Nikos and Mabruk

I managed to figure out what I was doing wrong (or, at least, what I was doing most wrong) with my digital camera, so I have more visual treats for you. This photo series features two more masks for "The Last Unicorn" (and, in a supporting role, the radiator in my kitchen).

First, I've finished the mask for Mabruk (at least, before he turns into a monster):

































I decided to go with really bold color schemes for each of the masks- Mabruk's obviously, is green. I tried to infuse it (especially the brow and the shape of the eyes) with some of the cruelty of the character, to contrast with the other older wizard we see in the story, Nikos:
































Nikos is Schmendrick's mentor, and is seen primarily in flashbacks. In my interpretation, he's supposed to be kinder and more melancholy than Mabruk, though the fact that they both will be masked helps heighten their similarities as entities of mystery and power- they have what Schmendrick wants.

Last but not least, I have much better photos of the Mommy Fortuna mask- I decided to give you all another look at the old girl, though it's becoming increasingly likely she won't be used. But the variations in the purple show a lot better under this new camera setting. Enjoy! More info soon.

Blogging here there and everywhere

One reason I've been blogging here less lately is that I'm actually also working on a blog elsewhere- at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs website. Promethean Theatre Ensemble was chosen to participate in the DCA's Incubator program in August- basically, we have the use of the DCA's Studio Theater at the Chicago Cultural Center downtown to workshop new material. I'm splitting the time with some of my other Promethean compatriots, but I'm workshopping two new-ish scripts of mine. One, "The Peculiar Case of Dorothy Gale" is a sort of creepy-campy take on the Wizard of Oz that reimagines it as an HP Lovecraft story. For more info, check out my blog post about it at the DCA website, here. The other piece is a stage adaptation of several different stories by the author John Collier. For more info on that, please check out my blog post on THAT one at the DCA website here. Most importantly, if you want to see a presentation of what we're working one, we're doing a performance absolutely FREE at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday 8/31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theater. Please come check it out! Like I said it's free, but space is a bit limited so I encourage you to make a reservation by clicking here. Thanks!

What this story means to me.

Why am I adapting and directing this new stage version of "The Last Unicorn?"

Time to get a little personal, and consequently maybe slightly weird.

Like so many of you, the first time I encountered the story of "The Last Unicorn" was via the animated version as a kid. I grew up in Raleigh, NC, and we'd often visit my grandparents in nearby Pinehurst. A frequent activity while visiting was heading down the street to the mom-n-pop video rental place and picking up a movie or two to watch. For a while, I would always insist on the animated version of "The Last Unicorn" being one of them- I'd watch it over and over again. When I was in my early teens, I had a life-changing moment when I found out that there was a NOVEL on which the movie was based (I was a voracious reader of fantasy novels back then; I was kind of stupefied that I had never found the novel before). So I devoured that, and it's been one of my favorite books ever since; I've owned several copies of it (including one that I loaned to a famous director...who never gave it back. She knows who she is. It's ok, I bought another copy. Eventually.) I remember being tremendously excited when, as a freshman in high school, I found a VHS copy of the movie version for sale while I was in Toronto. So the story and its characters have been with me most of my life- certainly as far back as I can remember. I really connected with a lot of the themes even as a kid- I knew a lot about what it was like to want to be spectacular but to sometimes fall short (like Schmendrick, and even poor Mommy Fortuna). I understood what it was like to feel uncomfortable in my own skin, like Amalthea. That theme of transformation has always been an important part of stories that compel me- whether The Last Unicorn, the ORIGINAL version of The Little Mermaid, Swan Lake, or even werewolf movies (which I also find awesome.) I later went on to appreciate many other works by Peter S. Beagle- but "The Last Unicorn" is special to me. It's a story that won't leave me alone- as a director I feel like it's something I almost have to get out of my system before I move on to other projects. Not that this won't be a pleasure to direct- I am obsessed with this story and can't wait to share it with everyone on stage, (i.e., on my turf as a theatre artist). Also, it's a great chance to connect with other people who love this story as much as I do- I will probably be at most of the performances, and I would love to speak with any and all of you to whom this great story means as much as it does to me.

It's a fella's prerogative to change his mind...

....ah, rewrites. As we've been working to make this new adaptation of "The Last Unicorn" as strong as possible in the past few months, we've found that many of the choices I made in previous drafts have had to fall by the wayside. I thought I'd mention one of the biggies here so you aren't too shocked when you see it:

We've decided we want the same actress to play both Amalthea and the Unicorn.

I know, I know- I had planned on them being played by different actresses. In fact, you may recall I did an entire post explaining in detail why that was a good idea. Well, several rewrites and table reads later I've come to a different point of view. I think that it helps the audience (especially audience members who aren't as familiar with the story) to be following one actress as the protagonist across the entire performance. It gives the Unicorn a stronger emotional arc and makes the audience more invested in their journey if they don't have to overcome that mental hurdle of having a completely different body playing the role for most of Act 2. Having one actress play both has its own challenges -we now have a pretty fast quick change to pull off near the end of the show, for one- but one of the benefits is we get to further utilize the talents of ensemble member Kyla Embrey- who I already knew was going to be a fabulous Amalthea, but am now pleased to announce will be playing both roles. Yay Kyla!

