I should be more mindful of people coming into Pittsburgh for the holidays. Missed a couple of friends this year... Elizabeth Warren is great, but I'm not holding my breath... If you run a medical portal you should not provide an option for patients to send in questions electronically if you are not going to answer them - or if your only answer is to call the office, or to make an appointment. Just don't give me the option... It is difficult to gauge when people are going to respond to work emails over the break. I guess I should have pressed harder before classes ended. Now it's all hurry up and wait... Somewhere along the way the value proposition of waiting for a table at a restaurant just went away. The obvious reason would be the toddler, but I think it happened before that development. I just have better things to do... Science Channel has been running a Mythbusters Marathon over the holiday. That's still good TV... Even with just the three programatic posts each week, keeping up this posting is difficult, and now I have compounded it by adding a requirement to take photos all the time... Every day I try not to let it slip my mind that the US has thousands on probable refugees locked up in detention. I should probably be doing more... The weather I most associate with New Years in Pittsburgh is rain. That is also the weather association with most of the spring and fall... The Steelers were in it right up until like 2:00 after their last game ended. Or, alternately, they were out of it as soon as they had that week one tie. I guess it just matters what kind of fan you are... Two more possible blogs in my future: one for rigging resources and the other for articles I thought I would post on the Greenpage until I realized there was pretty much nothing to read. That would push me up to six publications if you don't count the Twitter streams. That's probably too much... My watch downloaded a custom New Year's Eve watch face. There is a feature I hadn't anticipated... The boy and I had a weekend breakfast thing going at Eat and Park for a few months. Last week I took him to McDonald's. So much for Eat and Park... I have a couple of MAGA friends on Facebook. Occasionally they post things that are verifiably false and yet I can't figure out a productive way to engage... This year was exhausting...
Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Why High School Musicals Should Be As Respected As Sports Programs Are
www.theodysseyonline.com: When I was in middle school and high school, I felt like I lived for the musicals that my school orchestrated.
For those of you who don't know, a musical is an onstage performance wherein actors take on roles that involve singing, and often dancing, to progress the plot of the story. While it may sound a little bit nerdy to get up in front of an audience to perform in this manner, this is something you cannot knock until you try it.
How Rodgers And Hammerstein Revolutionized Broadway
NPR: We're going to hear from Todd Purdum, author of the book "Something Wonderful: Rodgers And Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution," which tells the story of their partnership. Purdum loves their music, but he's best known as a political reporter. He covers politics and culture for The Atlantic, is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and senior writer for Politico. We're going to hear some Rodgers and Hammerstein cast recordings. Purdum also selected a couple of Rodgers and Hammerstein interview excerpts that we'll hear.
Comedians and College Students Are Not Enemies
www.vulture.com: I wonder if Jerry Seinfeld knows that when he famously said colleges are too PC for stand-up comedy, he sparked a wholly unnecessary feud between stand-up comics and college students. At least in the comedy world, that’s how it feels. Earlier this month, the fire was stoked with the news of student organizers cutting former SNL writer Nimesh Patel’s set short at a Columbia University event.
50 Years of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
Make-Up Artist Magazine: Anybody who had the good fortune of meeting Stuart Freeborn knew he was a born storyteller. Freeborn, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 98, was a frequent visitor to IMATS London, where he was often surrounded by a crowd of spellbound listeners, right up until the moment he was packed into the back of a car to go home.
For actors and other theater workers, minimum wage is often the maximum, too
Datebook: In any other industry, the announcement of an across-the-board, $15 hourly wage wouldn’t be a big deal. Why celebrate a company for paying the legal minimum wage everyone else pays? And how was it ever allowed to pay less?
Yet for many working in the nonprofit theater industry, minimum wage is a welcome change.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Monday, December 24, 2018
Ellipses...
If you are a medical concern, and you provide a patient portal with some kind of electronic messaging, you have a responsibility to make sure messages receive prompt attention... Really, I think nobody in Washington has any idea on where to go with this shutdown... This year it seems like every time I finish cleaning up the leaves they very next thing I should do is clean up the leaves... That cork floor? It is probably dirtier than you think it is... The Steelers managed to lose one game and go from home field to out of the playoffs. It isn't a done deal yet, but not winding up there requires Cleveland to beat Baltimore. Well, they almost beat us... I kinda wish a Roku could use it's account feature to keep track of all the various logins. It is annoying when one or another just drop for no apparent reason, but installing a brand new device requires a truckload of logins that other devices on the network have already authenticated... The last day of Semester Reviews seems like it was more than a week ago... It had been years since we had been to Green Forest Churrascaria. It is still a good night out... The boy got a CD in the mail that had a song on it that was done to the tune of Louie Louie. That one I think is really just for the parents... Somehow my watch managed to put an appointment on my schedule for tomorrow without my having entered the appointment on any calendar. Some of these digital assistants are a little spooky... A guy I used to work with in Chicago passed away last week. He wasn't much older than I am. I hadn't seen him in forever, but it still sucks... We went to see Aquaman. In the DC series I would rank it behind Wonder Woman and in front of Justice League, although not my much. We probably should have gone to the Spiderman movie... I'm toward the end of reading a trilogy in reverse order by mistake. As it turns out it doesn't seem to be hurting the storytelling much if at all... Do you think the large chili at Wendy's is really only 300 calories? I've been trusting it but it seems unlikely... The Bumblebee movie is PG-13, but the boy is a pretty devoted Transformers fan. Probably still a miss... There's no Doctor Who Christmas episode this year. They've subbed in a two part New Year's ("Who Year's") event this year. I'm not sure if this was part of their effort to separate the new show from the old. Doesn't really matter to me. I don't even think we saw the first few in real time... I really wish we had shorted the market several months ago. I bet I'm not the only one. Good time to have your cash in cash... I've had the news on for like an hour and haven't heard anything about an attack in Kabul. TV News editors have their priorities mixed up...
