Nerd alert.

Strix and I have been talking for some time about going through and trying to find all of the music that plays at the Bronze and at parties and just incidentally in the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We just like the music.

So, how do you find a list of all of the music ever featured in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series?  You type "Buffy music" in Google and go straight to it.  Damn, I never thought it would be that easy.

So, Episode 1 is Welcome to the Hellmouth.  The first song featured is as follows:

Saturated

Sprung Monkey

Plays as Buffy tries on different outfits.

The first episode features four songs by Sprung Monkey, all of which are available on iTunes, but then has a song called "Losing Ground" by Mindtribe and "David Aragon" by "No Heroes," presuming that's not the other way around.  Does anyone know where I can get these?

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The play is over!  Thursday was the pickup rehearsal, with performances Friday night and last night.  We struck the set last night, so Friday night we had the cast party at my house.

Last Sunday was the matinee performance, and I took my camera in because after the show we did show shots, where we basically go through all the scenes in costume and do the blocking so they can take pictures for the theater group's website.

Girls Getting Read

I took this one backstage before the performance, with all the girls getting their stage makeup on.

Actor Fuel

Sure this is community theater, but who says we don't get paid for it?  Donuts and coffee kept us going... though of course one of the other actors had to buy it and bring it in.

Michelle

Michelle is the wife of one of the actors, and as such she got roped into being a stage hand.  Her son Talon is here signing posters with her.  Each actor, stage hand, and tech got a poster, and as a result each of us had to go through and sign each one, which takes a while.

And here are the show shots.  Of course, I didn't get any of the scenes with me in it, but Strix was there and took shots of all of them with a nicer camera than what I have.  You can see her shots on her Flickr page.

From Act 1:

I didn't get many shots of Act 2, mostly because I was in most of it, but also because the stage lighting was much darker and most of my shots came out blurry.

Act 3:

Dear Brutus Set Shot 1

A shot of the set with no actors on it, with Act II lighting.  Act I and Act III take place entirely in the house, on the left side of the stage (stage right), which was set up on a giant rotating platform built just for this play.  In Act II, the house is rotated around as you see it here, and all the action takes place on the right side of the stage (stage left) where the tree and rocks are.

Dear Brutus Set Shot 2

The moon played a large part in my Act II scenes, so they projected it up on the wall off stage right.  Of course, it has a fire alarm right in the middle of it.  Pretend it's a Lunar colony, okay?

Joey and Lisa

Joey, in the red dress, between show shots.  She was playing my character's wife, and here was dressed up for Act III, with a leaf still stuck in her hair.  Lisa, right, was the show's director, and she's telling us who's up next.

Strix

Strix, taking a picture in the dark.

Lisa

Lisa, making herself at home.

80s Trivia

The only decent shot I got of the after party Friday night.  I took this from the loft while my friends played 80's trivia.

So that's all for now, and I'm caught up.  Until next time.

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The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)

Philip Pullman

This morning while waiting for the plumber, I finished The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, by Philip Pullman, the series which started with The Golden Compass.

I was, unfortunately, mildly disappointed with this ending to the imaginitive series about multiple worlds and an eternal struggle between control and freedom.  This book was imaginitive and did tie up the loose ends, but somehow dissatisfying.  It is perhaps because after much anticipation, some of the solutions seemed a little too easy, a little too pat, and a little too much like Pullman was tired of his own material.

That also seems evident in how scattered this book was, running in different directions and not really sticking to the central story.

Still, overall I enjoyed the series and would recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy or science fiction.

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Finding Neverland (Widescreen Edition)

Man, I've been busy, and now that I've started rehearsing for the next play even though the current one isn't finished, it's likely to be like that for a while.

A few nights ago, Strix and I watched Finding Neverland.  Johnny Depp plays J M Barrie, the Scottish playwrite who wrote Peter Pan and - not incidentally - Dear Brutus, the play I'm in right now.  Finding Neverland is supposed to be about the inspiration that lead Barrie to write Peter Pan.  The beginning of the movie says, "Inspired by Actual Events," or something along those lines, and that's all you can really say, because it's not a true story.

In the movie, Barrie meets Sylvia Davies when she is already a widow, in 1903.  In reality, he met them when the patriarch of the family, Arthur, was still alive, in 1897.  Arthur didn't actually die until 1907.  Peter Pan was already written by 1903, based somewhat on the children in the Davies family, so the fact that the movie had poor Slyvia a widow four years before her husband actually died was the screenwriter's way of making her more of a love interest for Barrie.

We put this movie at the top of our Netflix list because I was interested to learn more about Barrie since I'm in a play written by him right now.  The character I play, Mr. Dearth, is semi-autobiographical, I think.  Barrie's relationship with his wife, Mary Ansell, was, at least according to some, a cold and possibly even sexless marriage.  Mr. Dearth is in a marriage with a wife that hates him, apparently for failing to measure up to some unspoken ideal that she had set up.  Dearth is an artist, and his wife is a model, whereas Barrie was a playwrite, and his wife was an actress.  Barrie and his wife were childless, a fact that he apparently regretted since he romanticized childhood so much in Peter Pan, and Dearth and his wife are likewise childless, a fact which he regrets but she does not.  There are a good number of parallels.

Despite the movie's playing fast and loose with the facts, it was very entertaining to watch, and had excellent performances from Depp (of course), Kate Winslet (Sylvia Davies), and an incredibly cold and unlikable Radha Mitchell (Mary Ansell, Barrie's actress wife).

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Opening night for Dear Brutus went off without a hitch, and now I'm back at the theater for the second show. We run it again tomorrow, then twice next weekend.

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I wasn't old enough for the director last night, so they aged me even more tonight.

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So in the first Act, the actress playing my wife is quite proper looking, with her hair swooped up high on her head.  In Act II, she turns into a homeless bag-lady, and so back stage during intermission in rehearsal last night, the hairdressers were working hard to rat it out big-time, hairspraying actual leaves and twigs into it.  It looked wild.

Me: Hey, Joey, you got a real Helena Bonham Carter thing going on there.

Helena of the Wild Hair

Joey:  Yeah, but I don't have a Johnny Depp.

Me:  Well, in this scenario, I would be Johnny Depp.

Hair Dresser:  Huh!  If you were Johnny Depp, I would be on stage with you, and I'm not even an actress.

Uh huh.  In other words, "Sir, I know Johnny Depp, and you are no Johnny Depp."

Oh, well.

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The director decided I need to look older. This is the result of the makeup. Stage lights wash everything out, so they have to really have to do it up.

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I might as well have kept my costume from A Christmas Carol, sans the cape.

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Sunday morning, I helped move the set from the scene shop to the theater at the college, where we will be performing. Here are a couple more shots of the set in progress.

The house is on a giant rotating platform that had to be disassembled into two pieces and trucked over on a flatbed. And yes, it's heavy!

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