Posts Tagged ‘fiddler’

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Packed with more flaws than features

Monday, May 25th, 2009

It’s been an adventuresome holiday weekend. Friday night my team won at Theatresports for the third week, although I felt like we underperformed in general. The audience seemed to have a good time, though, so at least we didn’t do them a disservice. I don’t feel like my improv was anywhere near as lame as it was last week, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a show where I felt like I genuinely kicked ass, and I’m itching to have that happen again.

All weekend long we had hot, gorgeous summer-like weather. It was perfect for my barbecue on Saturday, which went quite well by and large, with a good cross-section of friends from theatre and various workplaces. After the barbecue I went and performed improv down the street at SecondStory, which was unremarkable but fun. Afterwards a bunch of people wound up coming back to my place for an impromptu karaoke party, including a bunch of people I’d never met before who were coworkers of one of my friends. All told it was a massively exhausting and teriffically fun day.

Sunday we had a photo shoot for Fiddler in the afternoon, which meant spending large amounts of time outdoors at the park in our costumes (mine looks like a cross between a 1920′s paperboy and a pirate). It was nice to get to be outdoors on such a fantastic day, although the shoot itself was tiring and as usual I look silly beyond measure. We were late for rehearsal because of it, and both yesterday’s and tonight’s rehearsal were stressed as we are less than two weeks from opening.

My new GPS arrived on Thursday, and I’ve been having fun experimenting with it. It took me almost no time to purchase the Doc Brown voice and get it installed on it, so now I have him barking directions while cautioning me to be careful not to run into my future self. I’m generally not a fan of these in-car machines – I think they’re poorly designed and packed with more flaws than features – but I’m absurdly bad at navigating around Seattle and I know if I don’t have something like this I’ll try using my iPhone with its maps instead, and that’s just dangerous.

The last big question mark at work with my project seems to have finally been cleared out of the way, so we are now full steam ahead towards the finish line. Unfortunately that line is a lot closer than where it should ideally be, so it’s going to be a tough push for everyone, but for me especially with Fiddler opening so soon. But I’d rather be busy than bored!

Dan.

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Time off from my life

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Urgh, I feel bad for neglecting this thing for nearly three weeks now, but things have just been insanely busy for me between work, improv and Fiddler rehearsal.

Improvise Your Own Adventure had its closing, and has now been replaced by a new show that looks incredibly cool to me but I thankfully had the wisdom not undertake. My Theatresports team went on for two successful weekends and then was beaten last weekend, and just last night I was placed on a new team that beat the previous one. So I’m managing to stay active in the circuit there. Last night was a very good improv night for me on the whole… in addition to being on a generally kickass team for Theatresports, I also had a show at SecondStory where I got to do a very fun Shakespeare scene with Greg Stackhouse. The downside is that I’ve been coughing up a lung all week long and have now begun to lose my voice, which is really bad news as I’ve still got a lot of activities on the docket for these next couple of days that require me to be booming and projecting.

Work is a madhouse… we are on an extraordinarily tight schedule and are still unable to finalize some fundamental aspects of the design due to legal and contractual considerations. I am confident it will all work out but am certain it will have taken its toll on me by the time we ship the product. Maybe I should start planning my vacation sooner rather than later.

I saw an extremely good price on a Garmin Nuvi 855T and decided to splurge on it, as the iPhone is decent for directions but doesn’t have as powerful a GPS antenna and is difficult to use while driving. Plus I can download a Doctor Emmett L. Brown voice for it, which is just all kinds of awesome.

Fiddler continues to progress. It’s been a long rehearsal process already and we don’t go up until the 5th of June, but it still manages to feel like we have less time than we need. I really need to work on my song, but I can’t with my voice like this…

Must get more sleep. Must get healthier again. Must force myself to take more time off from my life to let those things happen…

Dan.

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Sight of the water

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

I’ve gotten into the habit of snapping the occasional low-quality photo on my phone, and figured it would be neat to have an online destination for the ones I want to keep. So I’ve set up a mobile uploads album in my gallery. Here’s a taste:

I’ve occasionally seen these traps set up on trees outside my condo. The corn is hooked up to a bell, but I have no clue who could be listening for it to ring. The other day I spotted a squirrel next to one, frozen to the point where I thought it was a decoy or something.

