Ballroom Boxing progress and Imagination Stage Open House Carpentry

Ive spent this past week building scenery for the Imagination Stage Open House on September 10th. I am at the carpentry stage right now, which is always a bit of a slog for me...I've often said that "I hate carpentry, but its what holds up the paint"...

Rapunzel's Castle

 I have tried to build the entire open house out of recycled/repurposed materials. For example, the door in the center of Rapunzel's Castle was salvaged from the Wind in the Willows set strike. I've cut a door in the top left panel of the door for the Rapunzel puppet to be operated from.

Narnia Wardrobe

The Wind in the Willows door has yielded two re-purposings...the back of the door became the split doors of the wardrobe for the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. I will be building the rest of the show this week, so you should have a full accounting of the show by the next blog post (two shows down, three to go!)

The week, of course, was punctuated by the arrival of hurricane Irene on Saturday. Fortunately we got through it with minimal damage. In fact, the only thing that really seemed to be damaged was our BBQ grill, which fell off of our new backyard deck.

During the Hurricane I was able to make some more progress on Ballroom Boxing...

The background changed a good bit...I decided that I wanted to go with a softer, looser background in order to keep the focus on the ring at center. A couple of days after Irene, I started to block in the main characters again, and started making some decisions about lighting....

I've started adding some of the audience members (particularly the Robot) My intent has been to populate the audience with a rouges gallery of characters, but KT is particularly adamant that they all remain monkeys...I'd be interested in hearing what you think...on the one hand I can see the value of making it consistent parallel monkey universe (a "planet of the apes" if you will) but on the other hand, there is something so awesome about this fight night that I don't want anyone to feel left out...

Lastly, I am designing a small set piece for this Fall's Hope Operas Of course, its a pile of poop. Ah, showbiz!