A little holiday present to myself (and to you!)

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This post contains specifics about the show itself, and how we're achieving certain elements or designing certain aspects. If you want this kind of thing to be a surprise to you when you see it, skip this post!

So last weekend I drove out to Downers Grove, IL to buy myself a little item I found for sale on Craigslist. I'd been keeping an eye out for one of these for a while because it could potentially be part of "The Last Unicorn," but I needed to get my hands on one to know for sure.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now the proud owner of a cow skull. If I owned a digital camera I'd post a pic of that here, but it'll have to wait for now.

Give you three guesses what it's for in "The Last Unicorn." Okay, I'll just tell you.

Here's the idea: Schmendrick, the Unicorn and Molly Grue get to Haggard's kingdom, which is supposed to be this barren wasteland, right? So since this is a piece of story theater (read: NOT scenery intensive) we're going to represent that by having a cow skull on the ground off to one side. Then, when the Red Bull appears, the cow skull is picked up and becomes the head! Here's a design sketch I did that'll give you the general idea:














I've been going back and forth in my head for a while- would it be better to use an actual cow skull, or to build a puppet one? What if a real skull is too heavy or too fragile? Or what if I get my hands on one and try it out in front of a mirror, and it looks incredibly lame instead of awesome? Because awesomeness is the goal here. But I'm happy to say that 1) the skull is actually extremely light and 2) it looked pretty cool when I was trying it out. I'm still a little worried about how durable it is- it has some cracks, etc., that I'm worried might have happened when I was working with it, and you can tell by holding it that if you ran into something with it or dropped it, pretty much game over. Still, progress! Even if we wind up having to build a puppet head instead of using the real deal, we'll be able to use the real deal as a model or to build a cast.

Pretty cool, huh?

Don't make me brag.

So....the show I'm in with Promethean Theatre Ensemble, Tony Kushner's "The Illusion," has been Jeff Recommended! For those of you not in the know, the Jeff Awards are pretty much Chicago's version of the Tony's. We don't know for sure that we'll be nominated for any awards at the end of the season, but we know for sure we're in the running.

Also, we got a very positive review from Tom Williams, one of the city's theatre critics. Here's a link to the review.

And in the interest of fairness, and not getting too big for my britches, here's a link to another review in the Chicago Reader that has some nice things to say but is decidedly more mixed.

But wait, you say. Where's my unicorn fix for the day? Here you go- A real live unicorn, as shown here:

We open tonight!!!

"The Illusion" has its official opening tonight at 8 pm! It's been a long road, with a lot of hard work put in by everyone, and I think it'll be one of the best shows our company has done. Here's a link to the show information; I highly encourage all y'all to check it out.

Winter wonderland!?

Hey everyone-
Tech week for Promethean's "The Illusion" is making good progress, though we did have a bit of a hiccup last night- the city of Chicago was hit by a rather sizable snow storm during rush hour last night, and since I was in my car, the drive from work to our performance space, which usually takes a little less than an hour, instead took two and a half hours!!! I know that technically winter doesn't begin until this Sunday, but she's decided to be unfashionable early. Basically, here's what last night was like (go to 1:20 for the full effect):



(Tenuous connection, I know, but I had to keep this Unicorn related somehow...)

I may be away for a bit

I'm about to go into tech week for Promethean Theatre Ensemble's production of "The Illusion," which means that I'll have very little free time. We open on 12/20- for more info you can click here. As I said before, the play has got romance and wizardry in it, so it's a great chance to see us do our thing prior to "Unicorn." But it's going to keep me crazy busy for the next week. In the meantime, know that (as a song I'm sure all of you know well states) "I'm aliive, I'm aliiiiiiive....." Aw shucks, I'll just post a clip.



P.s.- I just want to remind everyone I'm doing a stage adaptation of the novel, not the movie. Which means that though I (like many of you) am a drooling fanatic about the movie, references to it and clips from it won't appear here very often. Enjoy this one!

We're zeroing in on a space...(and geeking out about Tim Curry.)

Hey gang,
"The Last Unicorn" is in the process of picking a performance space, and dates are TBA. As soon as all of the details are completely hammered out you'll be able to read about it here. For now, know that we're on the case, getting ready to make this production of "Unicorn" the awesome event I know it will be. In the mean time, here's a clip from another really important movie from my childhood that had Unicorns in it (be warned, it be spooky):



Plus this clip actually has the bad guy use the phrase "the last unicorn...." We'll save her though, won't we folks? : - ) Tim Curry (yep, that's him under all the red body paint) is awesome- he has personally redeemed many awful movies, and is an accomplished stage actor to boot. Speaking of less-than-life-changing movies that Tim Curry redeems, here's another fun little clip:

More cool cannibal music

Remember how I said that the cave scene from Ravenous has awesome music? Actually lots of the music in that movie is awesome. Here's another music clip that really has gotten under my skin. I love how this piece starts out really repetitive and simple and then adds layers of depth and complexity as it continues. The clip also shows scenes from the movie- watch out, some of this is bloody and intense. I'd say it's still PG-13 or extremely mild rated R, though. But you see how much music and soundscape can enhance a story?



Ok, that's enough inflicting horror movie music on you for a while. I promise to be back on Unicorns and theatre related stuff again soon.

UPDATE, 2/19: The previous video got zapped by a copyright claim, it looks like. I embedded a different video so you can still hear the music I was referring too.