Corn Trap Squirrel-bait

Here’s a shot of my new commute across Lake Washington on a relatively clear day. The commute has been pretty painless so far, minus a couple times there were blockages on the bridge. Even on the far more common grey days I find the sight of the water manages to get the endorphins releasing in my brain, which is nice. The second shot is on the way home on a rainy day… there’s apparently a pot of gold at the bottom of Lake Washington.

Commute Rainbow

Work has been stressful in a good way… we are beseiged with challenges but I am rising to them. I’m currently geeking out on some tough computational geometry problems, the kind I haven’t worked on in a couple of years. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with them on a regular basis but it’s cool knowing my expertise is what’s making all of this possible for them.

We had two performances of Improvise Your Own Adventure last weekend. I wound up being one of the main characters in the second one, and I thought it went pretty well. We left a couple of main threads of the story dangling, but on the whole I thought we did some respectable storytelling. My Theatresports team lost in its third weekend, but I’ve got another shot with another challenging team this weekend, so that’ll be fun.

Fiddler rehearsals continue as well. I ran “Miracle of Miracles” for the first time. It’s got a long way to go… thankfully there’s time.

Dan.

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Fraulein Teacup

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

First five days at Übermind went quite well. Had a working prototype going by the end of the week that has our client using words like “ecstatic” and “beautiful”, so I’m clearly off to a good start in the right direction. I’m a bit bemused by how far a little magic from the world of video games goes with these marketing types… not that I think the stuff I’m doing isn’t impressive, but the really impressive stuff I’m doing is all under the hood, in the 3D gaming engine I’ve been developing that makes what I’m doing efficient, scalable and portable to other projects. The stuff at the surface is cool, but in the gaming world could hardly be considered revolutionary.

My coworkers seem like a good a bunch. They obviously care about what they’re doing and they don’t balk at taking the necessary initiatives to get the work done, which is something I appreciate. There are a lot of interesting restaurants in the area I’ve been checking out with them during lunch, which is great… there’s an Indian buffet as well as a Thai place and more than one organic/hippie venue, although the most interesting one I found on my own: a seemingly authentic Jewish deli, which is practically unheard of in Seattle. Before this discovery, the only place I could go for matzah ball soup or a hot pastrami sandwich was the I Love NY deli right next to the Market Theatre (where I do improv with Unexpected), which has great food but I can almost never go to as they are only open until 5:30 or so, and I’m rarely at the theatre before 7. So, score.

Fiddler rehearsals have begun, although I’ve only been able to attend the meet-and-greet and one vocal rehearsal so far. It’s awkward for me, as I’m one of only two members of the cast who aren’t veterans of the rather tightly-knit group. Not that they haven’t been welcoming or anything (quite the contrary)… I’m just a bit weirded out by it. They also just did Fiddler about four years ago, which is awfully recent for a company to be restaging a show, so I think they share a common vision for it that I’m not necessarily a party to. The director already said he’d get me a DVD of it so I could pretty much learn my blocking from it… which is fine if it’s what he wants; I just hope this production has legs of its own and isn’t too trapped in the shadow of one that’s already been and gone.

Improvise Your Own Adventure also opens this week, so we have some madcap rehearsal going on for that. That one scares me a bit as we’ve been focusing mainly on fundamentals so far and haven’t had a chance to run the entire format yet. I’m able to have a lot more confidence in this group, though, having worked with most of them for over a year and knowing first-hand what they’re capable of, so I know it’s going to be good even if we wind up having to wrestle with the format for the first couple of performances.

I performed in Theatresports for the first time in a few weeks last night, and my team won by a narrow margin, which means we get to come back as returning champs next week. (We might have come up with a less abstract and arbitrary team name than Fraulein Teacup if we knew we’d be returning.) The team was randomly thrown together and consisted of myself, a woman named Rebecca who I love to play with for her commitment, spontaneity and joie de vivre, and a guy named Brandon who is one of the sharpest and most clever improvisers I know but rarely ever perform with as he does a lot outside the ensemble. We had a really fun audience which made things easy… I don’t know that any of our scenes achieved anything resembling greatness but they were respectable on the whole and we were suitably entertaining. I got an ovation from the audience when we played “Kick It” and I broke out rapping in the scene for four or five consecutive rhymes… it was just a shame that was the beginning of the scene; it would’ve been great to end it there. The other team was in extremely good form as well and I think it was a strong show overall, which is always nice.

