I am back up in Vermont to start my third summer stock experience at The Bread Loaf School of English. I hope to do a weekly recap of my seven weeks here as the master electrician. So far, it has been a relaxed opening week of the summer. The equity actors and production team arrived within the first few days of classes starting, and everyone went straight to work opening up the theatre. There is a welcome back speech the second day, so it is always a rush to get the space prepared for the 250 students sitting in the house. The play this year is the Bard’s Twelfth Night. There is a static set for the show, so it seems the show will be lighting heavy to dictate the different locations. Students at the school fill in the additional roles to the hired actors as needed. All in all it ends up being a very enjoyable experience for everyone.

To my surprise I found a dozen new S4 Pars waiting to be installed as the new house lighting system. We are lamping them down to 375 watts so we only have to devote two of our 96 dimmers to the house system. It is going to be a big improvement over the previous system, plus it will provide flexibility for our space which can be oriented in any direction. The theatre is interesting as it is a converted barn with a static grid hanging above.

I also took a drive up to Production Advantage this week, which is conveniently located in Burlington to pick up some L520s for the house lights, but also to pick up an Apollo Right Arm. It’s a little complicated, but basically the T.D. here ordered this unit for his theatre, but decided to pick it up in Vermont. So now I have a Right Arm to finally check out and play around with. I have only had time to open the box up, but I will hopefully give a little overview of my thoughts about in, especially in comparison to an Autoyolk.

I drove down to UCLA yesterday to meet up with a few friends to walk-through the Design Showcase West exhibit. For those that are unfamiliar with Design Showcase West, it is a portfolio review and presentation primarily for graduates from a variety of schools. The main schools at the showcase this year were UCLA, USC, CalArts, University of Texas at Austin, University of Kansas City at Missouri and Yale to name a few. It is the “Clambake” of the west as we often refer to it at school.

I had a great time at the showcase because there was a lot of amazing work and I got to hang out with a lot of my peers who I haven’t seen in a while. Also, as I was unable to get to Clambake in NYC, I thought this might be a good opportunity to see what other designers were up to. I would estimate that there were a total of 60 presenters at the showcase, but the majority was scenic or costume based. I was a little disappointed with the low turnout of only five lighting designers, two of whom are friends of mine. The most impressive part of the showcase was the scenic models. They were incredibly detailed and accurate, and glancing briefly at the play titles they were for, they made a lot of sense in supporting each work. It was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon with friends in the industry.

What an enjoyable first day at the BLMC! I got to the conference a little early, met up with some other CalArts friends and had a lite breakfast before the day started. It was definitely not a day to be running late. The conference started with an amazing lecture from the one and only Jules Fischer. His eloquent public speaking and kind mannerisms really got his points across to the audience. Jules presented a lot of interesting magic tricks and optical illusions to get everyone excited about his lecture. It is funny how the simplest tricks still amaze me. Jules’ lecture was intense, in depth and certainly very insightful into the world of lighting design. There is a lot of content to summarize, but the key elements that I enjoyed hearing about were his theories on stage lighting and his message to strive for excellence by controlling light to its fullest extent.

The morning flew by fast. At the lunch break everyone was introduced to the numerous vendors showing off their favorite and latest gear. It was nice to speak with some of the reps and ask them questions and grab some swag.

After lunch there was a color theory demo session from Beverly Emmons and Clifton Taylor. Talking about color theory can be very daunting

sometimes, but actually being able to visually show how colors mix and interact on stage in a demo always makes it more enjoyable.

The afternoon concluded with a discussion on how light creates the ability to tell a story by my mentor Don Holder. I had heard some of the stories from discussions we had in class, but each time I do I pick up something new. In today’s lecture I was particularly fascinated with Don’s comparisons (including photo documentation) of classical style Broadway lighting for South Pacific to the current revival at Lincoln Center. We did a case study of the plot at Calarts, but it wasn’t until his lecture that everything fell into place and made sense about why we (lighting designers) light shows the way we do today.

Additionally, I was unfortunately not able to make it do Clam Bake after today’s sessions ended as the schedule between the two conflicted slightly.

As it would have been a rush to get to Clam Bake after BLMC, I decided to fit Young Frankenstein into my schedule. The sound design master class got to enjoy it as t heir feature show earlier in the week, so I figured I should get the chance to enjoy it as well. I will have to say that I was laughing from start to finish at the songs, jokes and numerous stage gags onstage. It was an enjoyable way to end my first evening in the city.

I’m looking forward to the 2nd day of BLMC and a full day of lectures, plus the added bonus of seeing Passing Strange.

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:

It has been a pretty exhausting tech week already for the Opera. Above is a shot from our 10 out of 12 this past weekend of the space with most of the set and my initial lighting look for Act. Tonight was the first run-through of the show as a whole, which was a lot of help to see. There is a really tight schedule for our tech though as the show opens this Friday and Thursday is a preview. I have discovered that teching a show in less than a week is very stressful. As I head to bed shortly, and an example of what my past fews days have been like, I hope to wake up tomorrow around 8 or 9am, review the video tape of the run-through, take down my missing cue notes, write up work notes, get to the theatre by noon to meet with my master electrician and assistant, do notes from 12-4pm, meet the director from 4-5 to discuss changes, get dinner, and then start our second run through, followed by tech talk afterwards…and then reverse and repeat. Two of my major frustrations at this point are: 1. The particular architectural fixtures/practicals I ordered were back ordered and only shipped today. They will be here by Friday, but I am in turmoil about whether to cut them or not if I am even able to have them installed before the house opens for opening at 7:30pm. 2. The follow-spot positions I am using for the show are mounted Source 4 10 degree units. It has become increasingly frustrating programing the spots in the cues on the board (Grand MA, for those who are wondering). Every time I want to change a level or In/Out I need to take focus away from the actual design. It’s driving me and my team crazy. I’m in the process of working out a way for the Spot-Ops to control their own intensity.

In other news, CalArts is reaching the end of the semester, but things do not slow down at all in May. There is a new works festival, portfolio review, mid-res review for many students, final project (which I am a bit behind in due to the Opera), and numerous shows to work on. I wish I could relax after the show opens, but I have to finish designing Les Liaisons Dangereuses for Grad Lighting 1, organize my portfolio, including finalized and updated plot, paperwork and production shots of Platee. I also found out my design assignment for next year. I will be working one of the fall shows called Blue. I am interested in seeing who else I will be working with on my production team.