I’m done with school for the semester - yayyyyy. Happy to be through with that and now I’m spending most of my time doing the research for the summer shows in a lazy boy with dogs draped over me. It’s also that delightful period in the semester where students develop localized amnesia regarding the attendance policy that they get warned about every four minutes. Yeesh. Seriously - pretty much the only way you can fail my class it to NOT SHOW UP. Which some people seem to take as a challenge. The good news is that on the illustrious ‘rate my professor.com’ i am listed as a five out of five. However, the site also allows students to grant professors a red chill pepper rating if they are considered ‘hot’. I am currently red pepper-less. Although, i don’t really like red peppers…so maybe it was consideration on their part.
We went on our little field trip to Indianapolis to see Will, our summer tenor, in The Music Man. He’s the one on the right that looks kind of like Richie Cunningham. Who, believe it or not, Rich was actually named after. I would like to thank Janice for not sticking me with a dude named Opie.
He was great - and it’ll be fun to have a boy in the cast who can kick over his head. Of course, that probably means beverages will go flying into the audience from the front tables…but as long as it does it during ‘Raindrops are falling on my head” we’ll call it an artistic choice.
It was actually really nice because we’ve actually never met Will. He auditioned and did his callback for us over Skype… so though we’ve spent a lot of time viewing him over a laptop screen - he really had no concrete proof that we actually existed. We saw the show, went to lunch after, and then apparently he promptly went him and stood on a belt, driving the spike of the belt buckle through his foot. He’s ok, but apparently that night he had quite the shi-boo boo-pi.
Rich, Janice and Bob over the past two weekends have made some great progress giving the actor’s house (Peckerwood as we call it) some TLC. Basically the plan is to replace all the fixtures in the bathroom, put in a new kitchen ceiling, and spruce up the bedroom that is next to the bathroom. The bathroom, for some ungodly reason, we decided to paint a dark grey… and since there are no windows (well there WAS a window, but it had been previously boarded over) it was dark and a kind of depressing. It needs a new shower stall as well, and since it was one of the only sections of the first floor that we didn’t redo the first summer, Rich decided we should just gut it. I wholeheartedly approve.
SHOWER COMIN’ OUT
SHOWER GONE
Apparently tearing all the old stuff out was not fun…
And as they were doing it they realized that the exterior wall had suffered some water damage behind the shower… so the outside section needed to come out too. So… clean slate time. They had intended on putting a new vent… and certainly this takes care of any ventilation needs So they had to carefully excise the exterior siding so that i could be re-attached once the interior guts were freshened up.
IN GOES THE NEW WALL…
I’d really never seen the OUTSIDE of house not…y’know… be there anymore. It’s kind of amazing how little there really is to a house. I mean - once the siding is gone it’s pretty much wood slats, insulation and then helllloooooo your inside. Rich realized that as all this was coming out they could actually extend the bathroom a little bit and, at the same time, build a closet into the adjacent bedroom (which was closet-less because we had converted it into a bedroom the second summer.
So - before they called it a day, they figured it would be worthwhile to, y’know, seal up the house…
The studs separating the bathroom and the bedroom came out (once they had supported the ceiling properly with new 2×4s and now Rich is gonna spend the evening figuring out the exact new bathroom layout.
The crummy old panelling in the bedroom is all stripped down now, as are the old ceiling tile. So Rich can add new insulation, which will everything that much warmer in those cold months. Once that is done, that bedroom will get all new drywall and a new door (it had a sliding door, which we all kind of hated).
So here’s where things are…
LIke I mentioned last time, rather than use all our remaining funds (until the summer shows) on a project that’s only gonna give us 2 days of progress (the last wall in the auditorium), it made a lot more sense to use the money towards making some real improvements in the living space for the company. The housing was totally fine - but having worked with so many casts now and having learned how they use the space and what the advantages and disadvantages are… it’s gonna make everything that much more comfy.
