Monthly Archives: June 2012

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Crafty Business

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I’ve always loved making things. As a kid, I did a lot of crafts, and then, as I got older and started doing theatre, I started getting to use the weird skills I’d picked up over the years to build costumes, sets, paint– that sort of thing.

Today, I made a couple of props for a friend to take pictures with this weekend– it was really fun and I got to test out my new design software, so it was a fun project.

As I was working, I started thinking about how nice it is that I’m “that girl with the costumes” or “that girl who can make things”.

I am usually really bad about finishing projects around the house, so while my humble abode doesn’t really SEEM like a crafty person lives here, I’ve had a lot of really cool opportunities presented to me because of my ability to fashion costumes and props for little-to-no-money in very short amounts of time. I’ve always been the girl who gets called in last minute: “Catie, I need to have a ___________ costume in like, two hours”. And I’m kind of proud of the fact that (pending if Salvation Army is open) I can usually come through.

This is me, in Amsterdam, cutting the legs off of a pair of sweatpants to create an impromptu Captain Planet costume. But there’s been stranger things than that…

A brief history:

There was the time the Children’s Museum hired me to play Belle from Beauty and the Beast….

And yes, that is Prince Charming under my skirt.

There was the time I got hired to play a pirate at the airport to promote their new flights to Florida…or something…

There was the time that a costume I made for a party got re-purposed in an hour after someone playing Anne Frank at an educational tour got really sick and they called me to fill in…(What’s really great about this picture is that my hair is bright pink and purple under the wig– the kids had no idea). Also, I felt kiiiind of offensive the entire time, but it was a really great program with a really great script, and I had a lot of the kids come up to me afterwards and tell me they got a lot out of it.

There was the time my director asked me to come over and help him make horns for the play we were doing– and that afternoon led to an invitation to play Mario Kart that evening which led to us to still dating two and a half years later…

There was the time I entered an online cooking contest and the editor liked my writing (not my recipe, please note) that she got me a job writing for a wedding website for six months.

There was the time I threw together an emergency Elphaba costume to party in Amsterdam.

 

Jake is actually pretty cool about the whole crafting thing. For instance, I found this awesome shower curtain on the internet. But it was like, $150. F that noise, my friends. So I bought a $6.00 white shower curtain and dug a sharpie out of my purse and did this over an episode of South Park. I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of digging the “inexpensive white shower curtain + sharpie = INFINITE POSSIBILITIES” thing.

 

 

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Bad Movies, Godzilla and Love.

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When Jake and I first started hanging out in that “we’re more than friends but we’re not dating”  period of time, I remember looking through his DVD collection and being impressed with his varied and vast collection of shitty movies, namely, horror movies and a nearly complete collection of Toho Kingdom monster films.

While I may have SLIGHTLY exaggerated the number of Godzilla films I’d actually seen in order to impress him (Okay, tripled the number), since our official “first date”, we have watched every single Godzilla movie– in order of release– except for two.

Not only that, but during the crazy process that was Titus, I did some highly questionable internet shopping through some highly questionable sources and managed to track down three of the most elusive movies in the Toho cannon, thusly completing Jake’s collection. I was pretty happy with myself.

So now the collection is complete and I’ve seen nearly all of them.

During October, our house transforms into an-almost admission worthy haunted house, complete with horror-movie nights, which are my favorite. Bad horror movies, above all else, are, to me, a testament to the will and dedication of legions of bad directors, actors and special effects crews the world over.

It’s really kind of amazing when you think about it. Someone thought that “Stabby Nurses from Outerspace” (not a real film) was a good idea. So they wrote the script, raised the money, found enough crew and actors to all be on board with it, and made a crap film. And now we, the unsuspecting public, get to reap the benefits of said crap film. It’s kind of an inspirational message about sticking to your dreams. No matter how terrible they are.

But back to Godzilla.

Godzilla movies are kind of in the same Japanese fishing boat. (HA). They have this great B-movie quality to them, but yet, since 1954, they’ve been churning out movies with, essentially, the same plot over and over again. Plot Synopsis: OH FUCK A GIANT MONSTER. There goes the city! We should use ______________________ to fight him! It worked! And now it heads off to sea/in a big pile of rocks/ice. It probably won’t come back. (Kiss ingenue). The End.