Another change- we have completed casting for "Unicorn," and I'm very pleased with the team we've assembled. One post on this blog discussed mask design for Mommy Fortuna. Originally I had thought that we weren't going to find an age-appropriate actress for the role- in fact, we may have wound up with one of the talented but decidedly twentysomething ladies of our ensemble in the role- thus the mask. I was delighted to have some fantastic age-appropriate ladies audition, and now that one of them has joined the cast as Mommy Fortuna, I'm thinking the mask is less necessary. Haven't made the decision for sure, yet, but I think we'll figure it out pretty quickly in rehearsals.

What can I say? It's a fella's prerogative to change his mind. : - )

Inspirational Music, part 5: The Hazards of Love

I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate some music that I've been listening a lot to lately, especially as I head into final rewrites for the show and seek inspiration for stage pictures, etc: the new album by The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love.

What can I say? I'd never really listened to the band at all, but I heard this album reviewed on NPR, and it sounded kind of neat, so I went on youtube and listened to some of the full tracks that people had posted. Finally, I bought the album* at Border's** and have been listening to it pretty obsessively over the last month or so.

It's a concept album- probably one of the reasons I'm so into it is that it tells a cool fantasy story that involves shapeshifting (like The Last Unicorn!). In this case, the heroine of the story, Margaret, is riding in the forest when she encounters a snow white faun, wounded and trapped in the underbrush. She tries to free it, but the faun transforms into a handsome young man, and they, um...(blushes). So it turns out she gets pregnant, and she wanders into the forest to find the young man again. They meet and set up house together in a one of the forest bowers- but complications ensue. The reason the man is a shapeshifter is that he's the adopted 'son' of the Forest Queen- a Titiania-like force of nature that has absolute dominion over the forest. She's also fiercely jealous and overprotective of him and sees Margaret as a threat. In order to get her out of the way, she enlists the help of the Rake- a wandering womanizer, rapist and child murderer (he killed his three kids after his wife died because they were making it too difficult for him to put the moves on the ladies. He's not very nice in other words) who is only too glad to despoil and destroy our heroine. So the shapeshifter guy has to cross a terribly dangerous river to rescue his true love. Here are some tracks for you to listen to, with a bit of explanation about each. If you like what you hear, I strongly encourage you to download the album- we should use our cash to encourage this band to make more art like this!

First, the song The Wanting Comes in Waves- it's a conversation song between William, the shapeshifter, and his 'mother' the Forest Queen. The refrain of it actually gets me a little weepy, and it's a pretty cool tune that forwards the plot- he basically tries to bargain with his mother to be allowed at least one night of happiness with his love.


Second, the Rake's Song- this is the song the villain sings that introduces us to him. It's a lot of fun and also horrifying at the same time.



Third, the Queen's Rebuke. This is the first song I ever heard from this album, and it's AWESOME. The group got a guest artist (Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond) to sing the character, and she really gets to kick some ass during this song. It also fooled me- it made me think this band was really metal sounding, but apparently this is an unusual sound for them. In this song, the Queen appears to talk with the Rake once he's kidnapped Margaret.



OK, last one I promise- Annan Water. Remember that dangerous river I told you about- in the Queen's Rebuke the Queen works magic to get the Rake and Margaret across, but William is still stuck without a way to cross- and apparently this river is SUPER dangerous- like so full of rapids and whirlpools that there's no way to safely cross through conventional methods. So William sings this song in which he bargains with the river- telling the river that if it will calm and allow him to pass, he'll allow the river to claim him after he saves his true love. And the river hears him and agrees. This song gets me choked up a bit too- the part where he actually prays ("And if you calm...and let me pass...") is really pretty.



So that's all I'll post here, but I really encourage you to check it out- there's more awesomeness on this album than can be contained in a single blog post.

P.S.- tickets to "The Last Unicorn" went on sale July 15th. To reserve tickets either buy online at www.prometheantheatre.org or call (773) 305-2897!

*Music executives: my story is why you are idiots for being overly restrictive and litigious about posting of songs online....in this case my ability to listen online led to me paying you money!
**who are discontinuing CD sales! Stupid move, Border's, no more of my money will you get!

Why I'm not a photographer, the sequel.

Would you like to see the mask I made for Mommy Fortuna? Of course you would. Sorry the photos came out so blurry! The mask is actually a lot more purple than in these pictures. The idea I'm playing with currently is that each of the three older magic users in the play will go masked- Mommy Fortuna's dominant mask color would be a deep purple, Mabruk's mask would be a deep green, and Nikos's mask (due to connection with Schmendrick) would be some kind of blue. We'll see how that develops. We had auditions this past weekend, and the downside of building a mask before you cast a show is that the actress you find might not necessarily be able to wear it. Well, if that's the case, I'll just make a new one- and I'll have a pretty cool extra witch mask. In the meantime, enjoy the photos!
































Also...tickets go on sale for "The Last Unicorn" tomorrow! I know the show's not till October, but I wanted people who might want to plan to travel to see the show- especially when Peter S. Beagle's there opening weekend on 10/17 and 10/18- to be able to plan way in advance. Speaking of which- those two performances are likely to fill up pretty fast. If you're planning on seeing Peter at the show you ought to get tickets to those performances soon.

Bwahahaha!

Hi everyone. Sorry I'm so sluggish about posting- things have started to get really busy on my end. We had another reading of the script last night, and I got some good feedback as I head into what will probably be my last rewrite of the script. We're also having auditions this weekend (interested Chicago actors, check the Promethean website for details!). I'm hoping to step up my posting frequency soon, but in the mean time, here's a little video courtesy of Adult Swim that almost made me spray my computer screen. Enjoy!