quickley

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what's up with the Fake updates.
She's been a busy girl.

Damned pensive indeed, is the new profile pick, there's always lots to think about.

So, since my last real update, circa end of March, I've been up to the following activities:

You've seen me alude to Thebans, Thebes, and Theban Cycles and other miscelaneous Greekisms. From November 'til Opening night on April 6th, I was involved in a school production called At The Crossroads. The play, a new work by a playwright called Gina Wilkinson, was based on Sophocles' three Theban Plays.

The Three Theban plays, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Kolonus, and Antigone, tell the story of the Lambdakid family, starting with Oeidipus, his wacky misadventures, what with the bedding of his mother, and the poking out of the eyeballs, through his adventures in exile, the feud between his sons, Eteocles and Polyneikes, their epic fight, and the shenanigans their kid sister Antigone goes through when she tries to bury the condemned corpse of her brother Polyneikes. She gets locked in a cave, and hangs herself, her fiancee finds her and offs himself, her aunt kills herself, her uncle the king freaks out, everybody's dead, everybody feels real bad, it's all hopeless and Tragic. And there was your brief introduction to Sophoclean tragedy from Ms. Quickley.

So, through weeks and weeks of creative process, we decided to mash Oedipus & Antigone's stories together, because they're similar, connected both in development and in character. There were lots of flashbacks, and the idea was really neat.

My role in this one was that of lighting designer. Having spent 10 years as a lighting techinican, I thought it would be a good idea to work on a lighting design while in theatre school so that I could have that skill in my toolbelt for the future. I'm not a design student, but somehow I was given the lighting designer role, without having taken any lighting design, lighting design realization, or lighting design assistantship courses. I spent a lot of time learning out of a book, and figuring things out for myself. I was also blessed from on-high to be given as a lighting design partner (a new, collaborative approach to design that Concordia hadn't tried yet) the absolutely lovely Ms. Cara, who we see focusing some lights, here.



Cara also hadn't taken many of the pre-reqs for lighting, but has taken other design courses. Her theory smarts, combined with my techie braun, made for an absolutely fantastic team. I don't think I've ever worked so well with anyone in my life. If I weren't so non committal about my career choices, and if I could convince the girl, I'd marry her, on some strange professional level, and we'd make beautiful lightbulb babies, with bright, light beam smiles. Coloured Bastard Amber and No-Colour Blue. Cara and I share a brain.



In addition, I was blessed with the assignment of a brilliant assistant, Sarah, who is a bastion of calm and coolness, and was likely more qualified to do my job at the time than I was. We were put under the charge of amazing lighting mentor John, who must be the most patient man on the face of the earth, and without whom, we'd never think to take a beverage break.



And so, the process involved creating a lot of images, mostly taken from the National Geographic magazines we scrounged up from second hand book stores, to illustrate what we felt the mood, atmosphere and tone of every scene was, and then translating that into a lighting plot, which led to a lighting hang, a lighting focus, and the building of pretty cues, like this one:



All this dealing with lights can lead one to see spots.



Now, since I've got my nose stuck in everybody's business, when I wasn't busy on the design end of lights, I was working in the scene shop at my after-school job, actually building the set I was lighting. We took the drawings of the set so thoroughly researched by the ever-talented Ms. Stfanie,



and turned it into a scale model, known as a maquette, for all you non-designy types,




And eventually, with hammers, nails, risers, plywood, and lots and lots and lots of rope, actually built it into a platform and bridges that 15 full grown actors could run around on.



Our set was mostly inspired by the clean, simple, minimalistic asian aesthetic, specifically some wacky gates in Japan called Toris, or Torees, or something. On each gate, there was a prayer or a wish made by the soldiers that walked through them, and each path you choose could alter your destiny.
Due to budget constraints, we couldn't do full sized gates, and had decided to use banners. Due to budget constraints, we couldn't do banners, so we used ropes. But the theory stayed the same. On each side of the platform/stairs/altar thing, the ropes formed 2 passage ways. Since the story involved a lot of characters dying, or comming back from the dead, the dead and dying would enter and exit from these passage ways. All very cool stuff.

I thought the design of this show (not to toot my own horn) was positively inspired. If I had pictures of the awesome storm-trooper-meets-ninja costumes, and the completed set and lighting cues, you'd be as floored as I was.

I can't say I liked the show, though. I have never been so glad to see a production end. Having been an actor forever, I felt a lot of Sympathy for the actors on this show, and was astounded and disgusted by the tone of the direction and stage management. There was no faith. I have learned, from this, how not to direct. I also felt that the adaptation of the script was a big, steaming pile of cheezy 1980's highschool drama shit. These ideas are too big for this writer.

And so, At the Crossroads closed on the 9th, and on the 11th was my 25th birthday, in addition to my last day in school as an undergraduate ever, (a big deal, after the 7-year Bachelor program I'd been following.) as well as the presentation day of my big final directing project.

I chose to do some scenes from a seldom-known August Strindberg play called Comrades. If At The Crossroads took up 70% of my attention, this semester, Crossroads took the other 30%, and the rest of my life fell all to shit. I found the perfect cast, and invested muchly both time wise, and personally into the project, which was difficult to do, considering it was meant to be presented the very week At The Crossroads went up.

And, as is Murphy's Laws of Theatre, everything that could go wrong did. at 8 am, Security wouldn't let me into the room I had booked, because they didn't believe that I had booked it. Come show time, one of my rented props went missing, and to boot, get this -- my lead actor's professor wouldn't let him out of class to come perform, and so, we had to go last, and all the other groups (actors, directors, tons of people) had to go a half hour early. It was wretched. That is, until Cara arrived with Chocolate for my birthday, and made me feel a zillion times better. I love that girl.

But, my faith in my actors proved to be well-placed, and they did a fabulous job. The scene was beautiful. I'd love to stage Comrades in full someday. I got taken out to a birthday dinner with some friends, immediately after which I fell ill for roughly 2 weeks with some shade of flu virus.

I did manage to get myself out of bed to be escorted by the ravishing Mr. Enrapture to my grad formal, where I was a hit in my 5$ miracle dress, which got me hooted at by an entire McDonald's full of big, black men.



And, so with school over, I recovered from my illness, rescued my troubled neice from a girl-slappin' SOB and took her in for a few weeks. She, Born and I will be looking forward to getting an apartment together in July with some extra space, where Born will have room to set up his exciting new magazine project, and I will have room to rehearse my exciting new Theatre projects, the New Intimate Theatre Company & Gottadoo Entertainment, which I'll post more about in the future.

Now, I'm working on I Am Yours which is fantastic. Come. Bring All Your Friends. DO IT.

And through all this, I had the immense privilege of meeting the hansome and adorable Sir Halfjack who, on his too-brief visit to Montreal was such a sport as to join me on my end-of-semester Theatre Student Pastadinner extravaganza. We enjoyed long walks in the rain, lots of good conversation, and very vague Canadian and Quebish History Lessons. He even saved me from a fire-breathing dragon. What a guy.
I didn't think twice to invite this random internet stranger into my house. Trust is a beautiful thing. I hope he swings by again to see the glories of the mountain in the sun.

And that's all for today, kittens. Thanks for your patience.

xox
Quickley