Anyway, I took a total-recall approach to this post, which was a bad idea now that I look back on it. I should have done what I did with my Guys and Dolls retrospective and taken a few notes every day to document what I was doing as I was doing it. This way, I'm sure a lot got left out, even if I did do a major brain dump right after getting back home in September. But the important stuff is there. And so, on with it.

When people asked me what I did last summer, I didn't know where to start at first. Fortunately, I've had practice describing my activities, so I can start with a very concise summary: Theatre.

Less concise, but more precise: Technical theatre and stage design.

I spent two months doing a couple different so-called "Design/Tech" programs, both of which were halfway across the country from Minnesota (one was in Colorado Springs, CO, and the other was in Boston, MA). Each program had a different focus, which was nice. One focused on the technical side of things, and the other focused more on design; but they each covered aspects of both, and—more importantly, I think—they each taught me a great deal.

Options

Before I did anything, I had to find and apply to programs that sounded interesting. I have to thank my mother for doing a lot of research for me. She found five programs to which I ended up applying, four of which I was very interested in.

Stanford was the most academic of the bunch. They offered what basically amounted to college-level summer classes for high school students. I wasn't terribly interested in it, but figured applying couldn't hurt. As it turned out, it was all right that I wasn't excited about Stanford's program. They turned me down. Oh well. No skin off my nose, except for the fact that Stanford's application had taken the most time. Whatever. Next…

Alfred University offered a summer theatre program to which I applied and was accepted. It was a design/tech program, probably similar to what Emerson's program was like. Speaking of which…

Emerson College had a great-sounding Stage Design program in their Summer Arts & Communications Academy. It got into everything: Set design, costume design, and lighting design. (Almost nobody has sound, unfortunately.) I got in there, too.

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center offers a program called Youth Repertory Theatre every summer. I'll describe it more in detail later, but it was highly technical with the promise of instruction in the basics of design.

For something different, LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) offered summer courses in various fields of acting. In London. In England. I applied for two of the courses—involving Shakespeare and physical theatre—and got in.

And those are the choices I had for this summer: Alfred University, Colorado Springs, Emerson College, and LAMDA.

Choosing which program(s) I'd do, though, wasn't trivial.

Deciding

Summer really isn't that long. Three months sounds like a long time, but most programs don't start immediately, and those that do don't generally go through the end of the summer. Between the two extremes, there's a lot of overlap. Doing more than two or three different programs is difficult, if not impossible. So I had to choose which programs to turn down.

Since Stanford was out, I really didn't have to decide between academics or theatre. (Not that there would have been a contest; academic courses usually bore me, and I like to be interested in what I do during the summer.) However, I did have to choose between the acting side and the technical side. Because I've done years and years of acting (I'm currently in my 11^th year at my extracurricular theatre school), I elected to explore the technical side of things this summer.

(Last summer at Northwestern University, tech was a requirement for all the actors. Since that program did ten shows in five weeks, we needed everyone in the shops getting things set up. That gave me my first experience with theatrical lighting. And yes, I do plan to finish my post about Northwestern. Eventually. It's just complicated—more so than this summer. As demonstrated by the fact that I wrote this one faster and more easily.)

That meant that LAMDA was pretty much out. Not only was it yet more performance, but the information packet I got in the mail indicated that housing was not guaranteed, and food was not provided. Neither was transportation. Sure, Colorado Springs was even less certain, but it was a lot closer to home. I really liked the idea of traveling to London, but I didn't like the idea of having to navigate a foreign country on my own for over a month. Also, the timing didn't exactly work out with my front-runner, Colorado Springs. I regretfully sent an email declining LAMDA's acceptance. I will go to London in the future—definitely.

With London out of the way, and Colorado Springs becoming the one that I really wanted to do, Alfred and Emerson had to duke it out. Well, I had to duke it out.

In the end, it came down to timing. Emerson overlapped Youth Rep, but Alfred's conflict was much worse.

So, in mid-June, I packed my bags and set course for Colorado.

Colorado Springs

The idea of the Youth Repertory Theatre program is to take a group of students ages 15–18, in both performance and design/tech, and provide them with the experience of a fully mounted show. Er, two fully mounted shows. (That's what the "Repertory" part means. The program always does two shows—one musical, one straight play—on a rotating performance schedule.)

It just so happened that I was the only out-of-state student. Why? Well, Youth Rep (as we affectionately call it) is a local, day program. It's not like the program I did at Emerson College (I'll get to that next) where students come from all over the country. The Fine Arts Center is just a local theatre, and they don't provide housing, food, or any of the necessities. It's not designed for what I did. But it still worked.

After I sent in my application, I got a voice mail from Chris, the FAC's technical director. Traditionally, all applicants come in for an interview or audition (depending on whether they apply for design/tech or performance). In my case, that was obviously not an option. But he was happy with a telephone interview, and so I was accepted.

Fast-forward to after the afore-mentioned decision process. Once going to Colorado Springs was definite, I needed to find a place to stay. It just so happened that Margaret was again the key to part of my life. She has family in Colorado Springs (she has family and/or friends just about everywhere), and she asked them if they knew of people willing to rent out a room for the summer. She got back a lead pretty fast, which ended up being where I stayed. A little Facebook and telephone magic, and it was all set.

Beginnings

Upon arrival in Colorado Springs the day before Youth Rep began, I got settled in my home for the next five weeks. The accommodations were modest but comfortable, and only a few blocks from the FAC.

That first Monday morning, after trying (and, as it turned out, failing) to set myself a routine, I arrived fifteen minutes early to the Fine Arts Center, to find the lobby nearly empty. Not surprising, considering that the FAC is closed on Mondays; but wasn't a program involving about 80 high-school students about to start? I didn't have to wait long. People started arriving, first in a trickle, then in bursts, then in a steady stream. Within ten minutes, the lobby was echoing with chatter, squeals of delight at seeing friends from the previous summer, shuffling, and all the attendant commotion that comes with a gathering of teenagers. The front desk staff made futile efforts to shush the group while I edged toward the few other quiet types taking refuge along the sides of the space.