Tomorrow Rich and I are going out onto the marguee to look at the Huntington sign. Plan is to pressure wash it, open it up and see what we can do with that puppy. I’m kind of excited about it. Although i think there are going to be some seriously pissed off pigeons.
in other news, i’ve discovered that charlie is actually Tim Burton’s frankweenie…
Welllllll…
Apparently Rich was jealous of Beth getting all the attention.
See the tile on the outside of the building has been kind of a huge pain in our butt since we got here. It’s substantially damaged and cracked. The problem is that it’s an art deco glass tile in these huge slabs that no one… no one… no one makes any more. We’ve contacted numerous specialists over the past four years and one guy even came out who salvages this stuff from other deco buildings. And we were S.O.L. The center of the building (with the fun curvy things) is metal… not the tile… so that’s not a problem. It’s the sides. Beneath that - the original 1904 facade is brick.
Recently the tile has been getting worse. The winter really took it’s toll on the stuff and there was a section that looked like it was in danger of coming loose. Ok… it was eventually GONNA come loose - it was a question of when. So Rich has talked to some people about getting quotes for a new brick facade, since there doesn’t seem to be much of a choice (yayyyy… more money we don’t have… yayyyyy). And on Sunday Rich and Bob drove the genie lift outside and went up to dislodge the precarious section of tile.
They, sensibly, decided to work from the upper most point of concern down… so that nothing would tumble down. Well.. it was good in theory. Apparently there were several more tiles above in the column that were also loose, and as they went to remove them, Rich basically got brained. Admittedly he has a very large head - so it’s an easy target. I was actually driving in the parking lot across the street so i had a really good view.
This is where you ask ‘were they wearing hard hats. I mean…after all… Beth got bonked earlier this week, so naturally they would be wearing hard hats.’ Of course. Wellllll… since they were working above the area they thought was troublesome, they didn’t. And a couple tiles basically slid onto the Pack Leader’s head. He also went to protect his head with this arm… so his shoulder got whacked too. These tiles were actually way heavier than any of us had anticipated. They are like 1×2 foot…but they are like an inch and a half thick… concrete… and heavy.
So Rich got whacked.. all the loose tile had tumbled INTO the genie lift base, and Janice and I had to clear it out before the lift could come back down. We looked at Rich’s head and my clinical analysis was “You’ve been hit in the head by a concrete tile. I’m no medical expert, but all that red stuff is probably not strawberry syrup”.
So… off the to the emergency room we went.
Bob the Brave, stayed behind with Janice and removed all of the rest of the material that might still be a hazard to anyone. Here’s how it went at the hospital.
Check in person: Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Rich: Yes:
Registration person: Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Rich: Yes.
Nurse: Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Rich: Yes
Nurse Two: Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Rich: Yes
Doctor: Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Rich: Yes
Dude next to us who has been in a coma since 1964: I’m awake! Have you had a tetnus shot recently?
Hey, at least they’re thorough! Either that or they have a batch of tetnus shots that expires next week.
His shoulder was actually hurting quite a bit worse than the gash in his head. And the problem is that Rich has a HUGE tolerance for pain. (Exhibit a… he lives with me). So when they ask him if he’s in pain or he needs anything for pain he’s always like… “no… this wolverine just gnawed my arm off…but i’m ok”. So I’m interrupting every four seconds saying “Yes. He’s in pain.” I mean seriously.. he once had a tooth removed without aneathstetic.
I was REALLY worried he was gonna need a cast…cuz let’s face it. That slows things down a little! But, luckily it wasn’t broken and the arm started to feel a lot better. His brain was carefully examined…
YUP… EMPTY
And then he got seven fun staples in his head. Apparently having your head stapled DOES hurt. Go figure.
He also had some fun strawberry blonde highlights there for a while.
Anyway - he’s fine. I had to wake him up every two hours to make sure he wasn’t dead. I would poke him and say “are you dead?”. He would say “No”. Which I took as a good sign.
He’s feeling much better today and…
has not taken a single pain killer.
Yeesh.
