WALMARTOPIA First Sketches

Yuri's Night Countdown:

43 Days until Yuri's Night!!!!

The big YN news this week has been the official sponsorship of Stoli! Did you know that Stoli was the first vodka consumed in space?
You can see the tube of Stoli right there...1975 during the Apollo/Soyuz mission...depending on who you ask, some people will tell you that the Russians pasted vodka labels on to tubes of borscht...but I ask you, do you think that any self respecting cosmonaut would just bring the label and not the vodka? No way. So here's to Stoli, and Yuri Gagarin! NOSTROVIA!

Here you can see the last of the Mumbo scenery before I schlepped it up to NYC...

Elephant and Seal Animal Banners, MUMBO
Acrylic on Black Velour, 4'x8' each

So, MUMBO opens in Baltimore next month (whoops, next month is suddenly Sunday...)

This Tuesday was the Clarendon Mardi Gras...
I was helping escort the Obama Family in the parade, so this is the only picture I've been able to scrounge up...

Lastly, I have fired the first salvo in the design for Walmartopia. I kinda have a hard time with this script. It can come off as kinda preachy...and it begs for a huge budget, so its a challenge on many levels.

Walmartopia first sketch
Pencil, watercolor and photoshop

I have a production meeting with the director tomorrow, so hopefully we will both come together on the concepts I am attempting to illustrate here. I am trying to rely heavily on projection in this show, because the script calls for a different location in every scene...so we cant change scenery very easily...but we can change projections as well as the clothes on the two cutouts of WalMart employees...it should be funny during the hooters sequence...

MUMBO almost done!

Before we start with the ABJ news this week, lets check in with the ole Yuri's Night countdown clock:

51 days until Yuri's Night 2009!!!!

The great big news about Yuri's Night's Lineup is that we will have Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey AND Miss Saturn!!!!!! This is shaping up to be a truly star studded lineup!

Speaking of Trixie Little, I am in the home stretch for MUMBO! I did the final designs for the animals that will be framed by the scroll banners pictured last week...

Animal Banners Elevation, MUMBO
Color Pencil on Black Paper, 4"x8" each

And the final painted result for two of the four animals:

Zebra and Tiger Animal Banners, MUMBO
Acrylic on Black Velour, 4'x8' each

I also completed the central portal...

Central Portal, MUMBO
Acrylic on Black Velour, 8'x8'

I have intentionally not cut the portal out (i.e. the black area is intended to be cut away to create a portal) because Trixie has requested that it stay intact until they get up to Vermont. During the workshop process, she will decide if it needs to be cut away, or simply a slit cut in the middle, or some other answer entirely...that is the beauty of the workshop process!

So, this Saturday I will be taking all of MUMBO's scenery as well as my pipe & drape up to NYC to do a "hand-off" with Trixie. Its kinda silly, but its the first time I have delivered anything theatrical to New York. It really feels like I'm doing something on Broadway! (even though I know I am not, it still feels good to pretend!)

Next week, I should have pictures from the Clarendon Mardi Gras, Follies, and Walmartopia!

THE BIG NEWS!!!!

What's the big news, you ask? Well, there's lots of it to go around. First, the new Yuri's Night website went live at:

www.outofthisworldparty.com

On the website you will find that we are adding artists and performers daily...for example we just got the Atomic Mosquitoes as our headlining band! And we have the DDP drill team anchoring our performances! So we are adding to the site daily, so check back often!

How about the gratuitous countdown clock? here it is:

57 days until Yuri's Night 2009!!!!

Now for the second bit of news...Today I can officially say that I am an awardee of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artists Fellowship Grant for 2009! So what it basically means is that I have received funds from the DCCAH to continue to do the wonderful things that I do in the arts. So, lots of things that I do in DC will be just that much more financially stable, Yuri's Night, Landless Theater, Artomatic, the Spooktacular, and many other small projects I am associated with throughout the year.
One of the things that the DCCAH requires is that I post the following statement and logo on all printed materials:

Funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
So, once again, Thank you DCCAH for partially making Between the Tines possible. If you are interested in applying for a fellowship you can reach the DCCAH here.

Speaking of Artomatic...today the dates and location for Artomatic were announced!

Artomatic 10th anniversary: Capitol Riverfront, May 29-July 5

Updated Thu, 02/12/2009 - 2:28pm

Prepare to celebrate Artomatic's 10th anniversary: The trademark, one-of-a-kind multimedia arts event will be at Half Street's 55 M Street, S.E., in Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood.

Artomatic 2009 will be held May 29 to July 5. Admission to Artomatic is always free for visitors.

Registration will begin in March and will be open to all artists — including painters, photographers, sculptors, graphic designers, musicians, poets, actors and dancers. Artomatic is an unjuried event, so all artists are welcome, from professionals to beginners.