And they’re all great. Well, terrible. And great. There are some really good ones, and there are some that I’ve slept through, but my appreciation for the films keeps growing.

I love it. The ingenuity of the special effects is absolutely remarkable, which, oddly enough, has become one of my favorite things to watch for. (You try puppeteering a seven-headed dragon and see how easy it is). We watched an awesome documentary about how they built the models and did the special effects, and the amount of detail and work they put into things like fake trees is amazing– and all to get fucked up by some asshole in a rubber suit.

I also unsuspectingly became a fan of some of the regular actors that appear in dozens of the films. I don’t know their real names, but “Oh hey, That Guy!” or “Oh Hey, Army Guy!” has become a relatively common occurring during movies.  My favorite is “Oh Hey, Eyepatch Guy!”– the odd “accessories” actor who always seems to have an eyepatch or a fake mustache or something. I like the idea that, much like Brad Pitt always eating, he decided that he always wanted some odd facial adornment.

That’s the other thing. I never thought this would happen, but I have a favorite Godzilla suit. Did you know that it has changed dramatically from its original concept? *Pushes up glasses*.

It’s weird how “Oh yeah, I’ve seen a couple” becomes “I’VE SEEN THEM ALL AND LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE DISCREPANCIES IN DESTROY ALL MONSTERS!”

Jake called that the original Mothra movie would be me favorite. It’s the girliest of them all, and while I hate admitting that  he’s right, the Mothra twins are pretty much my favorite feature in any and all movies they appear in.

So now we have two left, which leaves me in an odd place. After these two, that’s it, that’s all. About halfway through the marathon (which has spanned nearly 2 1/2 years at this point), we realized that we should have been reviewing them. So there’s that option. Start a blog, watch them all again, gain internet fame and fortune, free pass to ComicCon (because mine expired this year…sad day), but part of me wonders what else there is out there.

I have this thing where once I start a show, I want to watch the ENTIRE show in sucesssion. Doctor Who kept me up until 4AM every night for about two months– worth it. We’re working our way through Supernatural now, but we’re only watching one or two a night, so it’s taking much longer than I’d like.

It’s a very strange opposite– I seldom finish video games, but I treat series as a personal challenge to see how many I can watch in a day.

So, after Godzilla is over, what comes next? I had the startlingly odd realization that after Complete Works is over, I have an ENTIRE MONTH to do nothing in the evenings. It’s kind of a glorious feeling. Plus, the Olympics will be starting so our TV viewing will start consisting of nothing but that coverage for awhile, but after those two movies…the world is my proverbial oyster.

Except I’ll probably re-watch the good ones.

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(Abridged) First Weekend

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Well, the first weekend happened, and it was actually pretty awesome.

Despite a few disasters (which I actually didn’t freak out about), the show went up without a heeyotch.

My favorite part of the weekend, hands down, was the 7-year old who came on Saturday night. The cast adopted him as the unofficial mascot for the show and it was great to watch the actors PG-ify the show in the moment to protect his young innocence.

At intermission, he came to me nearly in tears and said

“You work here, right?”

I told him I did.

“Um, well, I went out into the parking lot to see if I could see them chasing him, but I didn’t see them. They’re going to come back right? Because if they chase him all the way to his house he might not want to come back”.

The magic of theatre. I love it.

All in all, I’m just really proud of the cast. We’ve worked really hard in a really short amount of time to pull this off, and we did it.

It’s been kind of a learning curve, too. First, it’s really weird directing adults. I’m used to high school and college students. It’s similar, but the small differences are what has made it interesting. There’s the swearing, first of all. And smoke breaks.

And working with non-majors– during the double run on Saturday, one of my actors kept asking me “We get to leave in between shows, right?” …Not in my world, you don’t.

Eventually, we decided to have a cook-out at my house in between the runs, which wound up being a nice break, but in the back of my head I felt like I was doing something sneaky by not being in the theatre.

It’s also getting me excited for my next chance to act. There is a part of me that really wants to do some balls-out tragic, weeping on the floor and crying to the heavens acting, which is strange, because normally I prefer more reserved stuff– but for a couple weeks now, I’ve had this urge to find some tragedy or something (somewhere) just so I can weep. Strange.