I’m just about done with teaching this semester - next week is the last week of classes. Yeehaw. I’m ready to be done. One of my students asked a question this week.. “Um… it says that the play this sunday is going to be signed for the hearing impaired. Are the actors still going to talk?”.
Oy.
I’m excited cuz we get to go see one of our summer cast members in a show next week. That’s a first. Will, our summer tenor is playing one of the leads in the Music Man in Indianapolis, so we’re makin the drive up to see him. I have a feeling after spending six months of last year working on the same show my lips may be moving during some of the songs… but it is always fun to see how different productions tackle classic material. And, since Will is playing a dance track, I’m kind of excited to see him leaping around.
Last week Rich and I went to Shipshewana for the first time. It’s Indiana Amish Country. I’ve never been to Amish country anywhere - so I was pretty excited. I was like… Look a buggy…look a buggy…look a buggy…look a buggy.It was a one-day kind of meet and greet for tour operators in the NE Indiana area. It’s like uber-speed dating. The operators basically travel in a line from table to table, and your on a vocal loop doing a forty five second schpeel for them before they move on to the next table. Pretty quickly, if you’re not careful, you could start to feel like you are an audioanimatronic robot at Disney World. “Great Moments with Mr. Najuch”. Rich kept saying to me “you need to relax and just slow down”… which of course is like telling Po, when she discovers a bag of twirlers, to only have 80 of them.
Our favorite encounter was with one lady named Princess. She informed us that she was so glad she’d run into us because she was thinking about becoming a singer and she wanted to give us our business card….
I really, really, really want to drive to Hammond Indiana JUST so I can stop by and actually CASH IN on the Princess Hook up. Cuz girl, we all know i be lookin’ all kinds of fierce with my hair scrunched.
The best part of our little excursion was we got to eat there. It was held at a place called The Bluegate, which is like super famous as the Amish-Eat-Yourself-To-Death not to miss stop. It was all served family style… and it was…seriously… insane. I don’t know what they put in the Meatloaf but it was like the best I’ve ever had in my life. The whole meal was like an avalanche of carbs. “Hold on… you need potatoes…hold on you need stuffing… wait… did you get bread… wait… how bout noodles”. Seriously. And ham, and fried chicken… it was nuts. And then pie. OMG. I am so glad I live 2 hours away because honestly, I would need to get Rich to have the restaurant put a restraining order on me.
I have a former student who works there and he’s gonna try and hook me up with the meatloaf recipe… I’m assuming it involves 3 sticks of butter, 2 pounds of sugar, pixie dust and crack.
This week Ryan, Beth and Chris helped us get the header supports up over the proscenium arch. It only took one night - but because the room, of COURSE, isn’t square, we had a few challenges keeping all of the upper sections plumb. You might remember that the floor not only dips, BUT the side walls of the auditorium also lean out slightly. So that made things super fun. it’ll take a couple hours of tinkering - but nudging here and there is a whole lot easier than cutting and initial installation. We’ve cut so many studs at this point that we had to get a new blade for the circa saw…. we didn’t realize but seriously the one we were using has been worn down about 2 full inches from it’s original size!
It was my first journey up to the top of the scaffolding. I was not a happy camper for the first hour… but I think I’ve become accustomed to it. I’ve learned not to eat right before going up there. It’s not the fear of heights.. it’s that the scaffolding has a gentle rocking motion - not all that scary - maybe just a half an inch side to side… but it feels (to me) exactly like being on a boat and I started to feel pretty seasick. Who knew I’d covet dramamine in a theater! Going up and down is the ookey part - but I’m getting the hang of it. The scaffolding is pretty great stuff - you certainly don’t feel like you’re going anywhere.
BEAM. ME UP
So - although it still needs some futzing…here’s the full proscenium arch all studded out. It’s PRETTY cool, kids.
And, one final note, I would like to personally thank everyone for texting Ryan and calling him Hot Lips… it’s the little victories in life, ain’t it?
