[crossposted from Dale’s blog]
Dale, Marc, Laura, Melissa, and Carol Lee in attendance. We were productive as usual, although in a different way this week. I brought my worries about the calendar to the table, and we hashed that out. Part of my worries has to do with not knowing whether we have a place to perform this, and we talked about that. I know that our producing arm is working on it, but it makes me very anxious not to know.
To make a long evening short, we decided to keep working Tuesday nights (7:30 for those who would like to join us) for the rest of March, getting together our design concepts and choreographing the two staged pieces.
The first week of April is spring break, and many of us will be in New York City. And I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we will be having lunch with Nancy Willard! She’s coming down from Poughkeepsie, and we get to meet her! I’m still excited about that.
Then, starting April 10, we will meet Tuesdays and Wednesdays and begin dragging in the casts of Man in the Marmalade Hat and Two Sunflowers. Actually, on April 10, we’ll invite the members of the chorus to come and work on a little blocking/physicalization of their part of this thing.
Sometime in April, we’ll hold a weekend color-cut-and-paste session where we can build and paint stuff we need all at once.
We buckled down and got our What We Need and Who We Need done for Man in the Marmalade Hat. (Lurkers, there’s lots you can do. More than enough. Get to work.)
We realized that at some point we need to storyboard Sun & Moon Circus so we can deliberately produce visuals for the multimedia part of the concert. I also shared that I had envisaged staging “production photos” of that and other pieces for the multimedia, i.e., photo a kid tossing up a planet balloon and use that as a visual.
Carol Lee had done a different successive approximation of a sunflower, one using a glove. We’re still undecided between the glove and the crossbar on manipulating the sunflowers. She will work on those this week.
Laura wants to work on a prototype for the hedgehog costume. (Dale will start working with Laura’s mom’s kindergarten hedgehogs this week.)
Marc will work on design concepts for the Inn itself. We did decide that for May, we can get away with simple suggestions.
Dale will work on prototypes for the Toast Heads (the MMH’s marching band).
Melissa, were you working on something? I didn’t write it down.
Everyone is to work on visuals for the winter/spring motifs for the MMH’s banners.
We got pretty whimsical thinking about the toast heads and the Man in the Marmalade Hat. We’ll share the delightful details with anyone who comes to a workshop meeting.
I’m going to play with the starch idea, too. Not quite ready to give it up.
Take a look on vyew. I’ve drawn a possible painting we might see above the mantle in the Inn. Most of it would be relief, i.e. stick out from the surface 3D style. The picture uses an umbrella as a tree. Help me think of other ways we could incorporate objects into natural landscapes or have objects serve other purposes than what they were designed for. We could realize the mantle/painting in time for the preview. Maybe. If we want to go that way…
Here’s another concept for the Inn. We have access to cardboard, so, alright, let’s talk cardboard. What if we think of the Inn as being manipulate-able and animated like a puppet. The kids and principles and whoever else can operate the Inn like a puppet is operated. The Inn performs and transforms in different ways for each song.
We’re coming to the cardboard. The Inn would consist of several independent units that can be moved about the stage seperately or linked at times with other units. Each unit would be a transformable set-piece machine made entirely out of pieces cardboard.
Think of simple devices that allow for the movement and manipulation of flat pieces of board. For instance, it strikes me that a Swiss Army knife has such a construction. One unit could be built like a giant Swiss Army knife, seeming at the outset like a large timber post from the Inn. Hidden within the post would be several “blades” of cardboard painted to evoke different scenic ideas, decor ideas, images of creatures, variations on perspective, etc. Another structure might be fan-like (similar to the Swiss knife, actually). Another might work like a giant levalour blind. Another like flip cards. Another might ingeniously transform from straight lines to curves and arches. Another might be nestled rotating half cylinders. Another might be a periaktoi. We might make use of a rolling “player-piano scroll” unit.
We would coordinate the manipulations of these units by the cast so that at times it would seem that the Inn was a vast living and moving entity, one that never quite stays the same from song to song. Infinite varieties of perspectives, decor, structure, interiors, creature presences, etc. Walls might even dance, etc.
And when it is time for Wm. Blake to lead a walk on the Milky Way, all of the units would undergo a coordinated transformation into starry night figures and suggestions (constellations, planets, Auroras, skylines), as if the Inn suddenly vanishes and in its place is an architecture of the heavens.
For our May performance, we could perhaps construct a unit…
You know, I’m seeing it.