Another Tear For Rome - Production Blog

EXPERIENCE! An ambitious young man on a chariot of leopards! WITNESS! The mysterious inner sanctum of an egg-loving prophetess. We're at the stage where we've got the show blocked (mostly), the actors know their lines (sort of) and we're starting to feel the nervous energy that comes with knowing it's close. The ticket link is live, and while they're not flying out the door, we're seeing some movement. We're probably 25% of where we need to be to "break even." Not a bad place to be with a little less than a month to go 'til curtain.  But I would like a little bit more "buzz."  I was having a bit of an SEO problem. The ticket company we're using doesn't really "rank" in the algorithm, so if a random person had seen one of our stickers and was curious enough to google the play, they wouldn't really find anything. Getting the play into a local social calendar turned that around, though. Our marke...

"I am the greatest actor in all of Rome! And yet… they say I merely mimic greatness and do not… embody it." The rough draft of the poster came in this week, and it was pretty glorious. Striking black image on a flat red background. The artist used the font from the poster for Fellini's Satyricon and it fit perfectly inside the wolf's body. I had been concerned about a legibility issue, but I am a famous fool. I was immediately happy with it, waking Sara up to take a look.  Having a keen eye for such things, she noticed the word Music in "A Play with Music and Prophecy" looked like "Musk." Turns out an I and a C together look like a K. A Play with Musk and Prophecy.  I pinged the artist, and I was like, "hey, music looks lik--" and he was like, "Musk! I know, I moved it all around, it's the font."  And I was like, "can you--" and he was like, "I did, this is the best. Just change the word."...

" As the only living member of the bloodline, I have become Empress! And you are nothing! Oh, how you will suffer! What untold tortures will be visited upon you, legally!" The play needs a poster. In the past, I've worked with comic book artists or gotten my designer coworkers to help me, but for the last few I've been working with The Ohmu, an old friend whose dedicated his pyrite years to developing his dormant skills. He's made some amazing posters for Floating Tomb, a DJ night we're both associated with, and he really came through on The Mighty Sequoias and Tulips of Fury (the productions previous to this one). The Capitoline Wolf is a plot-point in the play, and though I think of that as a famous image, I think audiences usually benefit from a "refresher" on those things. And sometimes they need to be educated. So, the poster can do that work for this one. I asked him to provide an image of the wolf with a single tear falling out of her ...

Cheap, fast, or accurate... pick two! There was an amusing incident last week, where a very high dude sort of wandered into the rehearsal room and asked if he could watch for a while. I made a snap judgment he wasn't taking part in a scavenger hunt with "dead actors" on the list and let him stay. He kind of slumped over most of the time, waking up to say "heh" when the rest of us woke him with our laughter. He seemed fairly bewildered and after about half an hour, I gently told him the rest of the rehearsal was "closed." He smiled, thanked us, and left. I hope it wasn't a preview of how the paying audience will react. Another solid week of rehearsal with some good work with the denizens of Exile Isle. We were able to integrate the actual actors who interact with them (as opposed to reading the missing people's lines) and it got pretty tight. There was a pretty clunky line given to the Greatest Actor in Rome, and I asked her to just rew...