Promptly at 09:00, the doors to the theatre opened. Over who should sit where, there was some confusion. No directions had been given to anyone, but it was all straightened out. The staff appeared on stage. Faculty were introduced, speeches were delivered, etc. etc. etc. After about half an hour, the program officially started, amidst more uncertainty due to lack of instruction—this time, over the sign-in sheet that had appeared at the front of the house right aisle. (It moved to the green room bulletin board for the rest of the five weeks and became routine for all of us.)

Our design/tech group was a few students short; one had apparently decided to do something else with her summer, and another couldn't make it for the first day. We made our introductions without the absentees; there wouldn't be that much to catch up on. Once introductions (including one interruption, a full-company meeting in the rehearsal space that nobody had thought to tell our mentors about) were through and our "textbooks"—large red three-ring binders—distributed, we began to learn.

Classes

In the first few weeks, mornings were devoted to a classroom-like study of our textbook material: An entirely FAC-staff–written Design/Tech Handbook. I learned a lot of the basics from that text. We also did some design exercises: Listening to music and drawing it, getting a word or concept and expressing it through various art works, and creating basic, quick design sketches from two-page clippings of plays.

For most of the text, we simply read the material as a class, with Chris (TD/SD) and Holly (ME/LD) leading with expansions, examples, questions, and answers. A few subjects (such as stage management, production, and costume design) warranted bringing in other staff members, which was always enjoyable.

I would like to say that, while my classmates and I were occasionally reticent to have discussions, at least one of us had something to say 95% of the time (not always me, I freely admit). The number of silences after questions may have been a little high, but it was more often due to thought than a desire to not speak.

Beyond the Youth Rep program, my instructor at Emerson appreciated having examples of my style a month later. I grew rather attached to those exercise pieces. They're all keepers.

Shop

With classes in the morning, shop training was left for the afternoon. For the first few days, the two were tied closely together, because we learned about the different tools in class and then learned how to use them in shop; but from there, they split.

I found shop to be very satisfying, especially once we started the build. Everyone had a hand in just about everything on stage; pairs or trios of us ended up having pet projects of a sort, in that we did most of the work for some particular design element.

For example, I and a pal (Calum, with whom I worked and chatted frequently; our banter quickly earned us the nickname "the married couple") had a heavy hand in building Grizabella's staircase on the main wagon (now that was one big rolling platform!). Calum, a second classmate (Steven, also a frequent work partner), and I all erected the piping on both house platforms. I and a third classmate assembled most of the scenic flats that would hang on those pipes.

Everything was interrelated. Nobody's project was really isolated. Each of us probably had some part in 75% to 95% of the set. That kind of interdependency is really awesome when you look back on it, and it was all Chris and Holly planning the whole dance.

Aside from the scenic elements I was involved in, I am also rather proud of two other small projects in which I participated on which I was the only student. The first was hanging the three moving light units (the FAC uses ETC Revolutions) at the back of the house, setting their DMX addresses, and running their power cables; the second, running the headset (intercom) cables to the two scaffold tower follow spot positions at the back of house (one of which I ended up in) and interconnecting them to those in the booth.

No, I did not hang three $7,000 lighting units by myself. That job came after I requested some involvement in lighting. (I'd been doing nothing but scenic work for three weeks while people with no real interest in lighting hung everything else.) Most of the lights were already hung, but the back of house hadn't been finished yet. So Chris, Holly, and I (feeling smug, of course, to be on special assignment ) trooped up to the booth and did a little put-the-Revs-on-the-pipe-without-letting-them-fall-30-feet dance. That entailed Chris and me sitting in the glassless windows, using the pipe for balance and our feet to support the Revs. Oh, boy, was I glad when each unit was seated on the pipe…

Running headset and power cables took advantage of my existing knowledge of circuits. The challenge was finding the correct lengths of cable. Since most of the cabling had already been done on stage, the supply of available cable was limited for both types. I had to do some creative things to get cables that weren't too short or too long. But I had fun doing it.

And by the way, the connections between projects were strongest when you were doing something on your own. Sometimes the smallest things—like headset cables—were very important. What would have happened if I'd messed up a connection and the follow spot operators (a group that included me, as it turned out) couldn't hear each other, or the staff? (It couldn't happen, because I checked the circuit myself when the cabling was complete. But it makes a good "what if" scenario.)

What I built

I lost track of all the scenic elements I was involved in. However, several of them stick out in my memory as pieces that I invested a significant amount of time in.

As a particularly remarkable example, I had significant roles in two of the three steps (I know, ouch) involved in making the staircase. With one partner, I glued and stapled about half the steps together. Then, a week or two later, Calum and I spent the better part of two working days stacking and securing and arranging those steps into a staircase bigger than either of us. We each drove dozens and dozens of screws into that thing. Neither of us knew you could break a sweat while sitting still, but we did with all that pushing on screws.

More screwing (a running joke) was involved in constructing the railing pieces for Midsummer. Those also got carriage bolts, which were great fun.

Before putting the steps on the main—huge—wagon, Calum and I (with help from Steven) put still more screws into the smaller flats on the back of the wagon, turning them into one big flat. That involved some ladder work and a few awkward positions. But it was all fun.

As I mentioned, Calum, Steven, and I single-handedly (triple-handedly?) put up the pipe frames on the house platforms that were later used for both hanging scenic flats and lighting instruments. If putting the flats on the back of the main wagon involved "some" ladder work and "a few" awkward positions, building the pipe frames involved awkward positions on ladders, ladders in awkward positions, and combinations of both. Plus those pipes were heavy: Ten or sixteen feet of steel pipe is no laughing matter when you're surrounded by polished wood paneling and painted seat backs; you mustn't hit anything or drop the pipe. But again, mostly fun, and we could all laugh at ourselves afterward.

Finally, those scenic flats I mentioned got three different stages of input from me. First there was that whole putting them together thing (staple gun and wood glue). Then there was attaching the flat goods (fake wood paneling, in my case) to a couple of them. Then I got involved in putting foliage on the trellis-type flats (with an upholstery tacker, a staple gun's runt child). I was especially proud of putting those things together, at the time, since they were my first project.