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Do We Really Need to Watch Shows in Silence?
Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Growing up in Honduras, I picked up my knowledge of theatre etiquette from the movies (thank you Pretty Woman and Citizen Kane). I learned that I shouldn't talk, that I should unwrap my candy before the show and that I should sit as still as possible and wait for my cues to applaud and, perhaps, laugh or cry (though never too loudly). For years, I believed I should shun anyone who showed any signs of life while attending a performance.
‘Midnight Rider’ Case: Hillary Schwartz Asks For Shortened Sentence
Deadline: Midnight Rider’s first assistant director Hillary Schwartz, who in March 2015 was sentenced to 10 years probation for criminal trespass and felony involuntary manslaughter for her role in the death of 27 year-old camera assistant Sarah Jones, this morning asked a Georgia Judge to end her probation now. The Judge has not yet ruled on the motion (read it here).
Why I Broke Up With The American Theater
The Lark: As I waited for medical professionals to wheel me into the operating room, shivering under two blankets, I felt scared. I felt alone, and, for the first time, I wondered why I was there.
The obvious answer was I got injured while working on my last show. I suffered three herniated discs in my neck, and a badly injured back. It started as a back injury which I told stage management about twice. But I understood how stretched stage management was so, when nothing was done, I kept going. Until the major injuries happened.
San Diego Opera planning 'hackathon' on cutting-edge stage technology
The San Diego Union-Tribune: Hackathons have become an annual tradition for engineering and other students at UC San Diego. Now, the cutting-edge style of these cross-discipline innovation summits is coming to the world of opera.
Next July, San Diego Opera will host what is believed to be the nation’s first large-scale arts-themed Opera Hack event at the Microsoft campus in San Diego.
Is It Time to Rethink "Men's" Class?
Dance Magazine: Next semester, there'll be a new course name on the syllabus of Boston Conservatory at Berklee: "Constructed Gender Identities in Classical Ballet: Men's Variations."
But this is not a new course, just a new title. The old name is one you might recognize: "Men's Class."
Friday, December 21, 2018
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
David's Crit
So we did classes and summer. Students doing their reviews would talk about production. In a faculty setting it would seem appropriate to talk about production, service, and professional development.
My production involvement remained pretty much the same as in prior semesters. I continue to prescreen all the scene designs to get the reasonably close to budget before we put them into our process. The more we do this the less well I feel like it is working. We made an effort at the top of the fall to try to build some good will with the scene design cohort as a group. We had for some reason slipped into an adversarial posture and there was some question as to whether our motives were pure. I tired to get in front of it, but honestly it hasn't been long enough to know if it had any effect. We also did a little bit of a Crazy Scheme reboot with our own population to try to shake out some of the requirements and procedures that had spontaneously generated over the last few Project Managers. We didn't do our best work on the first show. I probably own some of that as I tried to convince them that we could do something to preserve the scale they were looking for that I probably shouldn't have. I just hate being the bottle neck everything has to pass through. Sometimes I may turn out to be unjustifiably optimistic.
Something nearly nobody would ever say about me.
The largest service contributions I made this fall were both about campus visits. In both cases the work turned out to mostly be a thousand emails rather than something more substantive. I guess I am good at legwork though, and neither event would have happened without it. The first was a direct outgrowth of the summer trip to TAIT. We arranged for a delegation to come to campus from Lititz to do some recruiting. We wound up with two class appearances a dinner and an open info session in Drama. They also did a few appearances in some engineering classes. It feels like there's a possibility that we'll make it a regular thing for the fall. The other event was that we hosted the USITT Glerum Rigging Master class. They were here for two days just after classes ended. It was well attended and everyone seemed to suggest that the event went well.