Last weekend Rich and Bob continued to spend hours and hours removing the sections of the giant duct work where they needed to be able to run the proscenium wall. This job was pretty darn awful. Basically they were chop out giant chunks of plaster which would then plummet to the floor and shatter into a zillion pieces. It was apparently really dirty and pretty gross (cuz inside the duct area was basically 100 years worth of grody.
Here you can see a giant chunk of the mesh waiting to be snipped out:
The shattering plaster then created giant dust clouds. Let me put it this way… when I was like 8 years old my best friend David decided it would be really fun to dump an entire bottle of baby powder along the upper face of the fins of his bedroom ceiling fan. He then turned the fan on and said to his mother - ‘hey it’s snowing in my bedroom’. THIS involved more dust floating around. Seriously. The worst part of it is that all of the plasterwork up there is held together with that awful mesh of death - so rich’s arms got all scraped up (sleeves?? what are sleeves??) and it just took FOREVER. By the end of each day they were completely toast. But - they got it done!! To give you an idea of the amount of debris they took out, our big industrial dumpster has been filled twice to the point of it’s weight capacity. All the rubble gets carried out in 5 gallon buckets. The clean up, getting the rubble in to the buckets, and lugging it to the dumpster is not fun. It’s like some kind of challenge they would give people on the biggest loser.
It also had to be cut out cleanly because the duct work needs to tie in to the new wall and butt up against it. Which - when you’re ripping out giant pieces of plaster that like to crack using a saws-all… ain’t easy. There’s gonna be some fun fill in plaster work… but considering what a beast of a task it was…they did great.
The materials for the front wall arrived so this weekend we went at it. Honestly it was kind of surreal to watch. This wall, by far, is the most substantial change to the room and watching it come together was pretty extraordinary.
First Chris and Rich had to get the metal top channel run along the wooden beam (where Rich and Bob had cut the access channel). They had managed to cut the channel RIGHT along a main support beam… which was simultaneously brilliant Pack Leader planning, and still a pretty big ol’ helping of logistical luck. The beam is pretty neat - it’s the giant piece of laminated 2×12’s all pieced together to create this huge old wooden support. Because it’s laminated that meant Rich and Chris could follow the line of the laminated sections pretty accurately across the span of the entire room to make keep the guide rail running straight.
Then they had to drop a plumb line down 33 feet so that Beth could mark the corresponding place on the floor to run the lower guide track. Then Rich pulled out the plans and marked on the floor where there had to be gaps along the base rail (for fire exit doors, a service hallway, and, of course, the big old proscenium itself). Then wooden 2×4s were cut to the appropriate sizes and we used the WHACK BANG (remember the thing that hammers in spikes using a bullet charge??) to secure the 2×4 into the concrete floor. One whack bang about every 2 feet. We hit a snag, however… because there was one point against the wall where we only had a piece of wood about 6 inches long. That’s because along the wall that is shared with the restaurant we have to add in a 3 foot service hallway. So along that wall it’s basically one support stud, then a 3 foot doorway, then the wall the audience will actually see. But every time Rich tried to WHACK BANG this little piece of wood it would shatter along the grain. They tried like six times.. and THEN… THEN ladies and gentleman, Jo Jo actually had a mechanically brilliant construction idea. No… really. Read that again… over and over cuz we all know it’s kind of a miracle. I suggested we cut a much longer length of 2×4, butt it against the wall, whack bang it where needed, and THEN trim the longer piece off. This was tricky - cuz Rich had to set the circular saw to run JUSSSTT above the concrete and then chisel out the last 1/16 of an inch…but it worked. Woot.
Ok. So ceiling channel in. Wood runner below. Then the pieces of floor guide runner were cut to fit and attached on top of the 2×4’s secured to the concrete. So we have a top and a bottom guide rail. Believe it or not - that’s the most time consuming part. That took like four hours. It’s finicky, things don’t want to co-operate, and it has to be perfectly lined up or you have a 32′ foot wall that leans.
