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Category Archives: Arts & Entertainment
Load-in day
Being part-owner of a theatre company, I also get to be a roadie and stagehand for our play that opens in a week. Today is load-in day at the theatre. We have to move the set and props onto the stage and wings. Costumes have to go to the dressing rooms and make-up room supplies have to be put in place. After many weeks of reheasal and production work, the thing is really going to happen. For Kitchen Witches, we have a cast of 4- 3w and 1m.
This time we put a bit more effort into promotional work. We have a talented graphic artist who does posters and other kinds of copy for us. Posters are up in every shop that’ll let us do it. Post cards are out to our direct mailing list of recpients. We have not advertised on radio owing to the high cost. Newspaper advertising is a puzzlement to us. Who reads papers anymore? When you have a small advertising budget, getting bang for the buck is risky.
In community theatre, your audience is substantially the 55 + crowd. And among that group, it is heavily skewed to the 65 + demographic of blue hairs and Q-tips. Retired people go to plays. The age 21 to 50 group are commonly very scarce in the audience. I think it has always been that way. We are a theatre group without a bricks and mortar theatre. Given the thin demographic, if we had to keep a buildng in operation we’d be broke already.
We have local “celebrities” each doing a cameo during one particular scene in each performance: Two mayors, the school superintendant, an elementary school principal, and a few business leaders.
Our set guy came up with some clever stuff. We can’t wait to see the set in use.
Th’ Gaussling was in our November production of Dearly Departed, but the current production had no role for a cranky middle aged guy, so I’m sitting it out. We have one actor who just finished a run of Rocky Horror as well as an assistant director who was in the same production. Their production of Rocky Horror was quite well done, even if they did not allow us to throw toast. First timers like myself got called on stage for a public spanking by one of the transvestite characters. That was hilarious. \;-)
Mythbusters Cannonball Flight Path
I couldn’t resist posting this map. Just how many myths are there involving cannons? Judging from Mythbusters, there must be quite a few because they are always blasting something. There is a job I’d love to have.
Editorial Policy Change
I have moved my political posting to the Daily Kos where I’ll be an even smaller frog in the big pond. I want to limit this site to the sciency posts.
A most unlikely question
Saw Apollo 18 at the cineplex last night. It is filmed in a rough documentary style with “recovered” footage. My recommendation? It’s worth seeing on a big screen. Probably not a good date flick, though. But that depends on your date.
While at a brew pub in Denver Friday night, I was summoned to a table of 20-something ladies who were obviously celebrating a girls-night-out before a wedding. The bride-to-be, decorated with a pink faux veil, gestured for me to come answer a question. I walked over and bent down to hear her. It was then that she looked me in the eye and asked a question that most fellows rarely ever hear: “Can I pat your booty?” she said. I looked at the table of a dozen well coiffed lovelies watching me for some sign of a reaction. The guest of honor had a list of items in her hand that she needed to check off. Seeing this, and noting the urgency with which she needed to complete the task, I grinned and “relented”. At least she asked first. So I stood up, turned around and bent over a few degrees in supplication, and received the pat. With my brief role completed, I turned back around and bid them a farewell. Moments later I found my dinner party and sat down with them, satisfied that I had just participated in an important cultural rite of passage. Hours later the wife unit assured me that this happened only because I appeared harmless. So it goes.
The Golden Age
Th’ Gaussling happened onto the video behind the bouncy Heineken ad known as The Entrance. As a public service, I have attached a link to the full video. The band is Danish and are called the Asteroids GalaxyTour.
The New Theatre Season
Our theatre group has (finally) locked in the upcoming season. I just ordered scripts for Dearly Departed and for Kitchen Witches. We’ll do another play in the spring written by a fellow board member. Later this month we’ll do a reading of another one of his plays for some theatre folks in Denver. It’s called Cow Dung Dust and is about an odd collection of characters hitchhiking on a cattle trailer along Route 66.
Recently I was part of a public reading of a screenplay set in the 1870’s. It was about the US expedition to Korea. It’s historical fiction told through the eyes of a photographer. It’s fun to dissect the story and look at it from the movie making point of view.
Screenplay
A friend wrote a screenplay called the” Hermit Kingdom” and a group of us did a public reading of it at the Bas Blue theatre in Ft Collins last night. It is based on the 1871 American Expedition to Korea. It was quite enjoyable to read this and then indulge in a bit of analysis. There were 47 characters involved in many layers of story.
We’ve done this a few times now with new plays and screenplays. It is interesting to see how these things are written. Actors and directors get a lot of credit in plays and film, but only after the writers have conceived it and put it in print.
American Pie in Grand Rapids
I have to share this link going around on Facebook. This video is amazing. Have a look …
Notice the young men in the video? This is what they should be doing- dancing with their girl or playing guitar or just enjoying life. Not getting their brains scrambled by IED’s in the violent sandy places on earth. We need to produce fewer veterans. And the veterans we do produce need to carry around fewer horrific memories.
The very real injuries to citizen soldiers today have their origins in foreign policy set into motion sometimes generations earlier. Try reading The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, by Daniel Yergin.
A day in the sun
Fun day today. Th’ Gaussling served as a judge in a talent show. We had 11 acts to review. The highlight of the experience was watching two particular vocal performances consisting of a soloist and a duet. These vocalists were outstanding. Two of the three vocalists had performed in some of our recent plays and we knew that they had talent. But today the show was about them and they were just stunning. It is gratifying to see these folks deliver such great performances. I’m very proud of them and sorry that I have to be so cryptic about their identities.
Lamentations on Chemistry 