I also reprised my coordination of semester reviews - another task that centers on a thousand emails, but also has the added dimension of being something that nobody is ultimately happy with. We wound up doing 10 sessions over 4 days this round. I believe that if we make it into a world where we need 11 sessions something might break. If all the grad programs hit their recruiting goals we could definitely get into that world. Not sure what that would mean.
On the professional development end I continued - and reupped - as a Subject Matter Expert for the ETCP Theatre Rigging Certification. I attended the Glerum Class as an attendee to fill out renewal points for my certification. After taking the class I am seriously considering taking the Arena test; maybe next fall at LDI (or maybe by then the thought will have passed). For a minute I thought I might be getting a chance at something I had been lining up for... forever, but it didn't happen. Just didn't talk to the right people in the right moment. I continue to kick around ideas for books. I came up with one recently that would be really fun to do and would probably sell, but holds little value career-wise. Probably not the best idea.
All in all things went reasonable well for the fall and I am looking forward to a successful spring.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Ellipses...
Mondays are for Ellipses... Before you go saying the Steeler's defense is forgiven, remember that Brady got four shots at the endzone in the first place... The migrant detentions at the border are really troubling... I am strongly considering going off my food routine for the semester break. It'll probably mean a delay of my goals... The Fossil people sent me a link to a video on how to use their WearOS watch. Will it help? I guess we'll see... I don't know why, but I always seem to wind up paying more for parking when classes aren't in session than when they are... The leaves on the lawn are wet, maybe frozen. That's a chore I'm not looking forward to... A government shutdown would be really unfortunate. Here's hoping they get it together in time... The AHN people continue to impress on their time to appointment. On a call today the appointment is Wednesday... Should I spend the rest of this week prepping next semester? I would probably really appreciate making that decision in January... It has been cold and wet lately, but I think I would have found a way to do another credit ultimate had there been an appetite... There was a tweet today in the news where "border" was spelled "boarder." That happens all the time on rigging homework... 10 sessions, more than 150 students in four days. The end of semester reviews are a steep hill to climb... Do you have TSA Precheck? Do you think it is worth it? Seems like it could be... There is going to be a Hamilton ticket lottery in Pittsburgh. It'd be nice, but I think if I am going to win a lottery I would rather it be the Powerball... After more than a year I might finally get to take the photos off my phone. Something tells me I am doing it wrong... Today I had the thought that ScenoFab should be split into two full semester classes. That's a lot of material... Thinking about taking the boy to Aquaman, maybe to Spiderman. Probably too young... I am so, so hungry on Mondays. Also on Thursdays... Usually I fill out these posts by looking at a news page and making a comment on the top stories. Today I really don't want to talk about what I found there... The Greenpage is going on vacation tempo. Three posts each day. Maybe I'll put it on a hiatus for the last week of December...
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few articles from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Female directors provoked and excelled in leading roles
The Boston Globe: Cher has never been one to mince words, and she offered some typically blunt reasoning as she urged participants at a January Women’s March to vote for change. “If you want a job done right,’’ she said, “get a woman.’’
That maxim seems to have supplied the working template for Boston theater in 2018. This was a year when women, prominently including women of color, directed a hefty percentage of the impactful stage productions that are likely to linger in the memory as we head into 2019.
Parents Shocked By High School Play With Ku Klux Klan Uniforms
www.theroot.com: During a brief period of incarceration when I was 12 years old, I learned some valuable life lessons. I was serving three days of in-school suspension for a locker-room fracas that broke out when I punched a classmate who called me a racial slur because I had secured the co-starring role in our junior high production of Huckleberry Finn.
A star flutist has sued the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her case could change how orchestras pay men and women.
Washington Post: On a winter day 14 years ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that it had finally found a new principal flutist. The search had not been easy. Two hundred fifty-one players had applied, 59 were called to Symphony Hall to audition, and when it was over, only one remained.
Elizabeth Rowe, just 29, had landed in one of the country’s “big five” orchestras. And as a principal, she occupied a special seat, the classical musical equivalent of cracking the Yankees’ starting rotation.
“If I could have a dream job, this was it,” Rowe says.
The Evolving Fusion of AR, Public Art, and Virtual Public Space
AMT Lab @ CMU: Public art in commercial and recreational structures is a means to bring communities together and directly connect people with the physical space around them. Typically, public art is presented in the form of murals, sculptures, architecture, and environmental art. In addition to social bridging, public artworks can serve as identity-markers for particular locations, mediums to express distinct points of view, and vehicles to inspire personal and social change.
Suzanne Foellmer: Choreography As A Form Of Protest
The Theatre Times: Erdem Gündüz’s Standing Man was originally a response to the ban on public assembly imposed after the 2013 protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul. Gündüz just stood there, looking at the Atatürk monument and not leaving. Others later followed his example and stood next to him. The action quickly went viral on social media. Maybe it wasn’t extreme in expression, but in any case, it was a very much an act of resistance to which the police didn’t know how to respond.
