Accident

Ari & Maya

Maya is my lighting understudy in case I can't make it through tech.

At Texas Roadhouse

UCONN

My tech table for galileo

The pumpkin Mark carved for me.

One of my projects.

I have been getting more and more interested in LED projects. I think they will be incredibly important and valuable to my career. Greg Purnell took a picture of one of my projects that I have stolen. I will try to take some video so you can all enjoy the effects it does. It is a 3d cube that goes through several effects. I didn't invent it, I made it from instructions I found at my favorite hobby site Instructables.com. I made some very minor modifications, nothing too significant.

Behind it is my phone headset that I have installed a bluetooth into, so i have a hand held hands free headset.

No, Andrea: "Unhappy is the land that needs a hero."

I am sitting in rehearsal for Galileo. It is amazing how much easier it is to get my own creative juices flowing when I see other people using theirs. I have spent all of today trying to spiritually and emotionally find myself in this show. Up to this point I have been too intellectually involved. I have been causing my own problems. Finding emotion in a piece is sometimes difficult. I do, however, feel incredibly blessed to have found a profession where making emotional and instinctual decisions is often the preferred method. This is what makes art so meaningful. It is not about reaching out to touch others, but reaching in and using what touches me. I can only make it of any value if I do it this way. If I reach to affect others I will miss. It seems to me that most people have experiences that relate to each other. Hopefully what affects me will touch others. I have had a lot of insight into myself over the last 2 weeks, much of it has been a trial by fire.

I am finding time to meet some new people. I have been participating in activities in the Providence, RI Stake. I live literally 2 miles from the boundary of the Hartford and Providence stakes (a big deal with stakes this big.) I have been meeting more lds members at UCONN.

It has been incredibly sad about the recent murder on campus here. It is the first instance of this on this campus ever. It is such a beautiful campus, surrounded by trees, and full of talented and powerful people. I am glad they have made charges in the crime, it puts the mind at rest.

ummm, maybe I shouldn't admit this

I started watching Glee the other night. A couple of episodes in the students try to hire an evil choreographer. He is a short unattractive guy. I immediately recognized him as Whit Hertford, an acting graduate from the University of Utah. I worked on a show or two that he was in while I was at the U. It is crazy how small the world is getting.

Okay

It's been a long time. There is a lot I need to catch up on, but now it is late. I wanted to get started short with a couple of fun things. One is a video I made for a promo, not bad for my first video. It is for our school's next show.

www.youtube.com/CTRepertoryTheatre

The other is an awesome website. I think many of you will enjoy this one.

People of Walmart

Enjoy!

Hopefully more will come soon.

I broke a wing...but the show went on.

Today was possibly to toughest opening night I have ever been through. I was up the night before until 3 fixing focus notes and rewriting some cues. I woke up yesterday morning with a cold. I felt horrible. My head was so heavy I thought I would tip over. I couldn't sleep in, however, because my primary console stopped booting up the day before, so I needed to get on the phone early with tech support to work it out. I didn't want to run opening night without a backup console running. I did get the console fixed in the morning, the memory needed to be reseated. The rest of the day went hot and humid, and I got some last minute things done, but was for the most part ready to go. About an hour and a half before showtime a massive thunderstorm blows in out of nowhere. We were having a hard time tracking it because the internet we were on was proving to be very unreliable. Our best guess was that we would be able to do the show, if we started late. We had to drop part of the tarp covering front of house because the rain was blowing at an angle. When the worst of the storm had blown over we decided to get the show rolling. It was about 9pm. The pageant president, President Renouf, got up on the stage to start the introduction. I couldn't put the followspot operators in the towers because there was still lightning in the area. I had prerecorded some submasters with stage areas to cover for such a problem. I looked down at the fader wing to orient myself to the subs, but it was dead. I restarted the console, but nothing. Now I was a little stressed, the show was starting, and I couldn't cover for the spots. After trying a little percussive maintenance I decided to run to the truck and see if I could find a backup wing. I believed I had heard we had one. I found it and ran clumsily with an awkward box back to front of house. I didn't dare plug the new wing in while the console was on, I don't know how that would work, and I couldn't afford another dead wing. I shut the console off again, plugged in the wing, turned it on and crossed my fingers. I was pleased to find that the wing booted up and worked. I was just trying to buy time until I could get the spots up into their towers. The lightning persisted until about half way through the show. A while after the last strike the sky suddenly went calm, and it seemed clear that the storm was done for now. I sent the spots up and made it through the rest of the show successfully. By the time the show was over I was exhausted. I came home and stumbled to bed. Thank goodness I got to sleep in this morning.

Well, here's an interesting update...The reason we couldn't get the weather was because North Korea conveniently decided to attack government web sites this week. Thanks for adding to the fun...

Hitler

I know it is a little late for this, but I just stumbled across this video of Hitler's anger at last year's football championship.

A sad day for theatre.

Yesterday I went to the retirement party for Peter Willardson who was my lighting advisor at the U. His training is the reason I got into UCONN, and any success I have in the future will be traced back to the interest he took in my career. It is a sad day that no future lighting designers will have Pete to train them. I am happy for him, he has been ready to retire for a long time. There is a hole in the entertainment industry that will never be filled.