Tech and Performance

The last two weeks of the program—and especially the final nine days—were devoted to finishing the last few details of the set, tweaking lighting instruments, learning run crew duties, and showcasing the fruits of our labors. I ended up not having a thing to do for most of Midsummer's first half, but my assignment as follow spot operator on Cats—as well as the backstage hang-out time I gained by my lack of duty during Midsummer—made up for that.

Tech

I won't go into detail about the tech rehearsals themselves. If you've had them, you know what they're like; if you haven't, just ask Wikipedia. (I'll give those of you without experience in things theatrical a hint: Tech week is often referred to as "hell week" or "torture week", and for good reason. The rehearsals are very tedious for everyone, cast and crew alike.)

However, while Midsummer rehearsals were especially tedious for those of us with very few duties, Cats was a never-ending source of change, frustration, and entertainment for those of us manning the follow spots. Cues changed every day, and I (for one) never figured out all of the characters I was supposed to hit until the second performance. (Quaxo, if your positioning had been any less obvious…) Our entertainment, we got from headset chatter. Even on performance days, we cracked jokes, somehow managing to not irritate our SM.

Performance

All told, the performances were all enjoyable. With the exception of our last day (I'll address that shortly), everything happened almost exactly as it was supposed to. Set pieces moved, props traveled around, light and sound cues ran, and the audiences loved it all. Predictably, Cats was a sensational hit, selling out all four performances. Many of us on the crew, including me, were hoping to arrange tickets for others—in my case, the guy who provided my housing and my mother—but didn't move quickly enough, and had to deliver bad news. My mother got in to see the dress rehearsal by invitation, but she only saw the final performance by volunteering to be an usher; as it turns out, she wasn't the only parent to do so.

The Last Day

Many differences cropped up in just the four or five days between the dress rehearsals on Tuesday and Wednesday and the final performances on Sunday of the same week. One difference in particular, however, wasn't a conscious change by the creative staff. One of the leads got too daring during intermission of the Midsummer matinee on the last day and managed to injure himself severely enough to hold the show. He finished with a gauze bandage on the back of his head, close monitoring from the wings, and minimized appearances in the latter half of the show. He was taken to the hospital following the performance, but we still had one show left.

Cast and crew alike were worried about him. Never mind what would happen if he couldn't perform in the evening run of Cats; he was one of us, and nobody wanted him to be hurt badly. So everyone was relieved when he appeared, fully treated and ready to perform one more time, in time to wow one more audience.

Alex Killian is one tough guy. He took a head injury, finished the show, went to the hospital, and came back to finish. Not many people can say that, and I deeply respect him for it. I am proud to say that I know him.

The End

Of course, that final performance was bittersweet. It wasn't just Alex; five weeks with this group of people had gotten me rather attached. I suppose my position was unique; as the only out-of-towner, I alone was possibly seeing these people for the last time. Many of the others could count on working together again next summer; a lot of them attended the same schools. I couldn't count on anything. I was only eligible for the program this year; barring some sort of special arrangement (which I might have to look into, now that I'm thinking about this once more), I can't participate again.

But regardless of whether my future holds involvement with the FAC, my past always will. Who knows, I might decide to go to Colorado College. They have a rather novel class schedule, under which students take one class at a time for three weeks. I like the sound of that.

Boston

After a couple of days getting organized, repacking, eliminating unnecessary stuff (which went back to Minnesota—thanks, Mom! ), and booking last-minute travel changes, I arrived in Boston, MA around midnight and got to Emerson College at 02:00. Getting checked in was pretty simple—a couple staff members and both of my suitemates stayed up waiting for me—and I went quickly to bed after unpacking enough to get me through the night (read: pajamas). Tori, the program supervisor, told me when classes started (09:00) and said to come to her in the morning for directions to my classroom. I tumbled into bed, setting my alarm for 07:30.

I slept through it.

Tori woke me up at 10:00 via proxy; I was roused by Ben, one of my suitemates, knocking on my door. I rushed through the process of getting dressed and went out to knock on Tori's door, which was next to mine—interesting coincidence. (It was also interesting that the reason Ben was around to rouse me was that he'd also slept through his alarm, because he'd stayed up late to greet me.) That first morning wasn't the last time I had to rush to get dressed, but it was the first and last time I did so during class hours.

So, Tori led me to the classroom, by then nearly two hours late. It was not a good start to my first day that was actually already a week and change into the program. But the students and teacher were welcoming, and I learned of the reputation I'd earned in my absence.

There were many conflicting stories going around regarding me, the mysterious tardy student. One of the most popular was that I was up in the mountains building houses; another, less credible, said I'd been eaten by a mountain lion and wasn't coming. Most of the rumors did get one thing right: I was in the mountains. After all, Colorado Springs is up at about 6,800 feet.

All those rumors earned me the nickname "Mountain Man". Heh. Well at that point, I felt like one. Coming from 6,800 feet to just above sea level… Just imagine.

First Project: Drafting

Anyway, I got right into the thick of things. I already had a partner for a project they'd started two days before; she'd come up with a set design for a short play called Film Noir by Bathsheba Doran. My first assignment was drafting elevations of my partner's scenic elements.

Now, I'd never done any drafting before. Well, not formally. (I had a tendency to doodle geometric shapes in class when I was younger.) But before lunch I'd gotten a crash course and was well on the way to producing what Brynna—our teacher—would later call "pretty drafting."

I spent as much time as necessary on every elevation. If I thought something didn't look right, I rechecked it. I couldn't be rushed. I knew the project wouldn't stop with my work, and I wanted the next step—whatever it was—to go off without any hitches due to negligence on my part. As it turned out, the drafting was made into a white model. Julia, my partner, worked long and very hard on her model, and I think it turned out very well. Unfortunately, I couldn't get pictures of the finished model in a timely enough manner, and even one sheet of drafting is far too large to scan.

