Painting Pirates

I have been busy at work these two weeks or so. I have been painting scenery for pirates of penzance.

So far I have painted 3280 square feet of scenery and have more than 6,000 square feet to go.

boy am i tired.

USITT ’06

Just got back from the USITT convention. The United States Institute for Theatre Technology is the main convention for what I do. It’s an odd mix of people. You see a lot of black t-shirts and jeans, balding men with ponytails, and costumes designers wearing capes and other weird things.

I caught up with my technical Director from high school, RJ “Mike” Nielsen, we called him Boss. He seemed to know all the bigwigs at the conference.

The panels and presentations are a mix of professionals and educators, a line that is blurring year by year. More and more theatre artists are finding jobs at colleges and universities in order to pay the bills and have some security. I am hoping to present something next year.

Working on my list

Well, my little list of self improvement has seen some action. I’vebeen keeping up with Flossing as i wanted to, and didn’t buy snacks at school for two weeks. That goes out the window this weeks when we go into tech rehearsals.

Oh and I still had a cavity that had to get drilled too.

1 down, more on the way

So I have learned CPR.

I took a class at the Fairfield Rescue Squad. I’ll be receiving my card in the mail soon.

I wanted to do this ever since the accident. But I’m not sure I’m prepared. After watching a video and breezing thru a demo just doesn’t seem enough. I think I need to study the manual more.

Pirates of Penzance

So in the Spring I will be doing the Pirates of Penzance. As a result we are beginning to design the play now. Of course I am right in the middle of being the Technical director and Lighting Designer forThe House of Bernarda Alba. It goes into technical rehearsals this weekend. Also, we just finished doing a dance concert and tomorrow I have a design meeting for our festival of Student-Directed One Acts. For which I am doing the sets and supervising the lights.

I have started to gather research for Pirates. I started with some basic images on the locations mentioned in the play. Using Google Maps I found out that Penzance was in the Cornwall area of England, and guided my search accordingly.

After talking with the director I’ve found some more images. They are starting to reflect the feel of what our production will be. He is seeing the show as a Victorian style Keystone Cops. Playing up what might be seen by some as datedness(is that a word?) as a contrived artifice. So we are looking at Turn of the last century posters and illustrations.

Soon I’ll have some more sketches posted to show you what I mean.

the Blog of Owen Collins