My first year at CalArts is finally over now and I can relax for a few days. I had an extremely arduous last week of school. Not only did my show open and close, but I also had to prepare my portfolio for a school-wide review, finish my final paper project (Les Liaisons Dangereues) for Don’s class and prepare myself for my mid-residence review from my mentors.

Everything turned out for the best considering the time restraints I had. Teching the Opera in four days proved to be very daunting and stressful, especially working with the Grand MA for the first time ever. All in all, I was happy with where the design got too based on the time allotted. It was in no way a finished piece, or technically clean to the trained eye. However, I do think it supported the emotional moments of the show and helped in establishing the scenic setting of the LA river/marsh. But it is in the past now, and school is finished, so it is on to bigger and better things.

For starters, I flew back East this morning and I am excited to get into the NYC for BLMC later this week. I will hopefully have time to visit some of my fellow CalArts graduates at the infamous Clambake hosted by none other then Ming Cho Lee. For those unfamiliar to Clambake, it is a multi-school portfolio presentation between recent graduates to show everyone else your work. It is primarily focused on visual design (scenic, lighting, costumes and puppets) and you get to see how other students from top programs like Yale and NYU design.

I also had time on my flight to read the script for a new show I am assigned to next semester called BLU. The piece is written by one of the MFA 3 performance writers and will be performed in one of our smaller black box spaces. The play read very quickly the first time through and gave me a good sense of what the story is about. I’ll need to spend more time with the text to start dwelling on some potential ideas.

I also hope to have some time at the end of the week to go and see Les Liaisons Dangereues, as it picked up 5 Tony nominations, and I’m anxious to see what the actual production looks like, after working on a paper-project version of it for the past month.

And below are some of the production shots from Platee that I included at portfolio review:

Simon Matthews, Susan Stroman, Jonathan Deans, and Abe Jacob host a Q+A after Young Frankenstein.

The 2008 BSMC—this year’s version of the annual Broadway Sound Master Classes—kicked off on Friday evening, May 16, with a performance of Young Frankenstein at the Hilton Theatre. In spite of heavy rain and heavy traffic, a group of 120 people attended the show (which is totally hilarious). At the end of the show, the group remained in the theatre for a Q&A with Abe Jacob, creative consultant for the Classes, Simon Matthews, the highly-talented FOH board op, the equally talented sound designer Jonathan Deans, and surprise guest, director/choreographer Susan Stroman. “Stro,” as she is called by her friends, discussed her collaboration with Deans, whose sound design for the show includes 700 special effects.

Deans spoke more about the sound design for the show on Saturday morning, May 17, as one of the featured speakers at the BSMC…. referring to his three shows in the Hilton Theatre to date: Ragtime, Pirate Queen, and Young Frankenstein. In keeping with the broad comedy of a Mel Brooks musical, the sound for Young Frankenstein is bold and loud, complete with an opening thunder clap that Deans joked could deafen you for the rest of the show. As always, Deans was a knowledgeable, personable, and humorous speaker who is obviously passionate about what he does, including numerous productions for Cirque du Soleil, including the upcoming CRISS ANGEL Believe at the Luxor, the sixth resident show for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, which will be part of the 2008 Backstage Las Vegas during LDI2008 in October.