Costume Design

Individually, we each also started a second project in tandem with the individual/pair design work, called our "refrigerator character." This was a character to be designed from scratch, using only a photo of a refrigerator taken by someone else in the class. The design would, ideally, include as much detail as possible, including name, occupation, age, home, familial relationships (if any), personality, and whatever else we could come up with, though the character's costume was the most important component.

My photo² prompted my imagination of my somewhat wacky character, a 47-year-old divorced fraud analyst at U.S. Bank named Alan Kluesner residing in a rather messy mansion in the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa (my full notes). The kicker was actually finding a Plaxo profile picture of a forty-something U.S. Bank fraud analyst in my research. Of course I spent far too long researching Alan's life, from where he might live and work to what his home and office might look like, but I think it was worthwhile. (I won't deal with adding any of my research photos to this post; suffice it to say I have pictures of possible offices, houses, clothing, and so forth.)

This project allowed me to exercise my Google-fu and my skills in watercolor and GIMP. Taking a few pieces of costume research and a sheet of tracing paper, I got my character's shape down. I then photocopied the tracing and watercolored it. Finally, I scanned the finished watercolor into the computer and cleaned up some of the rough watercolor edges. Below, the final cleaned version:

Alan Kluesner, my 47-year-old bank fraud analyst character design project

Lighting

Another project was a group lighting design, created to go with a song. As a group, we chose the song and collaborated on colors, angles, and timing. Our guest instructor, Scott Pinkney, taught the basics of lighting and helped us with our choices. The song ended up being "Helter Skelter" as heard in the movie Across The Universe. Our efforts are documented in the video below (until such time as it may be removed from YouTube for copyright infringement ).

Grunt Work

Because our lighting instructor (not Brynna) was the lighting designer for Shakespeare on the Common's production of The Comedy of Errors, we all spent two days helping to assemble the set for the show before we began the lighting curriculum in earnest. It was fun, even though the weather was a little hot and I'd already spent the better part of five weeks building sets. We got our names added to a program insert for our trouble.

Makeup

We had a week of three-hour makeup classes, too, where we learned the basics of stage makeup and experimented with color, fantasy characters, old age, and some trauma (bruises, cuts, and so on). Funny how I tried to include a Bajoran as a fantasy character; too human. But one of my classmates turned herself into a panda. (We jokingly called her "pissed-off panda" for the rest of the session, because she got annoyed whenever anyone said she made a cute panda.)

Final Project: Solo Set Design

The concept sketch I drew for my set design before beginning the research and compositing process

Each of us also took on one final project. Mine was a solo set design, which I created based on the short play The Message by Hilary Bell. I began with a mental concept, which I then sketched. I did dozens of image searches for the various components of my design, saving them all (and embedding the sources in the file comments) and adding them to a GIMP file, and then composited the entire scene together. Making everything fit and look reasonably natural took a little effort, a lot of patience, and far too much time, but the end result, below, was totally worth it.

The wall portraits are all separate layers. I imported the headshots one at a time, added a border, and then used the perspective transform tool to "place" them on the walls. Conveniently, the walls in the greenroom photo I ended up using were built from concrete blocks, and thus had lines on them for me to follow. I laid in the couple, cart, and baby separately, erasing away the empty parts of each picture (standard practice). Much of my time went to tuning pixel-level detail around the more complex shapes and arranging the portraits. While preparing the image for posting here, I actually noticed a detail or two (like the shadow at upper left that isn't cast on the actress' headshot) that I didn't catch, but I think it still looks pretty awesome.

Since I had time to spare in class, Brynna suggested that I print the composite, trace it, and create my own watercolor version of the scene. So I did. It, like the refrigerator photo character, was good exercise for my neglected watercolor skills.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Looking back on the work I did at Emerson, I spent most of my design lab time either behind a drafting table or behind a keyboard. I suppose that indicates what I enjoy and/or what I'm good at. (Like I didn't know I enjoy working digitally. ) The drafting was surprisingly satisfying, and I'll have to look for more opportunities to do it.

Traveling the Northeast: Family and Colleges

When the Emerson program ended, my mother picked me up in Boston and we drove to meet up with my father, who turned 60 last June. My parents celebrated his actual birth date with local friends in Minneapolis; however, since the main corpus of my dad's family lives in Pennsylvania, my mother set up a second celebration in the East.

We spent a week at a rather nice campground in southwestern Pennsylvania, the five of us (Mom, Dad, my brother, me, and my four-year-old nephew), sightseeing and visiting family and friends in the area. I took far too many pictures of my nephew (as I always do—he's too damned cute) and the new 16GB SD card I bought in Colorado Springs when my 4GB card got full came in very handy. Not that I came close to filling it; I've barely managed to use half of it—including copious video clips—and I haven't yet emptied it.

After my dad went home (with my nephew) and my brother returned to school, my mother and I began a wandering tour of colleges in the northeast. We visited (listed in no particular order): Muhlenberg College, Alfred University, Brandeis University, Hampshire College, Amherst College, Brown University, Cornell University, Ithaca College (where my cousin is currently a freshman), and Carnegie Mellon University. At most schools we took the admissions tour, though some got less attention and some got more. (For instance: My cousin took us around Ithaca herself, but Amherst got a mere drive-by—the timing didn't work out for a tour, and we'd just spent most of the day touring Hampshire College.)

I found some good options through those tours, and eliminated a few choices. The experience got a little tedious at times, but I ended up applying to Brandeis and Brown (from this list only; I sent out nine applications total). Brandeis even looks like my current front-runner, so I'm really hoping I get accepted.

Home at last

After returning home, I added up how long I'd been away. The total was three months. Three months! That was a long time to be living out of one duffel bag and a backpack. Not that I haven't done that before; I last did it in 2007, when I went on two three-week canoe trips in Temagami, Ontario followed by a month of exploration on the roundabout (via New York) drive back. (I definitely suck at blogging about my summers. Two pretty major summers—2007 and 2008—never got blogged about. That's fine, I know that I fail. )

I got involved in the youth group play at our synagogue as an assistant director, and got myself roped into being part of the pit orchestra too (I just had to open my mouth...). That's been giving me some useful experience in directing and leadership; it performed the first week of February.

