Sun & Moon Circus (Day 237/365)

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I revisited the music for Sun & Moon Circus tonight. Now you would think that I had fixed everything there was to fix with that, but no. There was the passage where the Child rings the bell above his head so loud he thought he’d wake the dead, only it was still just the English horn over pizzicato celli. Not very loud at all.

I played with several options, first adding a French horn at “‘Rabbit,’ I called, ‘come here.'” Very nice. Then I tried doubling the English horn in the first part of the phrase with the French horn, but it was too much. I doubled the celli with the horn. Icky.

Finally I doubled the celli with the violins in the second octave. Not too shrill, and just enough to make us notice that it’s “louder.” And then the French horn comes in at the end of the phrase, leading us into the lovely “No need to cry and quake…”

So that’s done.

Mostly tonight, I played with my new Moleskine New York City notebook. What a fiercely wonderful thing! I’ve written in all our theatres, the hotel, the restaurants, the museums, that’s addresses, phone numbers, and subway lines/stops. I’ve marked everything on the detailed street maps. I’ve used the translucent sticky notes to draw actual routes on the maps. I’ve used the blank pages to plan our itinerary, including travel times, a deadly omission that beginners often make.

And it all fits in my pocket. I love it.

Workshop, 3/27 (Day 236/365)

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Forging ahead, Marc, Dale, Carol Lee, and Laura in attendance.

Carol Lee has finished two sunflowers:

Carol Lee's sunflowers

They are quite magnificent. We began to see a lot of possibilities now for choreography. Dale suggested that we keep in mind the Silly Symphony cartoons, with their simple and repetitive patterns. They’re a lot of fun to play with, and very easy to make into characters.

Dale reported on his adventures in Hedgehog Land: he worked with Sherry Lambert’s kindergarteners again on the MMH Arrives sequence, and they’re getting quite good at it. He then tested them on some ideas he had for the Marmalade Man Makes a Dance to Mend Us, where he asked them to strike hedgehog poses on the beat. Then they played follow-the-leader, taking a step and striking a pose on the beat. It worked, so we’ll actually be able to stage both MMH pieces! He also sent letters home to the parents so they could decide whether their hedgehog would be able to participate in the May 3 performance.

Then we forced ourselves to get to work on visuals for Sun & Moon Circus [SMC].

Marc continued his study of the circular bed, the Gang in pyjamas, King of Cats as ringmaster:

Marc's Tiger

That’s a magic lantern the Tiger is holding, projecting moons/stars/suns onto the circus action around them.

Carol Lee grumbled about being a three-dimensional artist (i.e., hot glue) being forced to work in a two-dimensional framework, but she approximated successively nonetheless:

Carol Lee's moon

Here she has the sunflowers listening to the Moon’s lounge act. Looking at this idea, it occurs to Dale that we can actually write in a vocal part for the Moon in the circus sequence, sort of a Cirque du Soleil descant thingie.

Carol Lee's clapping

A simple image, for creatures clapping. We probably could come up with a few more, paws and fangs, to add to the mix.

After working with paint last week, Dale went digital this week, using a program called ArtRage. It’s very gorgeous, and it comes in a free version for both Mac and that other platform, from Ambient Design. There’s also a $19.95 version that has layers, worth it if you can afford it.

Fitful, flashing light

Here the tiger is awakened by fitful, flashing light, streaming through his window. He has managed to get his paws on a bit of it.

We do not have workshop next week, April 3, because it’s spring break and Dale and Marc and Carol Lee will be in New York City. In fact, by this time next week, we will already have had lunch with Nancy Willard!

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Posted on by Dale

from the New York Times, 2/26/07, p. A7:

Headline: Pakistan Police Detain Opposition Members Ahead of Protests

The police detained hundreds of political opposition members in an attempt to thwart nationwide protests planned for Monday to denounce Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s suspension of the chief justice.

Perhaps this is what the NYPD (and the Bush/Cheney regime, buddies of Musharraf) had in mind in 2003. Or even now.

Wonderful Car (Day 235/365)

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Yes, I finally got work done. I listened through Blake’s Wonderful Car Delivers Us Wonderfully Well and made a few tweaks. Pretty subtle, but they were necessary. I think it sounds marginally better.

In other work, I dug out my personality profile from when I was a student at GHP in 1970. I find that it is the Cattell 16PF Profile. We were given this test, and then called in by the counselor (Eddie Najjar, a theatre person actually, and kin to the Mansours here in Newnan) to discuss it. He would show us our score on each item, and then we got to choose which of the synonyms on that end of the scale we thought described us.

Looking at it now, I’m a little surprised to see that I was in the average range for Self-Assured. Geez, I was an insufferable little thing. I must have cheated on the test.

