Day 3 on the No Nicotine Fundraiser where, they tell me, the rubber meets the road so far as withdrawal. This is supposed to be the Dark Day, and the final day. After 48 hours there is no nicotine in your system, and so your body craves it all that much more…but after this it’s suppose to get easier.

Day 3 is brought to you, as were Days 1 and 2 (and that little snippet on the 19th that doesn’t really count) by Susan Bedard.

Let me say this as politely as I can.

The Smoking Cessation industrial complex is brilliant. They have the entire nation, top to bottom, convinced that quitting smoking is the single hardest thing you’ve ever done. Harder than birthing a baby, harder than making Richard III sympathetic, harder than trying to explain to non-Americans that we didn’t all vote for imperialistic capitalism. BUT they will sell you something that will make it easier. And if you don’t make it this time, they’ll be right here to help you next time, and the time after that. What a friggen scam.

Aside from the neck tension, and jaw tension, and the stunning realization that my car smells very much like a 1970’s tobacconist’s - especially in the seasonal 70 degree weather. The only consequences have been psychological.

I used smoking as punctuation, and reflection.

On waking and sleeping, on setting out and returning, and as dessert for any meal. It was also my time killer of choice while sitting outside and talking for hours and hours.

So aside from losing my punctuation (which is disorienting) and something to do with my hands while I harangue who ever gets stuck at my house… nothing really.

Until I got bored. See. Saturdays are sit around days. I built them that way on purpose. Read a magazine and smoke. Play a half of Madden on the PlayStation - smoke. If you tack 10 minutes (two cigarettes) onto any activity, the days are just packed.

Take those away? THAT will make you peel your face off.

So the Smoking Cessation industrial complex is absolutely right… America is screwed… because we are all SO bored with our lives that quitting is impossible.

So I’m thinking that I’ll:

1. Finish the grant application budget.
2. Write another blog entry or three
3. send my Christmas Cards
4. Go Christmas Shopping
5. Go get branches or a bench for Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel at First Night.
6. Walk (not smoking WILL make you eat…)
7. Make sure Will gets the video for First Night so he can get it formatted for First Night.
8. Watch Squid and the Whale
9. Make another pot of coffee
10. Write a cover letter and exhibit list for the grant application.

I’m sure there are other things to get through… but I’m only killing the one day.

And I do need to call today’s sponsor. She rocks.

Tags: Uncategorized by Travis
No Comments »

As of 10:00 PM CST I have quit smoking for the duration of the production of Transformations.

Megan retrieved the mail after Christmas shopping for me, and in the mail were checks from Gramma Turner, Aunt Claire and Uncle Dave, Nana Poirier, and my Mom. The last brought me back through today and so I have stopped.

The numbers? You all have been exceedingly generous, and with today’s money received we are at $765 pledged with most of that received.

$765? Three more dollars than National Villain Barry Bonds has home runs. That’s right. Who’s the king now?

On receiving the mail I was giddy. The giddy has died down a bit as the reality sets in, but I have everlasting gobstopper candy canes, cinammon sticks and nicorette.

Pictures of the Ceremony below:

Tags: Uncategorized by Travis
No Comments »

After missing the opening meeting with (most of) the cast, there was no shot I was going to miss the first work with them. And on Saturday we set out.

Megan took Jessica Kincer (our Sleeping Beauty) for a shoot for part of the visual element of that piece. I tagged along. I do that.

 
Megan stalks Jessica in the woods.

 
Sleeping Beauty in the wild.

After feeding the ever ravenous Ms. Kincer, we headed over to The Foundation to meet with Kasey Glantz, and Liz Watts for their first time on this project.

Is there anything better than getting into The Room with talented folks and watching their creative muscles begin to flex as the burden of the show begins to shift to their shoulders? Not for my money.

 
Ms. Glantz

 
Ms. Watts in coffee camouflage.

Tags: Uncategorized by Travis
No Comments »

On Monday night, while I celebrated the holiday with my coworkers, Megan had a bunch of folks over to the house. She pitched them the show over pizza, and now we have some faces to go with with the amorphous aesthetic ideas we’ve been trying on for size for the last few months.

This step is always amazing to me. It’s amazing even after a traditional audition for an established text, but when you are developing a show and this talent falls out of the sky and is simply the only possible, perfect choice for what you’ve been imagining… that’s magic.

This is where everything comes into focus. The nagging questions of this specific moment, or the look of that special piece will be answered by this person who  hadn’t even been involved two weeks ago. Their fresh eyes, and their own personal aesthetic will round the edges of this piece, completing it.

And actually, in this show, they are also often the canvas we are painting on. We’re lucky to have them. Hell, we’re ecstatic to have them. Soon. Soon I will introduce them to you. Hang onto your hats.

