Things are getting busy!

All sorts of opportunities have come up - which is great as they are informing my research paper but I'm finding I'm very busy!
Yesterday I joined the Punchdrunk design team at the BAC to help with decorating some of the rooms for the upcoming production of Masque of the Red Death. It all seems very exciting as they're taking over the whole building and there's a hell of a lot of work to do, but there's something rather beautiful about returning the building to it's original Victorian era, even if it is going to be very dark and spooky! It will be interesting to return in a couple of weeks when I get back from the Prague Quadrennial and see how things have progressed.
I also met up with Elyssa again at the weekend to see what she'd come up with so far. There were a few things to think about:
- How to introduce the piece. Elyssa had tried speaking to the audience as herself before then going in to character. Not sure if that works yet. A bit of time needs to be spent for the transition, building up the set for example, setting out the table of jam making equipment.
- She is thinking of having a live actress to play the radio voice, but where will she be positioned? Within the house too? Up on a shelf perhaps!
- Lou was playing the guitar, and possibly going to be wearing a squirrel mask but for me that wasn't quite working. I think her moving downstage continuously to interact and then moving upstage to sit on her tree stump was too jarring. But this makes the dream sequences complicated, if she is not going to be involved. How will the squirrel be represented?
Today I found out that Lou will not be appearing at all which I think in a way will solve some of these problems and give Elyssa the chance to just think about developing her own character, but some of these issues still remain. How for example are the squirrels going to be conjured up? All remains to be seen in rehearsal at CPT tomorrow.