Anyway, I dug it out because I’m going to use its scales to give my little bloggers a handle on describing characters from their books. If they can see some contrasting personality traits, they can latch on to one or two to hang their writing on.

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From the New York Times, front page, 3/25/07:

, from an intelligence report on a series of concerts planned in 2003:

“Activists are showing a well-organized network made up of anti-Putin sentiment; the mixing of music and political rhetoric indicates sophisticated organizing skills with a specific agenda. Police departments in above listed areas have been contacted regarding this event.”

The concerts were scheduled for New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston.

Oh, wait, did I say Putin? Silly me. The NYPD were spying on anti-Bush musicians. They were contacting other police departments to be aware of the serious crime of criticizing the American President.

Appropriately enough, we have 666 days left to go.

Nothing, really (Day 234/365)

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Other than clean house and cook for a lovely dinner party, I didn’t get a lot done.

I did explore a to-do list kind of website, stikkit.com, which has some interesting features, but again, I don’t want to have to open a website just to keep track of all my stuff. It might be good for short term collaborative kinds of things, like getting people’s input on what restaurant to go to after the Louvre exhibit. But daily basis, I don’t think so.

I also ditched my old recipe software for a new one that is much more Mac-like and easier to use. I used to use MasterCook, but they stopped making a Mac version, fools, and it’s hard to find something that well-designed. But I think MacGourmet is going to do it for me.

I did not get to the two simple things I wanted to do this weekend, i.e., listen to the next two pieces in William Blake and polish them a bit.

A concert (Day 233/365)

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Spent most of the day in spring cleaning, not my idea, but sometimes someone else will veer off on an unplanned agenda. Then all one can do is to obey.

Still, not a totally uncreative day: Masterworks Chorale had a concert up at Southwest Christian Church in East Point. We had been invited by the Southern Crescent Chorale to join them in a benefit for the Southwest Christian Care Hope House, a respite care facility for medically fragile children. Good cause, not a lot of prep, so off we went.

Beside the two adult groups, we had the Newnan High Singers and the Union Grove High School Concert Choir. Both very good in their very different ways.

Union Grove “won” (not that I regard it as a competition, but I do award points based on interesting music choices) with “Flanders Fields,” a modern, complex piece based on the poem by John McCrae. No one else even attempted to stretch the audience’s ears. We did classical church anthems, and Southern Crescent did choral chestnuts. (“Va pensiero,” anyone? Although if I were going on a concert tour of Italy, I’d think twice before doing that nation’s unofficial anthem.)

Small accomplishments (Day 231/365)

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I didn’t have a lot of time to work on anything today. More messing around with the 100 Book Club business at school, but mostly I had promised to emcee the school’s talent show tonight. It was not an ordeal by any means, but it sucked up most of the evening.

So I settled for taking a second look at William Blake’s Inn for Innocent & Experienced Travelers. I figure now that I have a computer that can handle most of what I can think of, it’s time to revisit each of the pieces and see what I left out in each one. It’s mostly going to be percussion, which always used to (and sometimes still does) throw the sound for a loop.

For instance, in William Blake’s Inn, I’ve added a gong to the proceedings. If I get adventurous, I’m thinking about some rolled cymbals and some windchimes as well.

Anyway, it’s posted over at the William Blake page.

Bits & pieces (Day 230/365)

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Nothing truly creative today; just a lot of craftsmanship.

Continued blog training for the kids at school. I am increasingly un-fond of Drupal, the software we’re using to run this multi-blog site.

I’ve begun shooting a video for the kindergarten department, showing how a kindergartener would go about taking an Accelerated Reader™ quiz. The kid we’re using is quite the natural, generally getting it in one take. He was a bit stiff in his first shot, struggling to remember his lines. I explained that instead of trying to remember the words, remember what he wanted: “I need an AR™ book. Can you help me find one?” His very next reading was dead-on. He’s already talking the lingo: shots, angles, and today, after I shot three scenes with him wearing different clothes from yesterday (doh!), continuity.

I’ve updated the Unexpurgated Guide to GHP, and the GHP Wiki for Newbies.

I even pulled up the script to A Christmas Carol, I was amazed that InDesign CS2 could even open a PageMaker file that old, updated the fonts and layout, exported to PDF, and sent it off to Mike Funt, who for some reason wants me to spend my time modernizing all my archives (Green Eggs & Ham, anyone?) and sending them to him for his archives. But then he’s always been a selfish bastard.

Now I’m off to peruse my two new books on theatre business, both by Charles Grippo. Very clearly explained, and very scary. I did not know before, but now I do, that there is a contract for actors who have to do nude scenes.