I’m trying to relax as possible this morning, as between Fiddler and Improvise Your Own Adventure I’ve got about 6 or 7 hours of rehearsal this afternoon and evening. Maybe I’ll see if I can make it into that I Love NY deli before it closes and make it worth my while…

Dan.

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A mercifully major key

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

So I know I’ve been delinquent in keeping this thing up to date (sorry Richard), but not without good cause. A lot is changing, and I’m always hesitant to post when that’s the case. But I suppose it’s about time.

The big news is that I’m starting at a new company on Monday: Übermind. I am joining them as a resident expert on 3D and iPhone graphics, and will be putting my background in games development to use in the creation of games and game-like programs for the iPhone. It’s an exciting new opportunity for me to get (oddly) back closer to games development than I was at ArenaNet, and working on a fun platform that I can really use the benefit of my expertise on.

This means I’m starting my green card application over for the third time, something I’m none too keen on… but I have confidence that Übermind will make it a priority. As for ArenaNet, if it seems weird that I’m leaving at this low point in the economy, our parting ways actually began all the way back in December and was a long time coming. While I can’t discuss the details of it in a public forum you may be able to wrestle more of the story from me in private… to them I say only: “farewell”.

The other, less-big-but-still-significant piece of news is that I was cast as Motel in Fiddler on the Roof a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t even planned on auditioning for it… but I went to see my friend performing in a show up at the Historic Everett Theatre and got to talking with the director and a couple other people, and figured I’d throw my hat into the ring. Of course the role I really want to play is Tevye, but as was evidenced at the callback where there were nearly a dozen people in their forties or older up for that role and I was quite literally the only person there in my age/gender demographic, that isn’t going to be in the cards for a while yet. Which is fine, as Motel is the only other character in that show I have any real desire to play (Lazar Wolf might be okay too when I’m older, I suppose) as his song is short, sweet, in my range and in a mercifully major key.

I felt weird at the callbacks, as I was the only person called back for Motel, and had to stand there as five or six other lady actors took their turns posing next to me in consideration for the role of Tzeitel. I tried to make light of it, but all I could think was “these women must hate my guts right now” as they competed to be the “best fit” for someone whose sole demonstrable merit was being the only guy in the room who looked Jewish and was in his twenties. Our first meet-and-greet for it is tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. The show doesn’t go up until June, so at least there’s plenty of time for us to rehearse.

Meanwhile, at Unexpected, I’ve also been cast in their new show: “Improvise Your Own Adventure”, which as you may guess from the title is based on the old Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. The auditions for it were brief and it was another one of those “well, I wasn’t expecting to get cast in that” situations, but because it’s improvised at the theatre I’m already at anyway on most weekends it won’t really be impacting my schedule at all, so hey.

So lots of stuff going on these next few months. Übermind already needs me quite urgently for a specific product they’re developing, so I expect I will be burning the candle at both ends until it’s completed. But it’s been a while since I’ve had to do that, so that’s okay.

One rather interesting thing about working there is I will be a reverse-commuter, driving into Seattle every day and then back out to the east side in the evening. The extra distance doesn’t really bother me as long as I’m against the flow of traffic (which I certainly will be), although in talks with them there was already intimation about how long it would be before I moved to Seattle… I love my condo and my location, though, and am nowhere near ready to leave them behind, even for the thrill of city life.

What I do need, though, is a way to keep myself busy during the commutes, so I’m thinking of learning more about podcasts and trying to get the necessary setup to keep me regularly entertained by them while driving. If anyone has any experience in this area or recommendations of good podcasts to listen to, please let me know. I’m also in the market to purchase some kind of accessory for my iPhone that lets it play over my car’s FM radio while keeping it plugged into the cigarette lighter… again, recommendations are welcome.

Tonight I’m seeing Footloose at Tacoma Musical Playhouse, where I did Damn Yankees back in 2007. The show is nearly a who’s-who of people I know or have performed with in the Seattle area, so I’m excited to see it, even though driving to Tacoma is a pain.

So that’s pretty much it! This is my month of new beginnings: new job, new shows, new opportunities, and who knows what else… there’s still a good quarter of the month remaining!

Dan.

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