Guys and Dolls led to another pit orchestra opportunity that I couldn't resist, and I simultaneously got another, unrelated offer to run tech at the Jewish Humor Festival (which I keep typing with an extra 'e' after "Humor" for some reason). My last two summers of learning about tech came in handy, and I picked up a bunch of new skills as well.

The day after the end of the Humor Fest, I got another job at the same theatre running projection for their next show, Jack and Rochelle, which I'm doing alongside continuing pit orchestra performances with the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company. Both productions run through March 28.

I'm also waiting to hear from colleges. (The first letter, an offer to be put on Colorado College's waiting list, came March 15. 'Twas but an advance scout for the coming—I'm sure—onslaught.)

Final Thoughts

No matter where I end up in the fall, no matter what I do with my time (write! photograph! sing! play violin! edit Wikipedia!)—I know that I learned a lot this summer. Hey, the carpentry skills I picked up in Colorado Springs already came in handy when we got home. A board on the steps of our back porch came off about a month after we got back, and I was able to go down to the basement, scrounge a power drill and some wood screws, and fix the step—once I stopped at the hardware store for a pilot bit and a Phillips driver bit. Set-building skills translate directly to the home–maintenance world, and vice versa.

I truly believe that everyone should do theatre sometime. It teaches useful skills, it's good for stimulating creativity, and you get a real sense of accomplishment as you watch the audience enjoying each performance. Art may imitate life, and life may imitate art; but the art of theatre is life.

And that is what I learned this summer.

Notes:

1. Never again! From now on, I'm setting target dates for important posts and publishing them no matter what pictures or videos I would still like to add. The amount of time I delayed this post's publishing to wait for pictures that never materialized was utterly ridiculous.
2. Unfortunately, I never got a digital copy of my photo during the session. Whoever took it didn't keep a copy (I asked all my classmates) and Brynna didn't keep them either. I have a print-out, but it's hard to take to the library and scan because it's mounted on a foam board for presentation. I'll keep working to get a copy somehow...

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

I've been working the festival for 12 days—though I shouldn't include last Saturday because I wasn't involved in that event. In that time, I logged many, many hours in the booth. Time in front of both boards—light and sound—was part of it, but much of my time was spent in front of the JCC's ETC Express 24/48 DMX control board, writing lighting cues for the shows from scratch. I didn't design the pre-hung general plot (set up to provide flexibility for all the different types of performance), but even working within the limits of what was available I still felt like I was designing the look of every show. Really, it's amazing what one can do with just combinations of warm front light and blue down light.

With some of my free time during sparsely-cued shows, I availed myself of the Express' "Help" button, which helped me to learn new abilities as well as remember forgotten knowledge. Most significantly, I learned how to use the "Sneak" softkey to bring channels in and out slowly enough that the audience (hopefully) wouldn't notice, and I practiced writing effect cues.

The last two things I learned about were cue "Wait" attributes and dimmer profiles. I knew there had to be a way to tailor the upfades and downfades to the behavior of a particular instrument, and I found it by poking around in the setup menu. So if I ever need that feature, I know where it is. I also added a very useful "Wait" to the downfade of a cue in the short play Toast¹ by Monica Raymond, just in time for the final performance, which worked perfectly.

For one of the shows—arguably the most frustrating, on account of its 7th- and 8th-grade cast—I was responsible for flat-out designing the whole look with no input from the director other than approval when it looked good. The show—called A Purim Spiel—used Star Wars characters to tell the story of Purim, and included a couple lightsaber fights (because how could it not?). Despite being only 25 minutes long on a good day (20 on a bad one), I wrote more cues for that show than I did for any other. It included the only effect cue of the festival (flashing lights are always good for party scenes ) and had me glued to the board so I didn't miss a cue. Some of them were literally ten seconds apart, and I wasn't ever allowed more than a minute to "rest".²

I spent a good hour or two outside of the three 90-minute tech rehearsals for A Purim Spiel cleaning up and improving upon the cues I'd written, including a session between the two daytime performances last Friday. The last show would have been the best run technically if the two narrators hadn't decided to switch sides without making sure I knew. Because they failed to tell me, my cues lit Narrator #1 when Narrator #2 was speaking and vice versa. Fortunately I overshadowed their faux pas by running an "immediate" (0-second fade) cue from bright to dim lighting by accident. Thank goodness for the Express' "Back" button! That was a good-sized FAIL.

Beyond A Purim Spiel, my most significant lighting work was on So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz, a one-woman show by Amy Salloway. Her script included descriptions of the five general "looks" that her show required, and we spent the better part of an hour at the start of her tech rehearsal working out what those would look like. I ended up running sound for her show because Amy was uncomfortable (and I don't blame her) with the idea of having one sound op tech the show and another run it. The sound cue timing was pretty sensitive, and I do agree that someone who hadn't teched the show would have been lost. So I taught my fellow technician for that rehearsal to work the light board and copy the looks I'd programmed into subsequent cues. I hope Troy won't be as intimidated by the light board in the future. He did good work.

While Troy was intimidated by the light board, I am intimidated by the sound board. Sound operation continues to be something of a mystery to me. I don't know what to do with all the different knobs, nor do I know how to eliminate feedback or keep a mic from popping. However, I'm hoping to get some advice from Breton Parks, the sound designer who worked on the shows I teched last summer. (Yes, that post is still coming. I might give up on getting that last photo...) Learning to adjust more than the fader levels will probably come in handy if I continue working as a generic technician, since I never know what I'll have to do. So I kind of took too long to begin the process of getting advice, but it's not like I had much time online to do it before last Saturday.

I hope I do get some advice from Bret soon, since I'm moving on to be a sound board operator for the upcoming Theatre Or production of Jack and Rochelle (which starts teching tonight, opens on Friday, and runs Thursday–Sunday through March 28). Tonight I'll find out exactly how much I'll need to do. Hopefully it won't be anything with which I haven't had previous experience...