To be notified of the date when registration will open or to stay up on other Artomatic news, sign up to receive ArtoNews, the Artomatic newsletter, on this web site.

Planning for the event is well underway. Artomatic is run entirely by participating volunteers, and new participants are sought year-round. To help make plans for our 10th anniversary, e-mail volunteer@artomatic.org.

Okay, three big news items is pretty much all my little heart can handle for one posting, so on to some smaller triumphs. I have launched into full-on production mode for Mumbo...BTW, below is the info for that show (just to prove to you that it's actually happening, and not a figment of my imagination!)

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 7:30 PM
MUMBO
Baltimore Theater Project
45 W. Preston St.
Baltimore, MD
410-752-8558
http://www.missiontix.com/ or http://www.theatreproject.org/
Price: $20


SIX SHOWS:
Wed 3/18 at 7:30
Thu 3/19 at 7:30
Fri 3/20 at 7:30 and 10:00pm
Sat 3/21 at 7:30 and 10:00pm

Presented by Little Industries, Creative Alliance and Theater Project, with funding from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts...building on two years of training at the New England Center for Circus Arts...Trixie and Monkey unveil their original evening length show: "MUMBO" Inspired by the pantheon of tragic circus elephant stories, but with a primate in place of a pachyderm. Co-starring the brilliant master of inappropriate improvisation, Bradford Scobie. With live, original music by Gato Loco- the latin-cartoon-jazz-psychedelic, NYC-based, music masterminds.

In this dark, poignantly perverse circus tale, Mumbo the Magnificent Monkey rises to fame, learning the ropes from trainer Trixie Petite. But the fate of the circus is always under the dark cloud of Monsieur Dingling, whose insatiable greed and volcanic temper threaten Trixie and Mumbo at every twist and turn. Daring feats, rampant acrobatics, incredible trapeze, shameless humor, occasional tragedy and partial nudity.

So, below are pictures of some of the progress I am making on the scenery:

Animal banner frames, cut and uncut in the shop

Detail of two banners...with the bike behind them for scale...

I anticipate that I will have the majority of the Mumbo set done by this time next week...then Trixie and Monkey will take the whole thing up to Vermont to put the finishing touches on show!

I made a "white model" of Follies for a proto-drytech this week...except it was black:

1/4"=1' white model of Follies
Foamcore, paper.

And lastly, the build for the Arlington Mardi Gras started yesterday. Rob brought in some foamcore and started working on creating giant "finger puppets" of Richard Thompson's Poor Richard's Almanac finger puppets...and I helped.

Rob Lindsay, Jared Davis and Sarah Palin

Its official: YURI'S NIGHT 2009 @ WAREHOUSE DC!!!!

That's right, you heard it here first. Yuri's Night 2009 got the official green light for April 11 @ the Warehouse Arts Complex. So polish up that space suit, cuz we are going to start the countdown clock RIGHT NOW:

64 days Until Yuri's Night 2009!!!

Over the next few weeks I will start putting promotion into high gear...and sending out a call to artists...and getting the burlesque acts together...and update/improve the website...and the bands...and the DJs...and the vodka sponsorships...and the decor....and....and...(just drop me a line if you would like to get involved in any way...)

Now on to the recent past. As promised, below are some photos from the DC Mardi Gras debutante pushing madness!

Mike, Jared, Matt and Scott...did you know we all had the same tailor?

You can see the fear in my eyes!

Psst...Scott must be drinking...he's seeing elephants!

So, there are a number of other photos posted on Facebook (which more prominently feature my lovely wife, Kirstra and Rob) but I don't want to be redundant with the ole bandwidth...lets just say that there's lots of photos of when we were waiting to go push...but precious few of the actual madness in the ballroom, because, well, we were pretty focused on staying alive AND pushing...

The other big accomplishment this week can be filed under: "ask and ye shall receive". You see, I was working on the design for Follies, and I realized that what I really needed for Act II was a large group of cherubs. But it would be a giant pain in the butt making a multitude of heavenly host in the shop. I remembered that Pentagon City Mall uses cherubs for their Christmas decor...one volley of emails and phone calls later, and they are asking me to haul away all of their cherubs, because they were throwing them away...

Six large, and four small gold cupids on the scene shop floor

Here I am demonstrating how they are going to be suspended at the theater (and demonstrating relative scale...the big ones are about 3 1/2 foot tall!)

Needless to say, I am incorporating them into the second rounds of design for follies:

Follies Act I second sketch
Pencil and Photoshop, 1/8"=1'

Follies Floorplan
Vectorworks, 1/8"=1'

Follies Act II second sketch
Pencil and Photoshop, 1/8"=1'

This next week I am going to "come to Jesus" on the final designs for follies...paint 90% of MUMBO...and have first production meetings for Yuri's Night and WALMARTOPIA...