Feb 19

...And then, when all hope is lost, and the world is a very dark place indeed, you receive a shipment of glittery peacock feathers, and all is right with the world again...

Feb 13

My grandmother IS Amanda Wakefield. Heart-wrenching. Thank you, Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Brian J. Smith.

Feb 5

I love environmental theatre!

Jan 31

A nice memory from the summer. I'm really not inspired by much today.

Jan 28

Some days, my life involves building structures out of yoga blocks in order to understand how to construct something else 3-dimensional.  Who said building blocks are for kids?

Jan 23

All in a day's work...

Blurry Reasoning

I have a bizzare fascination with blurry photos. I always find them more mysterious, and often, more beautiful than their perfectly focused counterparts. Of course, there are many a time when a crisp image is absolutely necessary, but sometimes I miss the enigma of identifying objects through the blur, be it intentional or accidental.


I photograph every theatre show that I work on, ostensibly for portfolio purposes, although I had no need to share my portfolio with anyone for close to four years now. I find the documenting process fascinating, and my iPhoto is littered with an average of 100 shots per show, when I *might* use 2 to represent a particular production. I work on up to 15 shows a year - you do the math.



And when photographing the show, accidents happen. Not enough light or too much motion on stage being the most frequent culprits, I always end up with folders titled "BLUR". So I would like to share my most recent one, and maybe you too will be fascinated with blurry reality...

More Recent Distractions

As I can't stay away from doing crafty things with fabric, I covered this screen with different fabrics I chose for a production at work:

Notice how the screen fabric matches the throw on the chaise? That's intentional:)

And then I turned this:

Into this:

I think to date the back-and-white has been my favourite fabric to work with, as it was a linen that did not fray at all, and the pattern, while complex, was both symmetrical in all directions AND predictably repetitive:)

Hacking IKEA

There is a wonderful blog called IKEA Hacker. It is for/by people who like to customize IKEA furniture. Consider this my entry into this category of (somewhat crazy, always handy and imaginative) people.


This room was an unhappy storeroom for properties, when my theatre was dearly lacking space for dressing rooms. Moreover, we also lacked money. Fortunately, I had about a month of summer to figure out what to do about all this. There was an odd space in the basement that could house the props, if they were condensed and organized.

My assistant and I spent a couple of weeks sorting through the contents of the properties storage, and came up with enough items we could sell/give away. Amazingly enough, through a combination of eBay and Cragislist we made enough money on the unused props to buy shelving for the new storage room in the basement, AND to supplement some of the new furniture for the dressing room.

With budget still a concern, there was only place to to turn - IKEA.


We created space for 12 actors to put on makeup, as well as storage for wigs and shoes.






The counters were hacked from shelving units Udden, combined with Vika Kaj legs. The niche was created from the Udden units as well, but the metal sides left over from the units used for counters were used as spacers, creating the correct height for wig heads.

Other products used in the said hack were:

Mirrors Kolja
Mirror Minde
Mirror Raan
Chairs Herman

Dressing rooms always need lights surrounding the mirrors, and an inexpensive solution was found in undercabinet lights Liesta, plugged into power strips Rabalder

Unfortunately, since the hack was complete, IKEA discontinued these particular undercabinet lights, so when the bulbs burn out, we have dark spots. Other mini halogens are quite pricey, but I am considering replacing the burnouts with their current incarnation, Non lights. I believe they accept the same power connections, so it won't be much of an issue.