My latest technical project: Manifesto 2050 written and performed by Alex Hetrick. Set in a not so distant future it examines hyper-masculinity and just what exactly is technology doing to us…
I will be in the booth as operator and designer. Back in the wonderful BCN Studio, we’ve been hard at work plugging sound cues and programming lights in order to bring this show to life next week May 19th with an additional show the following Tuesday May 26th.
What I love most about designing lights is creating the world of a play. The lights are something that no one notices if they’re done well but makes all the difference in capturing the audience and leading them down the rabbit hole into the mind of the writer, director, performer(s), etc. It’s an indispensable piece of the theatre. And when you can take not only the literal image but the feelings and emotions out of the mind of the artist and throw them across the stage, it is a magical feeling for everyone involved.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to play along with incredibly talented improvisers from all over Europe in Valencia’s Impro Narrativa Festival.
It was three days of absolute shenanigans, whimsey, mystery, tomfoolery, and even some serious tones all formatted in various long form improv. There were classic structures alongside creative new ideas of storytelling and I got to be a part of it all. The picture above is my view from their light desk as I was live busking to the stories onstage. The venue was fabulous and it was a familiar challenge to me color mixing on the fly and following performers around the stage as the light board operator/designer.
My two favorite shows were “King’s Whim” as an audience member and “Sound Off” as a technician. “King’s Whim” featured two players, one straight man, one fool. There were pranks and destruction and panic and speed as the court jester and playwright have 30 minutes to write a show for the “king” based on audience suggestions. It was full of both wit and slapstick and had me cackling from the booth. “Sound Off” was a 45 minute long form, again, with only two players. These women were physical geniuses – as the whole piece was done without dialogue, only music from a live piano player and sound effects from the two players. As the lighting tech, I was able to play along with them with total freedom, becoming a character, myself. I used the lighting to change the time and create a lighthouse – it was one of my favorite things to create their world and environment.
I had such a blast at this festival and exploring the city of Valencia when I was off the clock. I will definitely be pinning this festival for the future and have made plenty of friends to visit in other cities around Europe and beyond.
This spring I’m flying south…well, riding a train…
Held in Valencia, Impro Narrativa’s festival begins March 26, and features workshops and multiple performances each night of their four day improv festival. I’ll be serving as their “Light Magician,” sitting in the sky with their lighting console and looking out over the grid.
My experience in theatrical lighting began in high school where I was recruited by my friends who specialized in design but needed a gofer to sit behind the board and push buttons. From there I learned to use an ETC Element board (no, not one as fancy as the image above, try a model four or five decades earlier), hang lights, secure cables, and a basic understanding of live-busking. At my university, I went on to choose electrics as my area of technical-concentration and continued hands-on training along with the theory behind it all in a class officially called, “The Fundamentals of Technical Theatre Design” – fondly christened by students as “Fundies: where fun goes to die.” But the class, and the manual labor, proved more than useful when I found myself trouble-shooting console control in a museum made theater in Germany. And I really pulled VectorWorks from the depths of my brain when I was commissioned to design and install an electrical grid in a budding theater space here in Barcelona.
I now work freelance gigs like this one as well as design and board operator jobs among my friends, colleagues, and hopefully many more to come.
At the end of this month, I’ll be headed to Lisbon for Stand Up Europe‘s next Comedy Festival. And while it will surely be a weekend full of jokes, drinking, and classic comedic tomfoolery, this time I’m there to work!
I’ll be leading one of the several workshops the festival offers, focusing on an essential tool for every comedian: the Voice.
As comedians, we’re ultimately story tellers – just funny story tellers. Our instrument? The body and, maybe even more importantly, the voice. A good comedian has good jokes, true, but good jokes still need good delivery. There are several key elements to the voice, and control of all them is essential. Volume, speed, pitch, inflection, and diction are all necessary tools of the comedian and all of these begin in the body itself. Beginning with posture and breath-work, we’ll build our voices back up again from scratch before learning to manipulate them in order to create characters, convey tone, and be understood. Non-semantic cues such as pauses and inflection are crucial in engaging your audience but especially so when both performers and audiences are operating in a second, third, or even fourth language. When you’re working outside your mother language, you have a lot working against you, don’t let intelligibility get in your way! Learning to tell a story with not just words, but with voice, will enhance any comedian’s ability to land the joke, get the laugh, and tell their story onstage.
I’m always happy to be back with the team at Stand Up Europe as I’ve attended their festival as a participant twice before, on location in Frankfurt and Prague last year. A small team, they have built an incredible community of comedians from all across Europe and the world. Every workshop and mic is a friendly, encouraging, fun space to tell your favorite jokes and try new ones. Not to mention to meet a whole bunch of other artists and subsequently make a bunch of new friends!
Artists stick together. And upon planning a European tour, my friend and I (another comic) realized that out of 35 cities, we knew performers and show runners in 30 of them. When I last traveled – to Vienna – I applied for open mics before a friend of mine from the festival asked if I wanted a showcase spot. I said absolutely! He asked if I had 10-15 minutes which I did, then with a couple taps of his phone and a few minutes later he responded, “You’ve got 15min on Tuesday.” I had another comic here in Barcelona put me on his show despite never having seen me perform, just trusting that I knew what I was doing. These are the kind of connections that these festivals foster and these are the kind of connections both business and friendship that everybody needs.
I start the year off with a new hosting gig here in good ol’ Barcelona. Joining a friend of mine hosting an open mic in the Gothic Quarter every Friday night.
Then this spring I head south to Valencia to join Narrativa Improv Fest as their light board operator.
Additionally I’m back to the drawing board…or rather the writer’s board covered appropriately in sticky notes and scribbles to reconstruct a play from the vaults of my hard drive.
We’ve got some more projects in the works, too! Including going for round two with an old student on her new work-in-progress solo comedy hour and a new mysterious creative project with a friend abroad…well, if Austria counts as abroad?
Stay tuned and catch me teaching corporate workshops and private lessons on communication, narrative, and presentation.