RAPUNZEL RAPUNZEL LET DOWN YOUR BUCKET TO ME.
The studs go in amazingly quickly - considering that you have to take a measurement for each one (with a tape Rich holds up to the top rail and Beth will hold along the bottom rail. Then Ryan and I measure each stud and cut it to that size, and THEN it gets installed. You remember that cutting the beams on the circular saw creates a 4th of July bucket of sparks… and during the process on Friday night Ryan was leaning in a little to close as he was cutting and said “i just burned my mouth”. Within about four nano-seconds I had christened him the nickname “Hot Lips” which is now his construction name for all eternity. So, please, should you see him on the street, feel free to address him as such. He will be delighted.
HOT LIPS IN HARD HAT
So we started with the studs on the left side of the hopefully-soon-to-be proscenium arch.
And by the ending we had most of the studs on that side installed - except for the area for the fire door - which involved a little more consideration. Down below, installing the studs actually went quicker than the first wall because you can access this wall from both sides to screw in and secure the studs. For the ones on the top rail, Chris had to climb into the theater attic above, monkey climb across the beams and screw them in from up there. So Rich was lining them up and securing from the scaffolding and Chris was above him in the ceiling. Because the beams don’t sway at all like the scaffolding does (it sways a lot more apparently at 32′ feet than it did at 25′) Chris says he actually PREFERS being up in the rafters. Having been up on those beams I’m not sure I second that opinion - but he may be right. Chris did say “wow - this is going so smoothly” and five minutes later we had our first auditorium related boo-boo. While installing one of the studs a chunk of the ceiling plaster got banged as the stud was being secured in at the top. And it came down. And WHACK BANGED Beth’s head. It was about the size of a paper back book - so Chris actually got to prove his long-held theory that Beth can be hard-headed. She had a big ol’ goose egg above her eye - but it could have been a lot worse. Rich and I were worried she might have a black eye the next morning - but other than a little tiny cut (actually caused from the frame of the safety glasses when they were whacked by the debris) - she’s good as new.
And, we are considering getting her a t shirt that says “I came to the New Huntington and got plastered”.
BETH HOKE - PROUD MEMBER OF THE (FROZEN) PEAS CORP.
At the start of Saturday (weekend whirlwind day 2), they began by finishing up the left side - installing the horizontal header for the fire exit doorway and the beams above it. This was the first time they created a door frame with the metal studs, and I thought it looked super cool.
You can see it a little better here:
I took a quick little video to show how quickly we were getting the studs up. The ones above the door actually have to be lifted up to the person in the scaffolding - luckily Ryan is a strong feller.
Then we started on the other side which was pretty much the same story - except Beth didn’t get brained.
Ryan, Beth, Chris, Rich and I worked until about 10pm Friday and Saturday. Ryan had to take off Sunday afternoon, so it was a little bit of a fun race against the clock to see if we could get the second wall completed before our beam lifter had to lift-off. We did it.
Rich made it very, very clear that once we decided the height of that arch, it was gonna stay there. It doesn’t sound ilke a huge deal - but it kind of is. I grew up in Bermuda working in a theater that I loved - but the proscenium was really shorter than is ideal. You want to be able to have 2 story sets…(the sound of music sucks if you can’t see the kids at the the top of the stairs!) and have a clear eye line from balcony. But every inch you go higher - means you have less room above it to raise scenery in and out. So, to make sure - I took a picture on Sunday night of the side walls in place, and Chris and Ryan ran a rope for me along the height of the stage. I went into photoshop and did a REALLY rough scale test (using the height of the stage (four feet) and the side doors (seven feet) as a guide.
The white lines indicate four foot increments.
So - eighteen feet seemed pretty good. BTW the proscenium design is now different - but I used the old plan to give me a quick idea.
And then, despite the fact that we had driven the Hoke’s to exhaustion, they were still up for trying to install THE HEADER.
