CollisionWorks

We were going to spend Tuesday at The Brick fully restoring the house plot for the December shows coming up (the last two shows almost completely rehung and recabled and due to some changes in who was supposed to do what when, Berit and I got stuck with the last third-or-so of the restore), but I had too much email business built up to take care of - invoicing for money owed on shows directed or teched (I get WAY too lackadaisical about this until I NEED THE CASH NOW!), answering questions from people coming into the space shortly, casting the Spitz short that is coming up fast, etc. So Tuesday was spent on that.

Yesterday, Berit and I went over to The Brick to work and we should have started much earlier - fixing the patch (her job - she handles the lightboard) and recabling the lights (my job - I handle the hardware) wound up being more of a pain than expected. After two shows in recabling things up there, there's now a giant mess of unnecessary jumpers all over the grid. And I had to add a few more to get things working ASAP.

After the January show (Frank Cwiklik's Bitch Macbeth, which I acted in in both the previous versions - 2001 at Access, 2003 at The Kraine), I should have a chance to tear everything down and start from scratch and make it clean and efficient again. Maybe then we'll also finally be able to add the top border pieces Berit and I have wanted to do for some time now, to clean up the line there.

So today we have three hours (between a class and a rehearsal) to go in and focus the lights and dress the cables, which probably won't be enough, so I'll have to finish during the day tomorrow, as we get set up for The Brick's Quinquennial Party. Berit and I were going to have a video/performance piece for this, but between the extra time going into the house plot and the Spitz play, it ain't gonna happen. Pity. It was rather specific for the event, so it just goes into the hopper of unrealized paper projects - a couple hundred by now, probably.

Well, while I have about 5-8 unrealized projects for every one I get done, it's not like I'm not overburdened anyway, and I usually wind up cannibalizing the good bits anyway of the paper projects anyway - the "post-apocalyptic acting company" framework I placed around my original production of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room was nicked from an unrealized combined re-construction/collision of The Wild Duck, The Pelican, and The Seagull (to be called Bird/BRAINS) that David LM Mcintyre and I were going to do after Even the Jungle.

I just spent some time typing out a description of what tomorrow's piece was going to be and it got me so excited about trying to do it again that I'm going to wait and see if there's ANY way I can get it done today/tonight. If I can't, I'll post the description tomorrow.

The problem is that besides the immediate work at The Brick, I'm still dealing with casting for the Marc Spitz short. I had three out of four cast, with two possibilities for the fourth, when one of the cast had to pull out as he hadn't looked closely enough at the schedule and turned out to have conflicts. So now it's just me and Alyssa Simon in the show. It's less than 10 minutes long, and not-at-all staging heavy, but I'd like a good 10 hours of rehearsal work on it at least, and time is getting short (we tech the individual show on Monday, have a tech with the whole program on Wednesday, and open on Thursday).

I have one actor still checking schedule to see if he can do it who can play either of the roles, and another who can do it, and is perfect for one of the roles, but can't make a lot of rehearsal time, or either of the techs (but works FAST and gets things right, right away). And now I have emails out to several other actors, and am waiting for responses.

Not a great time of year to try and cast something, especially when the last performance is on December 22. It seems like everyone's leaving town on the 20th or 21st. One of the roles can be played by many different types of actors, but the other has certain specific demands that make it more difficult to cast. We HAVE to rehearse on Saturday.

Ah, the joys of casting. I'll be happy when I have everything set, cast-wise at least, for all my 2008 shows by the end of January. At least that's the plan . . .