In addition to running sound for Jack and Rochelle, I will continue playing violin in the GSVLOC pit orchestra until the end of March. Next month, I'm working on joining the pit orchestras for Carnival at Concordia University and Cinderella with the Morris Park Players.

Notes:

1. For Hijab and Toast I was responsible for designing the lighting cues, with input from the director.
2. A lot of this was due to the scriptwriting, which gave only a few lines to each of most of the scenes. The rest resulted from the young actors rushing through and dropping lines.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

After Sunday's GSVLOC rehearsal, I took home a practice score. Imagine my surprise when I opened it to find handwritten sheet music that was every bit as sloppy as what I had to deal with during Guys and Dolls. Here I thought that that was unique to my last show. How naïve.

Fortunately, the work of transcribing the handwritten manuscript-style scores to engraved sheet music was already long done at GSVLOC. In fact, the rehearsal copy I read off of on Sunday said it was last revised in 1999 (interesting, since this is the first GSVLOC performance of this show, The Sorcerer).

So, w00t, WIN, etc. etc. I don't have to put in hours and hours to get music I can read. My contact even emailed me a PDF copy of the engraved score in case I want to print my own copy for practice. (She's the organizer; the conductor is an immediately likable Brit—a man—named Courtney.)

I was honestly expecting the music to be way, way over my head, but the fun of having high expectations comes when they're not met. The music is quite within my playing abilities, enough that I sightread with around 90% accuracy the first time. I have some annoying sixteenth-note runs to practice (typical Gilbert & Sullivan), but for the most part I have it.

It's interesting to contrast GSVLOC with Temple of Aaron when it comes to amenities. Temple's rented scores were hard to read, and they paid the musicians not a dime (save for the pianist, who was hired for rehearsals too). GSVLOC pays $17 per performance or rehearsal and provides engraved, readable scores as part of the bargain. I could really get used to this, but it's going to spoil me.

Needless to say, I'm excited about the GSVLOC gig, because I get paid to play my violin. That's something I have never before been able to do, unless playing for quarters at the zoo as a child counts. I've also heard some interesting rumors regarding the production style, which lead me to believe that it will be a somewhat Guthrie-esque presentation. I thought the orchestra would be isolated from the stage, but my veteran stand partner says we'll have monitors and will be able to watch what's happening. Yes!

I also have confirmed all my commitments to the Jewish Humor Festival, which starts on February 24th. I'm also excited about the JHF because I will be getting paid to do technical theatre work for the first time, and it will be like getting paid to go to the theatre. My favorite part about doing tech—or at least booth work—is getting to watch the show.

Last summer, I worked backstage for one show and as a follow-spot operator on another. I never got to see the show for which I worked backstage; in fact, I have almost no idea what happened on-stage except for the lines I heard over the greenroom monitor. For the follow-spot show, however, I was able to see everything. (I was technically up on a scaffold tower to run the follow spot. I do have a nearly complete write-up of what I did last summer, to be posted as soon as I can get one last required image from my teacher. Soon, I promise.)

So I like working in (or around) the booth, and I'm very happy about this upcoming JHF event because I wasn't even expecting it to be paid. My previous communications with the JCC indicated to me that anything I did there would be on a volunteer basis, so it was at least a pleasant surprise.

Of course, it took a lot of time to work out my schedule, since the JHF and GSVLOC's The Sorcerer tech week coincide. I put both sets of events on my calendar and made some tough decisions. Then I got emails back from both sides with changes. Then I agonized some more. Then I was released from some of the Sorcerer tech rehearsals (and performances) because of space constraints in the space, which made my life a lot easier.

Just as I thought the schedule was resolved, things changed again. Such is the nature of freelance theatre work, I guess. Fortunately the changes weren't too major—just a date change for a JHF event that freed me one evening. Of course, I would have rather had that evening filled with something, but I suppose I can't be too greedy as a newbie.

After all the scheduling work, I have a busy schedule of technical work from February 24th through March 7th, and violin performances throughout the month of March.

Now I really should find out the minimum income for filing income tax; ain't it great getting paid? I also have to figure out what to do about Social Security—like I'm ever going to get anything back out of it.

Oh, and as for the audition opportunity mentioned in the title, that's for StageCoach's Easy Stages production of My Fair Lady next summer, in London. I applied—and was accepted—to a program in London last summer, but didn't go because of timing and logistics. This summer will probably work better, if I'm cast in the show. Of course, what place is there for someone like me in early-20th-century London... (My summer post is coming; only one more image I need, and I can publish.)

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

You know, there's a certain satisfaction to this. I've been wanting to ditch Blogger for years, ever since I discovered WordPress. And I finally did. I'll consider the completion of this migration to be the fulfillment of my unstated New Year's resolution.

Thanks to the generosity of one of my Twitter contacts, @Navarr, I now have a self-hosted (er, friend-hosted) WordPress blog. He offered to host my blog after seeing me complain a lot about things I couldn't do under Blogger. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought a domain name near the end of October. The full story is available (once I finish revising it—oh, hell, that'll never happen, so just read it now and keep checking back ) on the about page. Now there's something I couldn't do with Blogger: A static page! (Update (01/20): Blogger just launched Pages on Blogger In Draft. Little late, guys.)

As an advance warning to my feed subscribers who've become used to visiting this site at voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com, I'm announcing that all pages on that domain will begin redirecting to a new WordPress site I set up at technobabbl.es soon. In fact, I'll probably have that set up by the time this post is published. Feed and email subscriptions, which are run through FeedBurner, should be unaffected by all this reconfiguration; the most you might experience are some issues with duplicate items being fed or mailed to you when the switch is made. Since I switched the feed a few weeks ago, all of those humps should be done with.

The search for a redirection solution was pretty tedious. Because I want to leave Blogger's hosting behind, the Custom Domain feature wasn't an option. Since I need the DNS records for technobabbl.es to point to DreamHost instead of Google, Blogger wouldn't issue 301 Moved Permanently headers; instead, it would show interstitial "untrusted domain" warning pages (returning 200 OK, creating a horrible search engine situation) that don't redirect users and don't pass link juice on to the new site.