So the plan was - this header spanned 28 feet (the opening of the proscenium). According to the instructions from the manufacturer it was supposed to be held in place simply by the screwed in clip brackets. But Rich and Chris both felt that this it wouldn’t be bad to give it some extra security. We had get one of the 28 beam sections lined up against the opening. Measure out that exact width and then plan on running 2 vertical studs against each other - one of with only went to the height of the opening - so that the beam would also rest on the top of a stud on each side (kind of like creating the shape of the symbol for pii). Since those studs are only like 2 inches thick - the measurement couldn’t be off - because then in order to secure the beam the side studs would have to bow in to secure them - and the walls would look like something out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory! Because the concrete floor also, as you may recall, bows in the center of the room - there was an additional challenge. In order to facilitate the service hallway (for all the servers) from the kitchen, there is that 3′ corridor that’s being incorporated into the side of the room. So the proscenium actually does not sit in the exact center of the EXISTING room. And since the floor BOWS… that means that the two vertical studs that the beam sits on were not NECESSARILY going to be the same height. So Rich took the laser level up the scaffolding and figured out the spot that would make the beam run level. So - 2 studs in each side. Ready for beam. Yikes.
The beam is actually composed of four sections that piece together to make a long rectangular tube. When we started I only thought that ONE of these sections was the beam, and I was like “oh - no prob - four of us can lift that”. Yah - well multiply that by four. Here was the plan. Get the genie lift in the middle of the gap. Assemble the beam ON TOP of the genie lift - (because once it was together there was no way it could be lifted) and then hoist the thing up with the genie into position and secure it. As we assembled the beam it became more and more evident that this was one heavy giant big ol scary piece of metal. It was a girder. This thing was big enough to crush Donald Trumps ego. Assembling it was tricky enough because each section had to be screwed together every foot - and driving the metal screws nearly beat Rich and Chris to a pulp. It took a lot of strength - towards the end I was helping by pushing on the of the drill as well… and it still was a heck of a work out.
I was positioned in the genie left with the beam. Beth would go to one end, Rich or Chris to the other to stabilize, and then they would take turns driving in the screws. By the time it was together Chris figured it easily weighed about 1,300 pounds.
This was not something you wanted to drop.
It was also something that had to be positioned on a five foot wide beam. And we only had one set of scaffolding.
So…
Rich went in the genie left to take the thing up. We did a test run - and indeed, the genie, which has a bearing load of 3,000 pounds apparently, was able to hoist it up into the air. We had it strapped to the left on each side so that it wasn’t going to slide anywhere but could still be nudged. As much as you can nudge 1,300 pounds. The trick with the genie lift is that the controls aren’t exact to the inch… When you press the control to go up or down it’s gonna go about six inches minimum. So lining it would be tricky. The genie would also function as a center support while the beam was being put in place - So Rich needed to be able to line it up dead on at 22 feet 6 inches (the stage heigh is four feet - the arch is 18 feet up from the stage, plus six inches for molding and dry wall. Chris would go to one end up the scaffolding, the beam would go up, and he would secure that side. Then Beth, Chris and I would as quickly and safely as possible move the scaffolding over to the other side. Chris would line up the beam, Rich would lower the lift a bit so that the beam would sit in position, and Chris would secure the second side.
And I would poop my pants. Seriously this was scary. Not because they hadn’t planned out - but it was pretty scary.
BEAM READY TO GO UP
READY TO GO UP
BEAM BEING SECURED
SECURING SECOND END
LOOK - A BEAM
I videotaped the first side of it - and then I was too busy being scared and helping move the scaffolding…but it’s pretty amazing.
Rich is on the genie, and you can see Chris over on the scaffolding on the left side.
WATCH IT GO UP
I know - you just pooped your pants too, right?
But they did it. After it was done (and it was a tense 10 minutes) and it was totally secured, we just kind of sat there staring at it.
Largely grateful that it didn’t land on Beth’s head.