Tags: Meta, Production by Travis
No Comments »

There have been very few projects that I have worked on that haven’t had a talented base group. In the small theatre worlds of San Francisco and Austin (my only experience) there are always little compromises to be made. Sometimes that one role that needs a Look just didn’t have a Super Talent walk through the door, or maybe you got your audition notice out late and you had poor turn our in general.

This sort of tightrope walk is always less prevalent when you’re creating your own piece, as we’re doing here with Transformations, and it as almost non-existant when you are both creating your own work and you are cherry-picking the participants.

Megan starting putting this group together in a steady stream of dropped hints and vague descriptions months ago. So it had been an open question of who was going to be involved no matter how many names were on the ‘maybe’ roster. And no matter who ended up on the Opening Day squad, Will and I hadn’t worked with them. I was familiar with many of them, and had seen some of their work, but actually sat in a room with them?

No sir.

Over the last few weeks as we popped the clutch and locked into third gear here at Transformations HQ we’ve begun meeting several times a week to keep everything on pace and on target. And, truth be told, to keep repeating our to do lists out loud to one another so we wouldn’t forget anything, no matter how many places such things were written down.

Will spent quality time on The Couches back in Intermission times, but Sarah Mosher was joining us, and I had no idea what to expect. I knew that she was taking Megan’s admonition to “do whatever you want. No. Seriously.” to heart. She had shared some of her ideas previously, but on Tuesday after we had covered most of what we could possibly talk about with only four of the (estimated) 457 creators of this project in the room, Ms. Mosher casually whipped out her pad and flipped it open to show us this:

This is a roughly eighth scale scan of her rendering of one of her two pieces, Little Red Riding Hood. I immediately became a member of the I Hate Sarah Mosher Club (I’m told there are t-shirts). I am deeply envious of any artistic skill, and it was clear that this was a sketch for her.

Two things:

1. I’m not telling you the secret of the dress.
2. Any producers dream, immediately after never ending funds, is to be the least talented person in the room.

It’s going to happen a lot with this show. I couldn’t be more excited.

Technorati Tags: Austin, Texas, theatre, Creation, Sarah Mosher, Little Red Riding Hood

Tags: Uncategorized by Travis
1 Comment »

The excitement is in the air!

Can you feel it!?

Yesterday we signed the contract with Salvage Vanguard, and now we can say without reservation that the show will go on.

February 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 9th, 10th.
It’s real.

There’s so much ephemeral shuffling of deck chairs in the production of any show that the touchstone moments, those moments of hard reality, become a little bit more heightened.

There should be something dreadfully prosaic about the simple legality of singing a rental contract. I have leased an apartment for a decade, resigning my latest lease just last Saturday, and never once have I been EXCITED about it. I was pretty relieved on signing my first lease in San Francisco.. but we were homeless at the time.

This is different.

It’s one thing to SAY you have a theatre company.
It’s one thing to get a group of talented people together and start hashing out a show.

It’s a whole different thing to really honestly have a space for it, and a time frame.

Maybe this it what it feels like for first time home buyers?
The commingled joy and terror of "It’s really ours and it’s perfect!", combined with a nagging "How in the WORLD are we going to pay for it!??!"

I’ll take it.

Do I have to mow the lawn for those two weeks?

Tags: Production by Travis
No Comments »

To every story there is a beginning.

If it is a well told story you will never be told the minutiae of the beginnings, so in my efforts to tell a story well, I’m going to skip the boring parts.

Cambiare Productions was born of three people who share enough theatrical vision to work well together, and disagree enough to create a broader range of performance and installations than they would separately.

For my money the only reason to begin a company is to create work that otherwise wouldn’t be done. And the only reason to bring people on board is if they augment your vision in some way. Or if you augment theirs.

Cambiare was created out of the realization that as a group we could create very good theatre that other groups weren’t interested in taking a chance on. In this case the idea that we could take the performance/installation hybrids that Megan was immersing herself in and making a night of theatre out of them.

And so Cambiare Production and our first production, Transformations were hatched in the same stroke. We are not a repertory company. We’re not going to produce seasons (not just yet anyway). We’re going to produce projects that excite us. Projects that are in our bones that other companies won’t do with us.

We will continue working with other groups, Will and I with Gobotrick Theatre Company, and Megan freelancing as a lighting designer. But we look forward to creating our own space in this community making theatre that moves us, and telling stories the way we would like them to be told to us. Which is, as near as I can parse it, the golden rule of theatre.

In this corner of the internet we hope to bring you interviews with the impressive group of people Megan has brought together to create Transformations, and some insights into the process that goes into creating this amalgamation of storytelling techniques.

Two months from today Cambiare Productions will be delivered into the Austin community, I do hope that you’ll join us during this gestation period and celebrate with us on February 1st when this child springs forth.

Tags: Meta by Travis
No Comments »