I'd just 301-redirect the whole site if I had any way of doing so. Since Blogger doesn't let me do that, I either have to start from scratch search engine– and backlink–wise or find a more creative solution. Thanks to Digital Inspiration for a great post on migrating and Blogger redirection template generator, and thanks to John Godley of UrbanGiraffe.com for the Redirection WordPress plugin.

It took me a while to find this combination, but my pre-implementation testing indicates that it should be pretty perfect. I've also extended the Digital Inspiration template to issue meta refresh redirects in addition to JavaScript, anchor link, and canonical link tags, which should make it even more search-engine friendly. I could have just used redirects in my Apache .htaccess file, but Redirection will log the redirects for me, so I can keep track of the traffic coming in from the old site. For a more complete explanation of what tools I used for the migration, watch for a new how-to post.

Even with the redirection, I would like to ask all of you to update your bookmarks, and anyone who's linked to me should please edit those links. Redirects are fine, but it's better to not make crawlers (and users) jump through those kinds of hoops. I'd like to try and keep the experience as clean as possible.

Speaking of cleanliness, there were other side-effects of importing everything from Blogger. First, my feed footer was included in every post. So that's something for which I should keep an eye out. I'll get rid of all those pesky footers eventually. I only have to get them out of 500 posts. Second, Blogger uses stupid formatting tags (lots of <span style="font-weight: bold;">...</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">...</span>) instead of the semantically correct, shorter <strong> and <em>, and it uses more <span> tags to size the text up for headers instead of creating <h_> tags. More slow cleanup work for me to do. Just have to fix a few posts at a time. I also need to do something with my Picasa-hosted images; rumor has it that they'll disappear if I stay away from Blogger too long.

Now I'm going to stop rambling about all the work I have to do on the site. Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope you'll weather any transition turbulence and follow me to my new site, where I've been working on a few hefty new posts to make up for the distinct lack of blogging in the last year.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

It's taken 21 months—almost two years—but GrandCentral ("One number for all your phones, for life") has finally gotten an upgrade (and a new name). I'm totally excited, and happy that the long-awaited upgrade (previously known as GrandCentral 2.0) is finally here. Meet Google Voice: "One number for all your calls and SMS".

New Features

Yes, Google Voice added several new features. One of the things that always, always bugged me about GrandCentral was the fact that my number couldn't receive or send text messages. Well, now it can. According to TechCrunch's expansive overview, the same technology that powers the SMS in Gmail Chat Labs experiment (known as Gateway) is used in Google Voice.

Other new features include voicemail transcription (sounds promising), very specific per-contact settings (definitely a trap for us OCD types), a completely overhauled interface (w00t! Less Flash!), conference calling (cool factor = 100), and easy dialing out via the phone interface.

I have to stop and talk about the dial-out feature. First of all, it was nearly impossible to dial out from GrandCentral unless you either had a new voicemail from the person you wanted to call (so you could press '2' after it to call them back) or had access to a Web-enabled device. Simply dialing out wasn't considered. Now, in Google Voice, there's a "press '2'" option right in the main menu! Finally!

Also, under GrandCentral's auspices, calling out was free during beta, with the shadow of paying per minute after testing was over looming in the future. Google changed that in Voice, which allows free calls anywhere in the United States. International calls are at greatly reduced rates (compared to conventional long-distance). Each new user gets a free $1.00 credit toward international calls, though I don't know if they'll keep that up once sign-ups are opened completely—it could be something just for migrating GC users.

Migration, Stranded Data, and Missing Features

Existing GrandCentral users get (or will get this weekend) a migration link at the top of their grandcentral.com inboxes, which will begin the automated migration of a GrandCentral number to Google Voice. The process was pretty painless, even smoother than the transition to the new FeedBurner system last month.

However, much data is not migrated. Most of the settings are reset, custom greetings and names must be re-recorded, old voicemails/calls/recorded calls are left behind on grandcentral.com, and contacts must be transferred manually by exporting GrandCentral's Address Book to CSV and importing it into Google Contacts. The automatic merging of imported contacts only merged about half of the duplicates in my set, and I had very few contacts to deal with. That was fortunate, because the rest of the merges had to be found and made manually.

In the future, I hope Google will provide a utility to migrate old voicemails from GrandCentral, especially if grandcentral.com is eventually shut down or redirected. Currently, the top of my GrandCentral inbox says:

Since you have migrated to the Google Voice Preview, you can now access your new messages and update your settings by logging in at google.com/voice. Feel free to continue to access grandcentral.com for your older voicemail messages. We're glad you dropped by.

That's inconvenient. But really, how often do I visit old voicemails? Not much. Besides, a lot of them were inexplicably lost... Their listings are present, but they can't be played; I'm guessing the files somehow went missing. I'm not happy about that, but... at least it hasn't happened again.

A minor annoyance is the loss of custom ringback tones, the sounds played to a caller while the phone is ringing on your end. (Google does have a suggestion to bring this back on the Google Voice Feature Suggestion page.)

Future Ideas

Of course, Google Voice is not without holes. It can't forward to numbers that require extensions (I don't need it now, but might in the future). It can't take an existing number and turn it into a Google number (which would be eminently useful, I think, for my mother).

Image via CrunchBase

There are also no apps for iPhone or Android yet (and I don't care about Blackberry, kthx). But the feature suggest page I mentioned above has all these and more. I've suggested about 75% of the features currently on the list, including integration with Gmail and Google Talk. I'm hopeful that these and more ideas (like the two I posted on Twitter) will be implemented, and sooner rather than later.

Speaking of future ideas, Lifehacker ran a short post yesterday speculating that the reserved "Voicemail" label in Gmail is for integration with Voice. It's actually for Google Talk voicemails (GTalk has a calling feature that I almost never use because of various technological or locational constraints), but it could certainly be useful for Voice messages as well, if Gmail and Voice are ever integrated.