Seriously - it’s incredible. it’s the first time I’ve been able to look in the space and see exactly where backstage would be. Where the wing space was. Where the audience sight lines were. Where the relationship of the balcony to the stage would be (much, much improved). It’s really exciting, and also makes your brain kind of overload - because you suddenly begin to process and adjust a lot of things because you finally see them in three dimensions. I hope to have a lot more problems like in the next few months.
We’re in a kind of an in-between stage at the moment - but a lot of stuff has been goin’ on.
Rich finished up all the horizontal bracing for the studs in the first wall…
Each time a horizontal run crosses a vertical, those runners get three screws. So if you think about there being 3 horizontals along the height of the stud to the ceiling - it’s a LOT of screws! It’s repetitious jobs like that which drive me mental…. I don’t know how Rich does that kind of thing. I guess it’s why I was never suited to a ‘normal’ routine job… cuz I’d lose my marbles!
WALLLLLLL-EEEEEEE.
After all those hundreds of little screws were in place, the building inspector, Shad, came and checked out wall #1. Intelligently, Rich thought it might be a good idea not to order eight gazillion dollars worth of materials for walls #2 and 3 IF for some reason there was any issue with the overall plan. So the inspector came in and said everything was ‘hunky dory’. Ok - he may not have said ‘hunky dory’ - but it was the technical equivalent. Yippee.
So - that means Rich took another bucket of measurements and made lots of little charts that no one but Rich can understand, and he’s placed the next order. Money-wise that’s gonna sit things pretty tight up until the summer shows… but that’s why you want to buy season tickets, right now, doncha? Cuz you want us to finish this mother. So, in about a week even TALLER studs will arrive for the center and side walls… We’re gonna do the center one first - the one that frames out the proscenium. And the header which will run along the top of the proscenium was actually quite a bit more economic than Rich imagined - so that’s great.
Chris and Rich did some exploratory poking in the ceiling and crawled around up in the…um… giant cavernous crawl space of death above the auditorium ceiling. And - by some bizarre miracle of ‘this never happens to us’-ness, there is a giant ol’ beam RIGHT above where the proscenium wall needs to tie in. Rich had calculated it so he knew it would be near by - but it worked out practically spot on - which makes things a heap easier. Apparently.
He’s cleared even MORE stuff out of the auditorium so it’s really pretty open now for the scaffolding to move around. It has to be to be able to span the front wall length. While Rich was working on all that stuff I began to experiment with the paint treatment for the marble that is going to run all the way round the auditorium about four foot high. I used to be pretty good at scene painting marble (cuz of the ol’ masters in set design) - but it had been a good 10 years since I needed to try it out. I also had never done one that was going to be viewed from a few inches away - rather than 20 feet. Plus, I had never done one to try and match an architectural color scheme. So I did a whole lot of on-line research and found various blues and browns and blacks that might work. I eventually settled on trying to recreate a kind of black/brown marble. So I went to Lowe’s and did Rich’s favorite, favorite thing. I stared at a wall of paint for about an hour immobilized. Walls of paint can be very intimidating. See - when you are doing stuff for a show, you can kind of take a bunch of different colors and kind of mix like your futzing around in a kitchen. When you need to paint 60 feet of identical looking marble - it means you can’t mix it to sight. Because you’ll never reproduce the colors exactly. So I have to pick existing paint colors and work with those.
So I spent about 200 bucks on experiment paint… which sucks to have to do… but there wasn’t much of a way around it. I brought home about seven different quarts of colors. Including pure black and white. And then, after basing a sample piece of 1/4″ ply with black, I started to play. Painting marble, the way I learned, is about the wettest thing in the world. You work with paint about the consistency of skim milk and just slosh your way like a three year old making puddles. And then you let it dry. Then you slosh. Then it dries… so it takes a while because of the stages. Doing each stage is actually not that time consuming - except for doing the veining. Anyway - when the time comes to do all of these for real I’ll probably do a little time elapse video for you. The real snafoo I hit came from the rake of the floor… I thought it would be slight enough that things might not drip… but when I do the real ones we definitely need to build me some kind of a level surface to puddle on (cuz the spatter slides slightly in the direction of the floor otherwise). What’s so funny about painting marble is that it’s a very additive process which involves glazes - so the colors you start with are NOT the colors you end up with in the final product (which is why it’s freakin’ hard to choose the colors you need!). But Rich kept watching me do it - and after every stage he’d be like…”I thought it looked weird… but it looks better”. Pretty much every new layer “I thought it looked weird…but it looks better”!
