On a Wave of Litigation
"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 eye.
He's running with the idea and has suggested placing the text inside a silhouette of the wolf. That feels like something you would see on a '60s Moby Grape poster, but I trust his instincts. Should see it soon. I need to make the social media invite and set up ticketing this week. I've left it a little late, we open in five weeks.
The play will be ready; I just need to make sure people know about it.
One thing for sure is they'll love the Goths. Rehearsal this week opened with a quiet practice where I just got the two of them on the chess set to work on their characters. It was a good moment of collaboration, rewriting lines to make them more comfortable, trimming scenes and working on motivations. We've gone back and forth a lot on how the "subordinate" Goth should behave, and I think we've finally landed on "bloodthirsty."
The midweek rehearsal was a large one where we worked on the family relationships. There had been some unseasonable snow warnings, but we put on our coats and made it happen. Labia, the Emperor's mother, had been sick the previous week, and it was good to have her back. Illness and weather are expected hazards of the "Spring" show. It's always an interesting challenge to schedule around the holidays and the viruses.
The Emperor's son had a sore throat, but he shouted it out. He's doing a very nice job of making the audience wonder whether or not he's ambitious or psychotic. I mean, I'm the audience right now, but the real audience will get it. Assuming I get the poster and the marketing up.
He thinks he's the son of Neptune, and there's a line I really like:
"I hear the roar of the sea at all times! Waves crash in my brain day and night! Foam pours from my every orifice! Sea foam!"
The cast has made this a wonderfully strange moment.
Wardrobe was in attendance, and it was so nice to see her draping cloth and jewelry over people in my periphery. The play is real, it's going to happen and people will be in costumes.
Afterward, Labia asked what the "song" would be. I reminded her we have a musical number in the first act, but she pointed out that we've opened with an all-cast song in the last few shows. The drug play opened with a Gary Glitter cover and the Dutch play opened with a song about syrup. Before I could stop him, the Emperor's son suggested "Roam" by the B-52s, and before I could yell at him, the Greatest Actor in Rome asked, "Isn't there a pretty song about the Mariana Trench?"
There is, it's "Wave of Mutilation" by the Pixies. For whatever reason, I knew exactly what she was talking about and felt the floating satisfaction of something clunking into place. It felt immediately perfect. And thusly...
We dedicated the Saturday rehearsal to working it into the show.
I remember once driving to Atlanta from Tallahassee and listening to the "UK Surf" mix of that song on repeat, thinking for a moment that some extra-dimensional formula had been revealed, that the ideal song had been summoned from another plane. The slowcore instrumental build had me floating above myself on the highway. And thusly...
That's the version we're putting in the show. Saturday was a big one where we worked out the bloody final scene. Battles and a full stage, made fuller by the 11th-hour addition of this new number. The cast took to it with incredible energy. Rather than groan at the idea of having to learn something new, they sluppered it up greedily, loving it and cracking one another up.
In an idle moment, we rewrote the lyrics to be about the "wave of litigation" we'd be in should anyone discover this theft. The first line of the song is "Cease to resist," so "cease and desist" was a natural.
The fight choreographer came in with a sack of yardsticks, and he was snapping them into smaller sticks for some unknown reason. Mortadella, a famous wit, said he was "breaking the rules." Marvelous.
Later, she used two small pieces of the rulers to simulate two daggers. I've always wanted a fight where someone wielded twin daggers. And this is the play where dreams come true.
Another character used a broom handle for a spear.
It worked so well, I almost felt like we should keep it.
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 eye.
He's running with the idea and has suggested placing the text inside a silhouette of the wolf. That feels like something you would see on a '60s Moby Grape poster, but I trust his instincts. Should see it soon. I need to make the social media invite and set up ticketing this week. I've left it a little late, we open in five weeks.
The play will be ready; I just need to make sure people know about it.
One thing for sure is they'll love the Goths. Rehearsal this week opened with a quiet practice where I just got the two of them on the chess set to work on their characters. It was a good moment of collaboration, rewriting lines to make them more comfortable, trimming scenes and working on motivations. We've gone back and forth a lot on how the "subordinate" Goth should behave, and I think we've finally landed on "bloodthirsty."
The midweek rehearsal was a large one where we worked on the family relationships. There had been some unseasonable snow warnings, but we put on our coats and made it happen. Labia, the Emperor's mother, had been sick the previous week, and it was good to have her back. Illness and weather are expected hazards of the "Spring" show. It's always an interesting challenge to schedule around the holidays and the viruses.
The Emperor's son had a sore throat, but he shouted it out. He's doing a very nice job of making the audience wonder whether or not he's ambitious or psychotic. I mean, I'm the audience right now, but the real audience will get it. Assuming I get the poster and the marketing up.
He thinks he's the son of Neptune, and there's a line I really like:
"I hear the roar of the sea at all times! Waves crash in my brain day and night! Foam pours from my every orifice! Sea foam!"
The cast has made this a wonderfully strange moment.
Wardrobe was in attendance, and it was so nice to see her draping cloth and jewelry over people in my periphery. The play is real, it's going to happen and people will be in costumes.
Afterward, Labia asked what the "song" would be. I reminded her we have a musical number in the first act, but she pointed out that we've opened with an all-cast song in the last few shows. The drug play opened with a Gary Glitter cover and the Dutch play opened with a song about syrup. Before I could stop him, the Emperor's son suggested "Roam" by the B-52s, and before I could yell at him, the Greatest Actor in Rome asked, "Isn't there a pretty song about the Mariana Trench?"
There is, it's "Wave of Mutilation" by the Pixies. For whatever reason, I knew exactly what she was talking about and felt the floating satisfaction of something clunking into place. It felt immediately perfect. And thusly...
We dedicated the Saturday rehearsal to working it into the show.
I remember once driving to Atlanta from Tallahassee and listening to the "UK Surf" mix of that song on repeat, thinking for a moment that some extra-dimensional formula had been revealed, that the ideal song had been summoned from another plane. The slowcore instrumental build had me floating above myself on the highway. And thusly...
That's the version we're putting in the show. Saturday was a big one where we worked out the bloody final scene. Battles and a full stage, made fuller by the 11th-hour addition of this new number. The cast took to it with incredible energy. Rather than groan at the idea of having to learn something new, they sluppered it up greedily, loving it and cracking one another up.
In an idle moment, we rewrote the lyrics to be about the "wave of litigation" we'd be in should anyone discover this theft. The first line of the song is "Cease to resist," so "cease and desist" was a natural.
The fight choreographer came in with a sack of yardsticks, and he was snapping them into smaller sticks for some unknown reason. Mortadella, a famous wit, said he was "breaking the rules." Marvelous.
Later, she used two small pieces of the rulers to simulate two daggers. I've always wanted a fight where someone wielded twin daggers. And this is the play where dreams come true.
Another character used a broom handle for a spear.
It worked so well, I almost felt like we should keep it.
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