Reaction

Despite the inconveniences, I think I'm going to like the service. It's a vast improvement upon GrandCentral; in fact, TechCrunch's Leena Rao says (in the overview mentioned above), "Google is finally bringing us the voice service that was promised back in 2006." I agree; the old GrandCentral was convenient, but Google Voice promises to be many times as useful.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

Image via Wikipedia
Remember that old post I made last October citing www.mcool.org as an example of a badly designed website?

Say hello to their redesign!

Yes, it's true! The site has been completely redone since the end of last school year, and it now features a great deal of improvements. Not the least of which are bookmarkable URLs (no more JavaScript-submitted CGI junk) and a menu structure that is fully functional without JavaScript enabled. I dare say time has been good to the site.

Well, that's one less annoying site off my list... Too bad I'm nearly done with my association with that organization; it would have been nice to have the current site about three years earlier...

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

So, I signed up for it. What else would I do? (And I think my mom was trying it out, too; she read the TOS at the very least.) Though it's going to be a fight between Google Health and Google Web History for the gh network shortcut...

The interface was a bit disappointing. It takes a while to load, and isn't really as "pretty" as Gmail or Google Reader. It's usable, but doesn't seem quite Googley enough (though I think it's built on the Google Web Toolkit, given the script and image file paths containing /gwt/). There are also several functions that load different pages and make you reload the interface when you're done (like the service- and care-provider directories).

Ignoring those things, it's pretty neat. There are great auto-completion menus for all the data fields and it allows for the creation of multiple profiles. I'm just waiting for the day when some local care providers are supported for importing, but meanwhile I suppose I could get my records and enter things myself (next month, not now, if at all; see below).

I know this is a terse review, but I haven't had that long to play with it and don't have time to write too much right now. Sometimes, I hate tech weeks. But that's just how it goes. The sites I linked at the beginning of this post have more information if you're interested. This is basically just my "w00t!" post that shows I've noticed the launch and have played with it, no matter how little. Now back to homework and reviewing lines for tonight's performance (our first one).

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

Anyway, I decided to upgrade because of a lot of reasons. First, there are new features in the new version (well, duh) like an integrated speaker and a remote (see my reasons for considering the upgrade for more). Second, the price is actually exactly the same. I was wrong when I said Best Buy doesn't carry it. According to the salesman I talked to, the stuff in the musical department shouldn't be on the website, and said my finding the R-09 on there was a mistake -- yeah, one that got them an extra sale.

That means the listing I found on eBay was apparently overpriced by $20, and it didn't even include shipping from Japan (who knows how much that'd be). Suffice it to say I'm glad I didn't decide to figure out a way to get that one. I'm getting the updated version with the speaker, included software, remote, and all kinds of stuff, for the same price, and all it costs me is a month of use (of the old one, because I had to return it). I say it's a good deal. All my performances for the rest of this Spring will probably be videotaped anyway, if recorded at all.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

Since Google is usually so very quiet about upcoming releases, I thought this slip-up was extremely funny. For the record, I'm looking forward to seeing this come out on Blogger In Draft and then to mainstream Blogger. I'd like to try it out on this site.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761

Incidentally, there was a huge blogstorm about this yesterday, before it was officially announced and before the site was available. Rex Hammock thinks it might be the highest single-day pageview count for a 404 Error page, as he briefly states in a post entitled "Google's new Not Found feature is really fun". Go ahead, it's worth a click. (Well, Ctrl+click or Shift+click if you want to keep reading this but you already knew that, right?)

Sign-Up Error?

So, it sounds interesting enough that I want to get in on it. Like Google App Engine (my own coverage) from last month, there's a waiting list. (I got into App Engine, by the way, and immediately wasted one of my three indelible applications with a useless test listing I'll never code. There really should be a delete function in App Engine, but I digress...)

Unlike App Engine, though, this waiting list is powered by a Google Spreadsheets form. And this one doesn't work. I get a nice generic error message, which leaves me totally in the dark as to what went wrong. Argh. (It did get fixed though; see update below.)

Until it's working (I'll speculate why it's borked in just a moment), I'll paste my additional info paragraph here, just as an example (who knows, you might want to use it as a template ):

Initially I plan to just experiment with the service and see what it can do, but I think I might come up with a brilliant idea to actually use it for real as part of one of the sites I manage. http://www.swrobotics.com/ comes to mind as another possible site where I'd use it.

So anyway, why might this Google sign-up form not be working?

Since it's based on a Google Spreadsheet, it's bound by the limitations of the platform. Spreadsheets are limited (only one thread of many) to 10,000 rows, and with the publicity this launch got it's completely believable that 10,000 developers already applied. This is the price for Google eating its own dog food (so to speak). I guess in a way it's a good thing that they don't give themselves superpowers in their own services.

Meanwhile, I can't sign up for the waiting list. Oh well, it's not like I'd get immediate access anyway. Being locked out has increased my interest, too, so perhaps using a limited submission system was a calculated move on Google's part to generate even more desire to sign up. Who knows? It's working on me.

Anyone who gets in on it, please let me know what the interface is like from the inside. I'll probably post again if and when I gain access myself, but advance knowledge would be nice to have. (Yes, I will be watching Google blogs, official and unofficial, for more info as well.)

Use Cases

Meanwhile, I can brainstorm. This site already has social features (comments), but perhaps I'd like to do more. A sidebar game or something. Perhaps not, but you get the idea.

The Southwest Robotics website might have a comments area added where people can chat about the team's efforts or robots in general. There's definite potential in that idea. I'll have to take it up with my teammates.

Other than those few examples, I'm sure there a vast number of gadgets that I don't know about yet. Only getting into the service will allow me to really see what's possible. Stay tuned for more opinions as I can generate them.

Update (05/14): OK, the form is working again. It's also been completely changed; the number of fields has at least doubled. So much for just copying and pasting what I tried to send in yesterday.

[Google Friend Connect logo from the Google site, displayed under a Fair Use claim; error screenshot taken myself, site design and imagery copyright Google, also Fair Use claim]

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2010 by Voyagerfan5761