I knew that a lot of faux artists use feathers for marble veins - but scenic artists (because the stuff is viewed from a distance) don’t normally do it smaller than a 1/4 inch brush… But this was a lot closer detail work…so i tried it. OMG I love the way it works… when the paint is thin enough the veins just kind of naturally branch and scatter as you spin the feather. It’s so much faster and looks less ‘painted’. So the final part of the experiment was the last tinted glaze - and I knew that the marble wanted to either look primarily black or primarily brown. So I just glazed over half the 4×8 piece with both options. The brown looked really muddy and kind of fake. The black glaze looked really nice - and Rich loved it. So - done. I thought I might start painting this stuff soon-ish because it’s gonna take a while… and just stockpile it. But because they need the space for running the scaffolding and because there’s a lot of dust at the moment, it doesn’t make sense. But I’ve made notes and I’m ready to go when the time comes.
This picture is actually during the second to last phase… before the last glaze goes on (which deadens the brightness of the white lines and gives it more sheen and depth).
I also did a rendering of what we think the final proscenium patterns will be.
The black at the side would be the opening of the stage. I created the pattern for that new maze-like moulding and we ran it through the machine. It looks really nice. I just have to create that diamond/circle runner and Rich can actually start making real lengths of the stuff. The layers of the fish scale stuff will sort of step downward so the part closest to the audience is the stuff on the left and then as it moves towards center stage it staggers back on each level - which should give a nice sense of depth. Then the inside return edge will be the maze patter surrounded by diamond runner on each side. Kind of excited about it. Still need to work out the sort of base plinth detail and adjust the very center keystone - but this is the bulk of the brain power taken care of!
There was a nice little article about me doing the Shakespeare project in the high schools…
And in other educational news - one of my university students decided to take this somewhat hilarious photograph of me, supposedly ‘TEACHING’.
My only guess is that I am demonstrating how to portray a very camp version of Puxotawny Phil in the musical version of ‘Groundhog Day’.
We also did our annual gig hosting Miss Huntington. And I’m kind of excited because the winner this year has a really, really nice voice. Rich and I were both very impressed. What I am not impressed about is this is our fourth year hosting, and still… no sash…no tiara…not even so much as a scepter. SERRRIOUSLY.
During the dress rehearsal one of the practice interview questions that they asked a contestant was “What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given”. I was very, very glad that I wasn’t a contestant because the first thing that popped into my mind is the age-old Najuch mantra:
“Never eat seafood in a land-locked state”.
Which probably would not have won me a crown. Unless I wanted to be Miss Maine.
While we’re waiting for the new studs to arrive (fill in your punchline here)… Rich and Bob have been excavating the sections of the ceiling curves (I don’t know how else to describe it) that used to house the original heat ducts. Basically they need to get the sides of the room to the same height as the center of the room so they can run the headers. I’m amazed at how much they’ve done - but it is super messy. It’s like a plaster blizzard in there. The nice thing is - that the stuff behind the new proscenium comes out pretty cleanly - which means we can eventually gain space above the stage to bring more things in and out.
So the nearest edge in this picture is where the new proscenium wall will start:
And here’s a shot from the other side…
I’m sorry those pics aren’t clearer - it’s hard with all the dust and so little light in there. Rich is going to try and rig up some additional work light so that the camera can document things a little more easily… with the poor little flash trying to fill in over a distance of 30-some feet - it’s a losing battle!
All righty -
that’s enough to keep ya happy, I hope.
I’ll tell you all about casting stuff soon…. I’m excited.
Jo Jo.
