April

This has been a pretty hectic month so far! I've been working miscellaneous jobs in Boston, including the Huntington still, Bent Productions, DesignLight, and more. I also went home to Vermont for the first time in a while to sell my car and to buy a Mini Cooper.... very exciting times.

That makes 2 in the family!

It is strange to be so happy when a tragedy struck Boston just this week at the marathon, but like the people I now call neighbors, co-workers, and friends around here, I refuse to let horrific events ruin my spirits. We are mourning and praying for peace-- both internationally and here at home-- but we are also strong, and we know the rest of the country and people across the world are supporting us. Spring is here and the sun has been shining; Boston has some beautiful sights for the spring, I may take my camera out and about soon.

Thank you for reading!

A New Brain

Moonbox Productions is performing their spring show right now at the BCA Plaza Theater in Back Bay for one more week! I worked on this show as the Master Electrician and also assisting the lighting designer, Jeffrey Salzberg. Moonbox is a great, up and coming company in the Boston area, for their talent as well as their partnerships with non-profit organizations, and although this is only my second time working for them, I know I will go back gladly. I have also worked with Jeff for years now, so we have a solid professional relationship (as well as being good friends!)

One of my favorite looks Jeff created.

A New Brain is a very strange show. It is a musical about a composer (played by Tom Shoemaker) who has to have brain surgery, and we see through his eyes as well as from the point of view of other characters as they struggle with the chaos and emotions that his condition causes...all while remaining musical and often humorous. My favorite parts include a coma-induced series of songs and images, featuring supporting cast members like Aaron Ray and David Carey; some quiet moments between Gordon and his lover, Roger (played by Ross Brown); and the generally well-captured, overwhelming feeling we experience at hospitals and with many medical problems. 10 cast members-- especially 10 very strong actors and vocalists accompanied by a large pit band-- is a lot for the small Plaza Theater, but they pull it off stunningly.

The set was built by Bent Productions, a shop based in Marlborough that I have worked with on several occasions now. The director, Allison Choat, decided to design scenery for this show with the technical help from Richard Gray, the TD at Bent, and it is a remarkably interesting set! There are only 2 main pieces: a bookcase that spans most of the upstage area (if you go, keep an eye out for patterns among the book placement...) and a huge piano, built from scratch by Bent, which twists and turns and splits and flips and lights up. We had some fun times embedding LEDs within the piano pieces, and installing lights in the bookshelves as well.

set and lights in progress.

As you may have guessed, we got to use some fun toys, including LED Source 4's again; lots of DMX devices like IQ's, gobo rotators, irises, a boatload of altman LED units (SpectraCycs and SpectraPars) and ColorBlasts, and more. 

A lenseless S4 LED creates the perfect effect for this psychedelic show.

Being the ME for load in was sure interesting, and I learned a lot. I am definitely better at managing people and time than at reading the manuals for all these devices, and it worked out fairly well. But I do need to work on closer supervision and instructions. All in all, a great experience. 

hard at work (posing for placement) during lights focus.

If you go: The show closes this Saturday night. visit the Moonbox website for tickets!

March

March has been (as predicted) CRAZY. I spent the first week of it in Washington D.C. working at AIPAC with a contracting company to set up and strike at the Washington Convention Center (more details to come, potentially?) Long story short: although it was awesome because of the people I was working with, D.C. kicked my ass when my wallet was stolen. I don't know where or exactly when. The person spent less than $500 of my money, which is incredible because they had it for a solid day at least. I was able to cancel my cards and such, and called the credit bureaus and everything (I don't know a lot about credit bureaus: why do we have 3 that have my information? and they still work together when communicating alerts like this?) I also need to get a new social security card, after I pay my taxes, because as a freelancer who needs several forms of ID often, I had mine in my wallet. *facepalm*

Dealing with no money or access to money (because obviously I'm not smart enough to keep extra cash stowed away for exactly this situation) has been interesting over the past week or so. My boss in D.C. and my friend George, who I traveled to and from Boston with, took good care of me. We were working 20 hour days at the convention center with meals and hotel paid for, so it isn't like I was struggling badly, but not having my ID and also going through the fiasco that is D.C. police was extremely stressful, especially on top of that kind of workload.

I'm now back in Boston and finally getting my stuff restored, slowly but surely. And doing my taxes. And working day and night with Moonbox (definitely more info to come on this show!). And resuming work with the Hunt this week. I thought that working myself to death had cured stress dreams but boy it sure hasn't...living on couches and out of my car in November was preferable to this! All I can say is, if you have to steal money from someone, leave the freakin' wallet. Take the cash, take the cards...but be a decent human being and save the person this kind of stress!

Luckily for me, I love my job and can tune out all that outside stuff when I'm focused on work. As they say: leave it at the door!

Check back again for info about my latest shows, both opening this week with Moonbox Productions and the Huntington Theater.

Upcoming!

So life has been pretty tame lately, with the exception of that snowstorm two weekends ago...

Work at the Huntington has been a steady force in the Life of Keelia. Having such a solid place to work at as a freelancer is rare and wonderful; I am pretty much employed through the spring. Things will not be so calm for the month of March, however.