I’m less tense than I thought I would be. In fact, I’m actually kind of surprised at the level of low-key that I have adopted. Sure, we forgot the house money and realized it 10 minutes before house open. Sure, we never actually got all of the props finished.Sure, there are still parts where actors aren’t hitting their mark how I’d like them to.

But you know what?

It’s still a good show.

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Opening Night

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Tonight is opening night for the first show I’ve directed with the Prenzie Players. I’m nervous, excited, but most of all– I’m proud. This was a ridiculously quick rehearsal process with a LOT of snafus and problems, but at the end of the day, we are still putting on a show. 

And I think it’s really good. 

Granted, I’m biased, but at the same time, this show has been so much fun to direct because every actor brought their own ideas and characters to rehearsal each night. It’s really not MY show as a director, it’s OUR show as a group. 

Last night, we stayed up much too late over beers at the Blue Cat and we were talking about Slings & Arrows. If you haven’t seen the show, I highly recommend that you watch it– it’s hard for me to say it’s my absolute favorite show, but damn if it doesn’t come close. There is a pivotal moment in the third season where everyone comes together to put on a show and they wind up doing it in some crappy gym and the show is absolute magic– and that’s what I love about theatre. And this show. 

Sure, we’re not doing the show in a state-of-the-art facility with a giant lighting board and all of the costumes money can buy. But sometimes, you don’t need that. You just need an audience of people excited to be there and four amazing actors who bring incredibly hilarious things to the show each night. 

And I’m proud that I got to be a part of this one. It was fast, crazy and ridiculous, but we did it. And that is awesome. 

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Directed Directing

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I have thoroughly neglected this lately. It’s because I’m directing. 

I like directing. 

It’s like an 8-week intensive in parenting, organization, strategic marketing, engineering, finance and design, and that’s even before I walk into rehearsal.

I’ve directed before, and I’ve always felt pretty good about what I put on stage, but it’s weird directing my friends. And my boyfriend. That’s kind of weird. Which is funny because he JUST got done acting as my director, so I suppose that I really shouldn’t complain all that much. 

The show is going well. It’s a huge contrast from the last show, so its been a nice change of pace to get to research the best recipe for pie-in-the-face as opposed to like, mutilation and rape. The rushed process has also been a blessing in disguise. Normally, I agonize, but this show has forced me to make decisions quickly, so I feel like I’ve grown a little in that department.

We are still missing some key props and costumes, but the show is a week away so I am totally confident that everything will come together. It’s actually kind of fun having to keep track of stuff like that– normally, as the stage manager/actor, I just have to know what I need or what the director tells me to write down, but now, I have to know what everyone needs– and realize that they need something before they do. 

It’s also helping me deal with my pet peeves. I have a lot of them, I know this, so it’s been good to step back and say “hey, it’s totally okay that this thing happened. Now we just deal with it and move on”. I guess being the person in charge does that to you. I’m still bad at delegating, but I’m working on it. Slowly. 

Tomorrow at rehearsal we are going to have a big talk about a lot of the show– our Artistic Director came to see the show today and he gave me some great stuff to think about, so I am excited to see how his feedback will improve the show. And the best part? If all of his ideas suck, I’m the director, we don’t have to use them :) . I’m drunk with power already. Or that might be left over from the bachelorette party I went to this weekend. Ouch. 

I also got some news today that I’m not sure what to do with. Apparently, I just came into a little bit of money. It has been specified that I’m supposed to spend it on education, and with the scholarship I have coming to me and this money, I could totally afford to go to the grad school of my dreams. 

Have you ever had a moment where you’re doing something you love and you’re passionate about it, and it occurs to you that it just feels “right?” That’s what I feel like when I think about this grad program. Yeah, going away for a year is scary, but it’s something that I think I need to do. 

We went to go see Timon of Athens (who knew, it IS Tie-mon, not Tim-on) at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre this week as a break from Complete Works, and I had this picture of preparing backstage to perform and it made me smile so much I was embarrassed. 

Next up, after this, is Antigone. I’m a little nervous. I know exactly, literally down to the shoelaces, what I want Antigone to be, but I’m not sure how my vision is going to translate to the stage. We’re going to need a lot of sand. 

But for now, my focus (however limited it may be) is on Complete Works.