. I mean I am not the person hurt by his actions, but I did get caught up in the Tour excitement. I did invest my time and my attention in following and cheering for Lance Armstrong.

I feel bad. I won't say I feel betrayed. I don't feel it personally. I don't think Lance Armstrong did anything to me. But I do feel bad, and I do feel bad for myself. I guess I should feel bad for the people he hurt directly and substantively, people he badmouthed and belittled and sued and, well, beat while racing clean.

And I am thinking culturally what is the other shoe? Next week will Bill Clinton be on Oprah saying "well, actually, I did have sexual relations with that woman"? WIll the guys that ran Enron go on Oprah and explain that they did rig electricity markets? Are Kobe Bryant and Ben Rothlesberger coming up on her schedule?

Is there anything to be gained from any of those people do any of that? Is there really anything to be gained by Armstrong? I don't really think so.

Maybe there are people out there that are really floored by this admission. I think the only person I would be actually floored by would be if something were to come out about Michael Jordan.

Please, please Michael don't shatter my faith.

The first half of the Armstrong/Oprah interview - there wasn't much there that was shattering. It does seem like even in the midst of coming clean Lance still feels like he won those races. I guess there is kind of a level of "everyone was doing it" although he specifically wouldn't say that.

If you look back a few days to the earlier post, he doesn't take the tack I thought was available. He doesn't say they were just really good at coming right up to the edge. He says they cheated. He doesn't say that it's a "no harm no foul" thing where if you don't get caught you didn't really cheat. I think a little bit he might believe that though. He does say they knew they weren't going to get caught so why not cheat.

There is something depressingly American about that impulse.

And this week we get to see why it is depressing.

Woosh

I got this email today. One of the students working on an upcoming show wanted to set up a meeting with me to evaluate the work done to date. I do these meetings for all of the shows, and timing the review is typically difficult. We don't want to have the meet when the work is so complete that if there is a problem they have to go backwards, but we also can't have the meeting so early that the work isn't formative enough to gauge.

Because of this difficulty, the student had lit me up a little early and was suggesting that he wanted to set the meeting even though he knew he had a little more work to do before he'd be ready. To indicate this he said:

"I still have some details to flush out."

Being a college professor has too many of these moments, times when you look at the screen and say "just how jerky do I feel today?" Today I felt pretty jerky, and so I sent back:

"Flesh out, not flush out." Maybe you saw the tweet.

Anyway, since my knee-jerk douchey response I have been considering what he wrote and how I answered. I think I might have been to quick to respond. See I know that I have heard Design Professors say "Good design is taking away." So maybe "flush" is the right word. Maybe one would "flesh" out a concept but then "flush" out a design - wash away all the unneeded elements.

I'm glad I had this opportunity to flush out this thought.

Moving On

I finished up the bulk of my planning for the spring semester. Syllabi complete for Basic PTM, Scenic Fabrication & Installation, Entertainment Rigging, and Studiocraft CAD - plus the schedule for Frosh Stagecraft. Pretty much all that's left is pinging on people about thesis. I have to remember not to let that go too long this semester before starting.

We made some changes in a couple of places that caused some venerable projects to drop out. I pencilled in a new course "Advanced Shop Fabrication" for the sophomores concurrent with ScenoFab. It's sort of a "stagecraft 3" for Technical Directors. Ben is teaching it and it will include lots of really crafty items as well as instruction on all the CNC equipment. The upshot of which is that the three weeks I had previously carved out for a pilot for that class are now gone - which is good because I had lost a lot of rigging content I now get to replace; and the joinery project which has been part of the ScenoFab class since its inception goes away. No longer will stage managers suffer through mortise and tenon joints.

A little bit I am missing it already.

The other change is that Basic PTM essentially reverted back to the old Production Planning class. When the change went the other way all of the departmental introduction material moved from my freshman class into the Sophomore Technical Management class. For some reason that just never seemed to work well - something that I actually think is a problem with a third class (stagecraft 2, I'll have to remember to try to fix that) - and so this fall we decided to put that content back in the freshman year. All in all I am fine with it because I kinda felt like the course was stronger in its previous incarnation anyway. The interesting thing was that when I put together the syllabus my organizational chart assignment dropped out. That's weird, because that assignment was part of the old Production Planning class. But somehow in the current configuration (and in my current estimation of the proper amount of homework) it just doesn't fit.

I guess that is ok. For the past couple of years I hadn't felt like the students were getting the same oomph out of the thing that they had before. Something about the way I was teaching the content or more likely the positioning of the assignment with respect to what was being taught in the design classes. Or maybe it has something to do with the nature of the Millennial students. In any case, finding a way to graphically depict all the necessary communication to execute a theatre production is no longer a requirement of Basic PTM.

We'll see if it makes any difference.

The Kitten Commission

Today I came home to find myself before the Kitten Commission. They didn't look pleased. I couldn't tell you why given an entire house they would choose to sit on those two chairs. Could have been more bizarre I suppose. There could have been four chairs. Full meetings of the Kitten Commission are pretty rare though.