Starting next week, I'll be in Washington D.C. for 10 days to work as a production assistant at a political event. A friend of mine, a fellow stagehand/freelancer in Boston, got the job from a contractor company and thought of me when they needed more hands. Lucky for me, my boss at the Hunt is awesome and told me I can come back afterwards. I have never done this before-- never been to D.C. either-- and so am excited and a little anxious all at once. It sounds like we may not have a lot of time for sightseeing or visiting due to a pretty intense schedule, but I am looking forward to it all the same!

(I realized today that I have almost no 'professional' clothing and went on a TJ Maxx rampage. My mother has kindly agreed to send me some items from home in VT, too, which is one of the many reasons she is awesome!)

After D.C. I will be at the Hunt for 2 weeks while working evenings and weekends with Moonbox Productions again, this time as their Master Electrican/Assistant Lighting Designer. I am very excited to work with this company again (the show is A New Brain; more info to come!) and a little nervous for the responsibilities involved. My LD is Jeff Salzberg, an old friend and co-worker, and he is a very patient teacher above all else. So hopefully all will go well. We are using some fun equipment-- source 4 LED's, IQ's, wireless DMX for lights embedded in the moving set piece-- so that will also be new.

And finally, at the end of March, I'm taking a week off to go to Florida with my cousin Patty on her spring break and visit my best friend Meg from the summer. Meg works at Orlando Repertory Theater, so we will stay with her, go to Disney, and see some relatives!

Wish me luck this month :) busy busy!

Blizzard 2013

Over the weekend, Boston ad New England were hit with a massive snowstorm! I was luckily planning to leave my car at my aunt's house on Thursday anyway, and got the news that work was cancelled for Friday while still up in New Hampshire, so I stayed there for the long weekend to weather the storm. We had a lot of fun watching movies, shoveling show, playing board games, watching the weather, and of course playing in the snow!

my 8 year old cousin whooped us!

Tiny Tim is the lump near the basketball hoop.

My car, after a little snowblowing

Snowbanks= sledding hills!

I'm a sucker....

Excavation on Sunday.

 My aunt and uncle have been so good to me over the past few months. They packed me up with snacks and beer and drove me back into Somerville on Sunday. Tiny Tim will stay at their house until I can find a good way to park him closer to me. Thanks Auntie Mary and Uncle Jim: I get my "cool aunt" inspiration for my future nephew (and nieces and nephews TBD) from you both!

last week's adventures

Last week at the Hunt, we struck the set for Invisible Man, the mainstage that opened in January. I wish I had taken pictures of this set coming down, but the atmosphere during a strike is very purposeful and fast-paced, with lots of concern for speed and safety all at once. You can find some pictures of this set going up earlier in my blog, especially here. I enjoyed this strike; I worked on taking down a lot of the walls and columns and eventually did some work on the fly rail. The Hunt usually has 2 people in harnesses open a big door at the back of the stage that leads to the dumpster, where only those 2 people can approach the door, so the rest of us chop stuff up and send it their way, unless it is a set element that we are saving. Other people formed teams in the grid wayyy up in the air, making sure hanging things were taken down safely. We worked around electrics and props people as well. The strike went well; we started at 5:30pm and we were home by 2am.

We also had more work during the week on a show we know as 602. The 600's series are not mainstage shows (Our Town, which was located off-site, was a 600 show) and therefore we know less about it and the set is generally smaller and less complex. I built 2 small, custom stair units while other people in the shop started some flats, finished up Raisin in the Sun (004) and shop projects, like installing and squaring a new metal saw and putting in some shelves for the costume department. I also worked on a set of flats that will be put together to make a sort of doorway or portal for the 602 show. They were complicated in that some were mirror images of the others, and the steel framing is at a 6 degree angle, and the wood pieces we added had to be rounded over so the fabric that eventually gets stretched over it won't rip....

All the fun.

Stair units

The Glamorous Life

This week has been a little less crazy in terms of amounts of work I've taken on, allowing me to completely recover from a cold and to relax a little and make plans for the future. 

At the Huntington, we struck the set of Our Town. This show performed at the Boston Center for the Arts, about 15 minutes away from the Huntington's main theater. It was a messy strike, since a lot of the set was custom built and therefore unlikely to be used again (especially not with the small amount of storage space this city-based theater has)-- so a lot of it had to be demolished down to dumpster size. Not to mention the fireproofed fake snow and the real trees we brought in for parts of the set.

During the building stage

I worked with the scenic designer to put these trees in behind the doorway you see in the first photo...

...and it looked kind of like this from the front when the show opened.

We took all of Monday to get rid of the entire set.

After that, we worked to restore the space to its original state/to a different seating configuration. We worked closely with the managers of the space to install a huge amount of risers and seats (which involves a surprising number of parts and leveling), to store pipes and equipment properly, and to ensure all of the Huntington's tools were returned to our shop. Although we work in that space often, other groups rent it as well, and many of the students we see at the shop at Huntington Ave are also in and out of this space or one of the many theaters in the complex on Tremont Street.

So, kind of like recovering seats last week at the Hunt...the end of this week has been pretty tedious. It just goes to show, people in this business have to love what they do. John Devlin told me they have to need it. I know I do because although it sucks sometimes, the results and the people are so worth it.