Is Everybody Happy?

Well, tonight, The Brick's Antidepressant Festival opens. Hooray!

I've been at the space for many, MANY hours every day since Monday working to get the space and some of the shows together for yer dining and dancing pleasure. I'm very tired, but fairly satisfied at this point. We're just about completely ready for everything. Except that I have to have the space's five stage cubes (the ones Berit and I built for Magnificent Ambersons) painted black by tomorrow, and I have no idea when I can get this done. I'll be booking over there shortly to see if I can do it while techs and other prep are going on.

The space got put back together in great shape by a crew of Bricklayers (the theatre's helpers) on Monday night. Tuesday night we teched Theatre Askew's The Tale of the Good Whistleblower of Chaillot's Caucasian Mother and Her Other Children of a Lesser Marriage Chalk Circle, which went well, though, as expected, a bit late. My lights look pretty good. I was a bit unhappy briefly by being asked to do some particularly ugly things (the framing device of the show is played in massive bright flat front light, ugh), but they actually wound up looking "correct" when contrasted with the more parodic body of the show -- and I enjoy getting to do "parody" lights ("Okay, now do a bad version of Mother Courage . . . okay now do some bad musical theatre lighting . . .").

Wednesday, there was a bright-n-early morning tech for Afternoon Playland's 2012: A New Dawn -- I didn't design that one, but I was there to supervise and all looked good.

Then I spent most of the day pre-programming cues for the evening's tech, Adventure Quest, which is both a simple and hard show to light. Simple in that the actual looks are pretty basic and easy to make look good. Hard in that there are projections going through the whole show, and we'd like to wash them out from being visible on the actors' bodies (given our space and where we have to have the projector), and doing that sometimes means pumping the lights up to a level where they stop looking good. I think I wound up splitting the difference okay (I still have to go in and fix some of the cues to make them work right).

Adventure Quest went really really long, especially for me as I'd gotten less than four hours sleep the previous two nights and had been at the space since 9 am. After the cue-to-cue, there was a run, which didn't get started until a bit later than planned, and I wound up sleeping through most of it. Well, my lights looked okay in the cue-to-cue, they should be fine. Got home sometime after 2 am.

Yesterday, Michael Gardner supervised Matt Freeman's Glee Club during the day, then I came in and pre-programmed again, this time for that evening's tech of Infectious Opportunity from Nosedive. It was a fast, well-organized evening -- they came in and did a rehearsal of the many complex set changes while I showed my cues to Pete, the director, and he passed them or worked with me to fix them, then they did a cue-to-cue and we were out by midnight.

Well, except I discovered I'd left the car's lights on when I arrived that afternoon and my battery was dead. Luckily, AAA had someone there really fast, and I got home in time to get a hair more sleep than I had been this week.

So I'm extremely happy with the shows I'm seeing, and pretty happy with my own lights for them. There are bits of Whistleblower and Adventure Quest where I may wince a little, but I did the best that I think could be done there with the space, the equipment, and a Festival house plot. The Nosedive show looks maybe a little better than that, and they were much appreciative (the first two shows really REQUIRED me to go all out and be wonderful just to make the lights work on any basic level; Infectious could have gotten by with much simpler work, but I think I gave them more than they imagined, and they seemed very grateful).

So, what do I see all around in the Antidepressant Festival? Comedies and "feel-good" shows that don't really feel all that good. Bitter, nasty, angry, and very VERY funny comedies masquerading as palliatives. Please come and enjoy.

Today, I have our main iPod again instead of Berit, as it might be needed for music at the party after the Opening Night Cabaret, so I'm able to listen to a Random Ten from the 25,596 tracks on this one . . .

1. "Until Yesterday" - JC Chasez - download
2. "Firing Squad" - Subhumans - Firing Squad 7"
3. "Jagged Time Lapse (BBC version)" - John's Children - Smashed Blocked
4. "Computer Date" - Suburban Lawns - Suburban Lawns
5. "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" - Monty Python - The Final Rip Off
6. "Coconut" - Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
7. "Sweet Dreams" - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - The Psychomodo
8. "In A Hurry" - Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Ubiquity Studio Sessions Vol.3—Strings & Things
9. "Don't Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk" - The Cramps - Psychedelic Jungle
10. "Weird Cornfields" - David Thomas & The Pale Orchestra - Mirror Man - Act 1: Jack & The General

In the midst of all this tension, exhaustion, and craziness, sometimes you need to relax. I relax with YouTube . . .

Here's a two-minute clip from an art installation in L.A. that looped several short sections of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan just before and after William Shatner let loose with his classic yell of . . . well, you know (I think the full piece ran 15 hours). Meditating on everything going on in the Shatman's face in these short sections can be very relaxing . . .

Also relaxing . . . baby tiger cubs . . .

And for humor relaxation, here's one o' them "Literal Music Video" memes sweeping the internets. Everyone's posting the new "Total Eclipse of the Heart" one (which IS pretty funny), and there's no loger a good copy of the original "Take On Me" one (still my favorite), so here's a lesser-seen one, as done by The Fab Four. or not quite:

Okay, now I'm back off to the theatre to paint some boxes black. Ah, art!