As it turned out they didn't tell me what I had done and they declined to pass any judgement at that time.

Worth a Look

It's a jumbo "Worth a Look" post covering all the Greenpage articles since the end of the Fall Semester...

What Molly Did Next

On Yellow Paper: It’s October. It’s dusk. It’s the second week of rehearsals for The Trojan Women, a modern version of Euripides’ tragedy in which I’m greedily playing three different roles: Cassandra, the maddened seer (a teenager in red-and-white striped long-johns); Andromache, trophy widow of the city’s most decorated soldier; and Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand dicks”. I’m standing in a dirty office in the old BBC training building on Marylebone High Street. There are dirty blue carpets on the floor and dirty great fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. There are six other people here. They’re all dressed; I’m in a bath towel that I’m about to let fall to the floor. Nobody knows yet, but I’m not wearing any knickers.

Posted by David at 1/07/2013 10:54:00 PM

The happy mask: Carnegie Mellon must address stress culture

The Tartan Online: “I can't do this anymore,” my social, popular, and highly capable friend sobbed into my shoulder. It was the second week of the school year, and she'd just officially taken a semester leave of absence from Carnegie Mellon. The stress was piling up. A bad breakup was enough, but to have to manage her course load on top of that was too much to consider. She'd considered suicide before the sudden clarity of deciding to take a semester off. I held her and told her everything would be all right, but frankly, I'd been feeling the gloom myself since arriving on campus two weeks prior. After a fantastic summer, even I had to admit I wasn't looking forward to another year.

Posted by David at 1/10/2013 11:12:00 PM 

Shark Tank Explodes in Shanghai Injuring 15 People

Geekosystem: Fifteen people were injured last week when a 33-ton aquarium exploded in the middle of a Shanghai shopping center. The injuries sustained are reported mainly as cuts from the shattered glass, and not from, as one would suspect, sharks. The aquarium was installed two years ago, and had been a popular attraction at the mall until it exploded, spilling fish, turtles, and sharks into the shopping center. That tends to drive down foot traffic.

Posted by David at 1/02/2013 09:27:00 PM

Want To Work For An Innovative Company? Be Prepared To Answer These Unusual Interview Questions

Fast Company: The next time you step into a job interview, don't just go in armed with mental bullet points depicting your strengths and weaknesses, or a winding story about your ability to persevere during times of crisis. Employers at some of the most coveted companies have other questions in mind, according to a new Glassdoor list of the top 25 oddball interview questions for 2013

Posted by David at 1/13/2013 02:48:00 PM

Congressman calls for ban on 3D printed guns

Boing Boing: Well, that was predictable: days after a 3D printed gun fired a few rounds, Rep Steve Israel has called for a ban on of Wiki Weapons. The congressman points out (correctly) that all-plastic 3D printed weapons would not be easy to spot using traditional methods, such as metal detectors.

Posted by David at 12/19/2012 05:23:00 PM

Why are we still waiting for Godot?

BBC News: So why are we still waiting for Godot? How has Samuel Beckett's play grown from a tiny avant garde performance in Paris to become part of the West End theatre coach party circuit?

It's 60 years since Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot received its premiere in the Theatre de Babylone in Paris.

Posted by David at 1/11/2013 02:35:00 PM

It Can’t Happen Here: Sexual Harassment in the Theatre

theatrebayarea.org: “We have a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment, and we have never had any complaints.” This is what I heard from the representatives of every Bay Area theatre company I asked (the ones who responded to my query, that is) regarding their histories and policies on sexual harassment. While this consensus paints a rosy picture of our theatre community and its progressive attitudes, I know, and many people who read this will know, that this is not entirely accurate. While we may be past the era of unscrupulous producers installing two-way mirrors in women’s dressing rooms (as was rumored to have been discovered during the Orpheum’s renovation years ago), theatre people are not too different from everybody else, and sexual harassment and assault are still all too prevalent.

Posted by David at 1/10/2013 10:58:00 PM

Michigan Film Industry Goes Dark

Studio 360: The new movie Oz: The Great and Powerful — directed by Sam Raimi, starring James Franco, and distributed by Disney — comes out next spring. But like Dorothy said, they're not in Kansas anymore; this Oz was shot in Michigan. Oz was the high-water mark of an ambitious program to convert some of the state's abandoned auto plants to film studios. State taxpayers funded 42% of the filming costs at Michigan Motion Picture Studios in Pontiac, outside Detroit, in the hopes that it and other productions would establish a new industry in the state. But the studio has been largely idle. Michigan’s Republican governor Rick Snyder vowed to cut back the state’s film subsidy program, and Hollywood studios began taking their business elsewhere. Now Michigan’s pension fund, which guaranteed bonds to finance the struggling movie studio, is left holding the bag.

