Androgynous

Posts may be few and far between as I attempt to struggle through Audrey. The most recent version of the script is several times better...the characters are beginning to be less the stereotypes that I originally sensed. Unfortunately, the earlier version must still be hardwired into my thinking as most of my rough sketches reflect the stereotype and not the person. I'm having such a difficult time with the Dad. I suppose the lack of experience with transsexuals may be a factor. Michael Miller lent me Cage aux Folles (the French movie, not the musical) to get ideas. Granted cross-dressing and transexuality are two different things, but it is a start. I may also be shopping with our actor and playwright on Sunday to find out what may work on him.

It is so much easier to get answers from the playwright than our director. I'm sure he has done fabulous work in other places and other times, but I have been less than thrilled with his previous production here, and with his process so far. At times during meetings I am interrupted, run over or completely ignored. I'm still not sure how much of that is intentional and how much is the result of his poor hearing. He cannot read rough sketches well; so much more time needs to be spent on fully rendering a thought to paper. Kina, our Korean scenic student, had a much more difficult time, though I don't know if she realizes how bad it really was. Language is always a barrier for her to begin with. When pushed in the right direction she's done fabulous work, but she has trouble managing our terminology, allegory, metaphor and the like. When a director states something, she tends to take it literally and apply it directly to the problem. In the end our director will get exactly but he asked for from her, but nothing that he wanted. The part that really irked me and the other designer was that the director began talking to Kina's advisor instead of directly to her, but not as a translator. It appeared as though she didn't even matter. Our lighting designer is terrified because of the abuse a former lighting designer from this program took for the director on the last production. It's such a shame to see our meetings deteriorate and painfully inch forward.

That feeling vanished in the read through. The director works very well with the actors and sincerely appears to want to produce the play Sara wrote. I'm afraid the production quality will suffer.

I am currently stalling from any other work. Tonight I should be up to eyeballs in paint again. Only 13 full color for David this time around. And 8 corrections to make to my rough ideas for Romeo and Juliet the Ballet. Audrey will certainly take up more time. And the makeup class needs two weeks of assignments graded. One step at a time. A few short nights last week, but this should be manageable. If you don't see any posts next week, you'll know it wasn't.