Sprint to the Finish

An apt description of my life for the next five weeks.

three long weeks

Ben has been performing his show in New York City at the Frigid Fringe Festival!  It is going really well! You can read about his experience so far here.  He's also seeing shows on Broadway and making Patrick Stewart laugh.  He's networking and getting inspired to do more exciting projects.

But for real.  He's been gone for two weeks. And there's still one more to go.

 

(get it? because I'm home alone) 

hitting the ground running.

If January is indicative of how the rest of the year is going to unfold, it will be productive, busy, fun, and fairly successful.  However, I won't get much reading done...

Ben has been working hard on Questions of the Heart.  Mid-month he performed the show at our church building as a fireside.  Ben wrote a great post about it on his website.  The discussion afterwards was incredible.  In fact, the whole evening was rather surreal, especially for Ben.  He's had several productive discussions with the Bishop and a handful of others about what would make it an even better fireside in the future, for various types of wards.  Through this fireside, Ben has made some incredible connections and received encouragement to add ways to donate to the show.  We also have two additional performances in Bloomington lined up, one before, and one after the Frigid Fringe Festival in NYC.

The Primary Room transformed into a performance space.

Along with assisting Ben with his show stuff I opened my thesis production, Woyzeck. The show is known as the "first working-class tragedy" or the "first modern tragedy" and is about a poor man trying to make it as best he can but is ultimately driven to insanity and violence.  It's pretty strange (the playwright died before it was finished) and dark, but I love it!  I chose it because the story is fascinating (it was based on the crime that used the first "insanity plea") and it lends itself to being highly stylized, which I hadn't done yet and, frankly, slightly terrified me.  It has been an incredible experience and I have loved working with the director (who I worked with on Waiting for Lefty) and design team.  With the production up and running I will have my thesis defense in a couple weeks and can focus on writing the accompanying paper about the process of designing the show.  That will be due towards the end of the semester, so I'll be chipping away at it over the next couple months.

Three of the Woyzeck renderings

Because this is my thesis, they displayed a good portion of my work from my time at IU.

Happy to have gotten to this point

 Some sneak preview photos from photocall.

Oh, and I suppose I also have those classes I need to finish...

The Beginning of the End

Last week marked the beginning of my final semester of school.  I must admit that I didn't have a great attitude about it.  Towards the end of Christmas break I was ready to get back into a routine, but not ready for that routine to be school.  I wasn't excited about my classes and I was feeling overwhelmed by the thought of getting back to working on my thesis.  I may or may not have had some real anxiety about it.

However.

Once things got started I quickly realized that there is potential for this to be a great semester.  In fact, this might be the perfect semester on which to end.  I am taking good, fun classes: period understructures (corsets and a crinoline), masks, and thesis credits*.  Getting organized also helped me feel hugely better - it's so amazing how that works.  I was able to look at my schedule and - since my thesis credits aren't a concrete class, but rather something I have to schedule on my own - I set aside time each week to work on writing that as well as chipping away at my portfolio (we have a portfolio review at the end of each academic year.)

In addition, I will be assisting my mentor and professor, Linda Pisano, in her design for La Traviata.  Linda is an incredible designer and I am very excited to be working with her.  The designs are quite exciting!

The only downside is that I seem to have developed tendinitis in my right wrist/arm... but I suppose it's better to learn to deal with it now while I have a student health center a short walk away.

Other than that slight hiccup, I am feeling optimistic about the upcoming months.  I may just finish this thing after all!

*My thesis is designing IU's production of Woyzeck.  Once the production is over (it opens February 7th!), I meet with my committee and discuss the final product.  After that I have to write roughly 30-50 pages about the production and design process that I will turn in with all my paper work and renderings.

the 19th grade

This year is no joke.  Mission statements.  Teaching and design philosophies.  Portfolio and website.  Conferences.  Thesis.  Tailoring.  Masks.  Anatomy for the Artist (fancy phrase for figure drawing).  Job hunting.  Being a human.  I don't know if I'm ready for it all, but I am feeling hopeful.

Meanwhile, Ben is doing really exciting stuff, including writing a new play!  Have I mentioned how cool he is?  I really like him :)

Cool things from around the web:

Check out my friend, Denise's blog about her "love/hate relationship with art."  She somehow finds time between her toddler and newborn to get some amazing work done.  I am so proud of her!

Also, check out this great series on motherhood around the world.

Month in Review

Now that we're well into November, I figured it was the perfect time to give you an overview (with lots of pictures) of October, a.k.a. somehow the craziest month of grad school each year.

Powerpoint Master.

In the first four weeks of school I have made eight, count them, EIGHT, Powerpoint presentations.  I have learned so much about Powerpoint!  You can pre-record transitions and make them automatic, insert music and sound effects, not to mention animations... I love animations.  And I have not used them until now!  Well, friends, now at 26 I know better.  Animation is fun!  I know what you're thinking: "oh no, Barbara's presentations are probably super cheesy with too much swiveling, bouncing, and pulsing"  No no, I am super classy in my animation usage.  I mostly use fades and floats and I try to make it all very consistent.  I have very high standards.  If your thinking that I have gone too far, let me tell you about the powerpoint for my ritual class (this class is insanely insane, but more on that later).  It was an exercise called PechaKucha.  Here is an explanation from the official PechaKucha website (!!!)... (main points are in bold in case you don't want to read the whole thing):

A Titanic Week

Looking back on this week it's hard to believe all that got accomplished.  Waiting for Lefty opened, I had three big assignments due, attended an amazing two-day master class for rendering in Photoshop, I broke my old phone and got a new one - finally joining Ben's phone plan, and managed to have an amazing girls' night with Julia and Erica (which involves a story about having an amazing husband).

Indiana University

Last Tuesday, March 1st, Ben and I flew out to Bloomington, Indiana to visit the campus of Indiana University.  Unfortunately, we have absolutely NO pictures because the trip was SO fast.  We left our house Tues. at 4am to catch our 6:35 flight.  We flew out just as the sun was rising.  It was absolutely GORGEOUS and I kick myself for having the camera in the overhead.  We had a connecting flight in Chicago, landed in Indianapolis at 4:55 and drove an hour to Bloomington.  The drive was great - Indiana is so different from California.  I thought it was really pretty, even with completely bare trees.

Chicago - a big entry for a big trip.

Last Friday, February 4th, Ben and I flew to Chicago to participate in the Unified/Resident Theatre Association (U/RTA) - in other words: Grad School portfolio reviews, interviews, and auditions.  Despite the huge storm the country experienced a few days before our travels, our flights were not effected by the weather - but only just barely.

This was the first time I spent this much time in this much snow and cold since I was about six - and even that I barely remember, so it was pretty exciting.

Saturday was my big presentation/interview day.  Each design candidate was given a table on which they created a portfolio display.  The set designers most often than not, were the most elaborate in their configuration - they had some creative displays!

Posing with my Portfolio Presentation