Posted by David at 1/09/2013 10:41:00 PM

Theater Offering 'Tweet Seats' to Folks Who Can't Turn Off Their G-D Phones

jezebel.com: Actually, that headline might make it sound like I believe this to be whack, when in fact, I believe it to be very fresh. But that's probably because I love Instagram so much. How the hell else am I going to show off my adorable niece and the double-dipped salted caramel and coconut donuts I just ate? Am I supposed to just share these moments with my family? I'm not not a machine!

Posted by David at 1/01/2013 09:36:00 PM

10 things ‘The Nutcracker’ won’t tell you

MarketWatch: Ah, “The Nutcracker.” That celebration of all things Christmas, that choreographed ode to childhood, that visual spectacle replete with parties, pageants and even candy canes come to life. Oh, and yes: that show that pretty much ensures every ballet company can survive another season. As much as “The Nutcracker” may be an artful expression of holiday cheer, the two-act ballet is also a moneymaker in an industry that’s otherwise heavily dependent on the largesse of deep-pocketed donors.

Posted by David at 12/24/2012 03:39:00 PM

What Could He Possibly Say?

So Lance Armstrong is going to go on Oprah and tell the world that he did something, something that for more than a decade he's been insisting he didn't do.  I'll confess to being an Armstrong fan.  I was a Gren LeMond fan way back when and when Armstrong hooked up with US Postal and put US Cycling on the rise again I was certainly excited.  And when he won year after year I was very excited.  But most importantly when he said "what am I on?  I'm on my bike." I believed him.

When he retired and people started to leak stories I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  I used to think: how could it possibly be true when he has so energetically denied all claims, how could he be dirty and jeopardize all the good he does as a public figure?  I also remember thinking that if he did come up dirty that it would be the biggest betrayal by an athlete of their fans in the history of sports.

I guess I wasn't paying attention to Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds or Marion Jones.  Interestingly all these folks that come up as doping after the fact all have a great impact on public following of the sports in real time, and often although there is talk during the achievements, people don't seem to let it get in the way of enjoying the performances.

So it is going to fall apart this week.  Armstrong wants to compete in triathlons and in marathons and for that he needs to come clean.  And so I am sitting here wondering what he could possibly say that would leave him in a better place than he currently sits.

There's just one way I think it can work.  He has to come up and insist that he didn't actually break the rules.  That in some way what he'd done was really American.  That like paying your taxes, if you don't get caught that you didn't do anything wrong, that he's not responsible for enforcement and that if the regulators had been doing their jobs that maybe they would have caught him and then possibly things would have come out differently.  It's like how in football you can hold as long as the referee doesn't catch you.

He could come out and say that he did do everything he possibly could within the absolute letter of the rules, that he had a team of trainers, doctors, lawyers, and operatives that worked with him and his team to stay just far enough ahead of enforcement that he could win and not get caught.  He could say absolutely he violated the spirit of the rules, but that winners, that Americans find a way, they are not bound by the spirit of the thing but rather that they look for every inch, every edge, every possible way to enhance their chances of winning without being caught.

He could say that when he accused officials of having a vendetta against him that clearly they were acting out of an incredible feeling of impotence over knowing he must have been doing something but at never being able to prove it.  He could say it would have been one thing if they could have proved it at the time, but since it took them years to put together anything resembling a case that his lifetime ban is just unfair - un-American.

I guess he could say that and then he'd just be the most alpha of alpha people and it would explain all of his prior statements on the grounds that he actually believed he was within the letter of the rules.

I guess.

Ellipses...

One post per day is a hard thing to live up to. It wasn't a resolution or anything, but it would be nice to continue... This post curtesy of a new app (for me) using native Blogger on the tablet. First time... The weather the last two days has me waiting for the other shoe to drop - or rather a boot (and anyone doubting global climate change is bananas)... No Stillers this weekend, but football still looks great on that giant screen... We babyproofed a little this week, no, not for us. We had friends over with a newly walking toddler. Seemed like a good idea to block off the stairs... It seems like cabinetry is expensive no matter how one goes about it... I heard someone say today that the President is specifically picking people the Senators will have individual problems with baiting them to obstruct so that we can get Senate rules reform. If he's that deep as far as I am concerned he can be President for life... At some point when I really wasn't paying attention the calendar year rolled over... You can really tell who follows your social media and who doesn't by what they ask about your break... after nearly a decade I changed up some of my classroom paperwork (you saw some of the early work). I wish I were better at laying out documents... My sister texted me last night and got me stalking my own digital footprint from four years ago. Hard to believe my mom has been gone that long (actually most days it's difficult to believe she's gone at all)... I have to find a way to cut down the rough housing in our house without being a wet blanket. It's a tough sell... I think tomorrow we might actually start a real ball rolling on some landscaping for this spring. Be great to have an outside more commensurate with our inside... I go back to work Monday. As of today I am almost ready for that to happen. It's nice for at least one day of the semester to be ahead...

Is This Stupid?

I've become bored of the syllabus format I have been using since the turn of the century.  I thought I would try something new from the cover page:

Is this stupid?