Someone read my blog!
My last post garnered a response directly from the man himself. Pretty spry for a bicentenarian. Here is a transcript of our Twitter conversation: It seems he took my joke as it was intended. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see what happens to my next rights enquiry…
Samuel French Releases eBooks
In an uncharacteristically futuristic move, Samuel French has placed over a thousand titles on Apple’s bookstore. This is the same company that still prints their invoices on a dot matrix printer. Electronic publishing was inevitable, but I can’t be the only person who thought their first eScripts would be txt files stored in a Commodore 64 that ...
Just Coming Up for Air
The Arsonists just wrapped, bringing to an end about four solid months of theatre. I’ll be putting up some material about the show on the projects page, but first I need to play catch up. For starters, here’s an article I wrote for the University of Houston’s Creative Pride blog about the 2011 Summer Masters trip ...
4/28: First rounds of Commedia
Here are the videos from the first two days of improv work. Lotto [video src="http://mr.welbes.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/lotto.m4v"] The Book [video src="http://mr.welbes.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The_Book.m4v"] The Grocery List [video src="http://mr.welbes.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_0386.m4v"] Disneyland [video src="http://mr.welbes.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_0387.m4v"] Take a moment to watch the videos and evaluate our work so far. Consider how well we are addressing the following problems: Communicating with the audience physically. Communicating ...
Add Constraints to Unleash Creativity?
You only have to look at the run of Spiderman previews to see that unlimited resources and scope can become a curse for a creative staff. Trying to work around constraints and limits in a project often leads to some of the most arresting and memorable stage moments. Nathan Weller, writing for Web Design Ledger, ...
Ira Glass on Creativity
Ira Glass, host of the This American Life radio program, has an honest and humble view of the work it takes to achieve creative success. In this short video, he talks about the dangers of your own good taste as you develop your creative ability: You’ve got really good taste, and you get into this gap ...
2011 IA Round-up
It’s that time of year again: IB internal assessments are in and marked, and I am left thinking about how the last two years led up to these final examples of work. So, mostly for my own reference, I want to catalog some of the thoughts that occur to me as I put the final ...
3/28: Mask Workshop
Here’s the run-down from today’s introduction to neutral masks. Students can jump down to the bottom for the reflection instructions. So, we began by passing out masks and hoods to everyone. After securing the hoods, we took a few moments to get acquainted with the masks themselves, first by looking at them, and next through ...
I saw this: Cooking Nanta
At this year’s APAC festival, in Taejeon, South Korea, we spent a day in Seoul to see Cooking Nanta, a long-running, Stomp-style, musical comedy. Insofar as it has a story, Nanta follows a team of restaurant chefs who must prepare an impossibly complicated wedding feast in an hour. Their work is overseen by a dictatorial and ridiculous manager who further demands that his worthless nephew on the crew be given a position of authority among the crew. The largely wordless production plays out over ninety minutes of highly energetic musical and acrobatic set-pieces, with an enormous amount of audience participation and precisely choreographed goofing around.
Read on for the full review…
Notes from a puppeteer
I don’t know Mary Kowal, but she knows my friend Rob, and the two of them are working on a stage adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel Odd and the Frost Giants. The play involves a number of animal characters, namely a fox, an eagle, and a bear, and she is developing the puppets that will ...
