I saw a some really neat ways of making play posters shine this past weekend at the Indiana Thespian Conference. The conference took place at Huntington University’s arts centre and the hallways were lined with posters from past shows.

I noticed something a little different about these posters, however. Some of them had a three-dimensional quality to them, such as this poster for Godspell:

My photo really doesn’t does it justice, but the poster really popped and caught my eye.

Here’s a shot showing how this effect is achieved:

Basically it involves cannibalizing another poster, choosing which elements should be three-dimensional (the collage of people in this case), cutting them out, and mounting them with a little bit of foam core.

Here’s another example:

Other posters were framed to reflect the theme of the show. This Little Shop of Horrors poster had bite marks in the matting:

Some old records sat in the frame of this poster for The Glass Menagerie:

Rose petals adorned this Beauty and the Beast poster:

Pebbles continue the image in this Waiting for Godot poster:

Various sundry “Shakespearean” items in this frame for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged):

I love how much thought has gone into the framing of these posters. This is a lovely way of making your keepsake show posters come alive.

Came across this post over at Shakespeare Geek about a different approach to the end of Romeo and Juliet.

….has anybody ever done an ending to this play where the Prince still gets to give his speech, but rather than the statue building stuff, the two families turn their backs on each other and the grudge continues?

I rather like this idea. I am a huge Shakespeare fan but I’ve never been fond of the “hey we’re going to stop feuding right now” closure to R & J. Both sides are so stuck in the cement of their hatred of the other – why wouldn’t they blame each other for their children’s deaths? I don’t truly believe there’s closure for either family.  Maybe if only one of the two had died (a la West Side Story) so that the other could directly address the families then I might buy it.

But then again just because an ending seems to suggest closure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually true. After watching  the amazing Follies I’ve listened to a number of opinions about the show on various podcasts. And one thing that comes up is that some hate the ending. They hate the fact that after all that happens during the show, and all the vitriol that gets tossed around, the two main couple seem to get back together at the end. This assumption is made simply because the two couples leave as couples. Closure. I don’t see it that way at all.  Just because the two couples leave together doesn’t mean they’re happy. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stay together. Nothing is really resolved for any of them. In fact, I see it as more failure that they leave together. It’s like the Capulets and the Montages turning their backs and carrying on that grudge… I really would love to see a R & J that suggests nothing has changed, it’s all lies for the Prince and the fight will continue on till they’re all dead. That would be something to see…. Anyone up for it??

The Legend of the Lion King was a show at Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom that closed in 2002. The show told the story of The Lion King through puppetry and someone has posted an incredible behind the scenes video on Youtube.

The video shows the puppeteers in action and the intricate backstage ballet they went through to make the show work. Most of the puppets needed two puppeteers working in tandem. I love the focus evident in the performers’ faces. I’m guessing that this video was shot late into the run and I’m very impressed by the dedication that these performers are still putting into the keeping the show alive. Not an easy task for a show that was performed many times per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Lindsay and I saw this show on a 2001-ish trip. This behind the scenes video is far more interesting than what the people in the audience saw.

Enjoy the video while you can. I can’t imagine it’s going to stay up for long, particularly because of the last five seconds.

I’m working on a play right now that keeps tipping over from imbalance. If I write too far this way, the main character becomes unlikeable. If I write too far this way, she’s not striving to pursue what she wants. If I write this way, I don’t know why this character acts the way they do. if I write this way, everything becomes very depressing which since I’m writing a comedy is not helpful. So it feels a little bit like fishing; the line goes out sometimes it comes back empty, sometimes with a fish and sometimes an old rubber tire. Over and over again.

But I’m not discouraged. This is what the writing process is all about. The path from beginning to end of a play is not a straight line. It’s a maze, filled with twists and turns. Sometimes I write myself into a dead end and have to backtrack.  Sometimes I get really far only to find there’s a water feature in my way and I have to figure out how to traverse it.

The best way I find to deal with these dead ends and water features is to ask questions of the characters and story and then answer them.

• What makes Elly likeable?
• What does Willow want?
• How does changing Elly get Willow what she wants?
• What is the final straw for Elly?
• What are the characteristics for each group?
• How can Willow help in a positive instead of a negative manner?

And so on, and so on. I sit with a pad and a pen and just figure out the answers. I don’t worry about dialogue or where these answers fit into the story. I just make sure there is an answer for every question I come up with.  The great thing about Q&A in a theatrical context is that the answers can be whatever I want. This is not a historical drama, there are no facts that need to be correct. There only needs to be the answer that gets me out of the dead end and across the water.  And the more I Q&A, the more specific the play will be. The better the journey for the characters. And the more satisfying the process.

How do you write out of roadblocks?

.

So my 2012 project requires equipment. Equipment that I don’t have. Equipment that’s not easy to find. Of course, I probably could have found this equipment closer to home. I didn’t have to purchase said equipment in New York. But I was there. And what could it hurt to look?

Really, is there anything cooler than walking into a building on 5th ave…..

Walking up four flights of stairs……

Into this?

It was damn cool. I don’t mind telling you, I swooned a little at being in a room full of typewriters. They’re just beautiful. And real. And that makes my project real. It’s one thing to talk, it’s another thing to take steps. It’s easy to talk, it’s another thing to sit in front of this machine and feel the reality of it. This is now not just thoughts in my head or words in my mouth, but something I have to do.

And so I did. Meet my new baby.

Stay tuned to my weekly video series called Typecast and watch me try to write a play on an Olympia Deluxe.

One of the most memorable parts of our two days in New York was an exhibit we attended at The Grolier Club entitled Printing for Kingdom, Empire, & Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.

The exhibit featured all sorts of pieces of typeset from France. I thought I knew what I needed to know about movable type, how individual pieces of type were put one by one into a frame to build words, sentences, and pages. But what never occurred to me until this exhibit was that the pieces of typeset themselves would all have to have been created by hand. All those tiny reverse letters created one by one by extraordinarily talented and patient craftsmen.

What really impressed us was how minuscule the four point type was, and the notion that someone would have carved those letters by hand on that insanely small canvas. Makes me appreciate how easily it is to change a font, to make something bigger or smaller, to move a paragraph to a different page. In the days of typesetting, all of these tasks would’ve been major undertakings.