Starting, but not ending, with a new layout/color scheme. What do you think of the new look?

Yes, the icon is Buster from the fantastically funny show Arrested Development.

After the Friday night opening of Take Me Out I drove for about 4 hours to go on a “Guy’s Weekend” with my brother Dominic, brother in-law Bill, father, and 3 other guys; Jim (Dominic’s father-in-law), and Dominic’s friends Bill and Scott. It’s been scheduled for months, but when Take Me Out came up I had to miss the first day of the weekend because of Opening Night for the show.

Still, we had a blast. Riding the Quad/4 wheelers, (which I’ve only done a couple of times before), golfing, sitting around the campfire. A ridiculous amount of fun to cram into 2 days. (Now, thanks to several hours of zipping thru the woodland trails on a 4 wheeler and 9 holes of golf, my out of shape bones are stiff and sore! But it was worth it!) Now I’m back home, just got the kids tucked into bed, and Jeanne is falling asleep as I type!

When I got back, the kids were very excited about giving me ‘a present!’. Jeanne said that they had gotten me something for Christmas, but the kids now couldn’t wait and wanted to give it to me now. Well, the number of times I’ve refused presents is…let me think…yep, I think it’s zero. SO, the kids made me sit on the couch with my eyes closed, and Jeanne brought in the gift. When I opened my eyes, I found one of the cutest, best presents ever: A cartoonists version of my kids! You know at street fairs, they have people draw you as cartoons? Jeanne had one done of the kids, and it’s just beautiful. The artist really captured their smiles, their energy! So now, lucky me, I have a wonderful new piece to hang in a place of importance! Jealous?

Also, in case you haven’t kept up on your Williamston Theatre Project info, we have a reading this Saturday, in Williamston.

And, lastly, since I’m exhausted and going to go to sleep, I have to report that my Tigers have again dropped to 4 games below .500, after a DISMAL 1 and 5 road trip. *sigh* Still, better than last year.

Click here to see the Ann Arbor News review!

Hooray! We’ve made it to Opening Night for Take Me Out, and I’m very happy with the way the show turned out. Feel free to scroll down and read my Lessons Learned post about this experience, but right now I’m getting ready to go in and watch the show! I’ll post some reviews later, as they come out.

Next on the worklist: 2 more WTP readings, preparations for directing a show in Ann Arbor in the Fall, and our first WTP Production in the Fall, as well as continuing to move forward on important WTP things like Board of Directors, building, budgets, fundraising, strategic planning.

Sometimes it feels like we have miles to go, but then I remember that we’re starting from scratch, and every little step forward is still a step forward: A friend said to me the other day “Wow, the Williamston Theatre Project is more than just a dream now, it’s an actual entity!” and that made me smile because I realized, well, he’s right, and even though we have miles to go, we’ve also come a long way since the dream turned to discussion turned to action!

Okay, here’s a quick link to a short series of bloopers from Star Trek The Next Generation. Fun, a little bit of swearing!

Come hear Captain Picard say “Shit”!

PS- a few new icons, what do you think? Also, still no luck with the cd burner – anybody got ideas?! (Thanks to those who called with suggestions, they didn’t work…)

Still can’t get the iTunes on my computer to burn an audio disc!

Let’s see. I’ve gone to the new playlist I made, which is titled “Burn this to disc”. When I click it, the side window opens and shows the songs I’ve dragged in there. I make sure each song’s “checkbox” is checked. Then I click the “Burn Disc” wheel on the top right. It asks for a blank disc. I put in my CompUSA 16x 700 Megabyte CD-Recordable blank disc. iTunes says “Checking Media”. After it flashes that a few times, it says “Click Burn Disc to start…13 songs, 55:53 total time.” I click the flashing Burn Disc wheel. It says “Initializing Burn Disc” and the song titles flash by. Then it says “Writing” and lists the first song, and the Burn Disc starts wheel starts spinning. After about 15 seconds, it says “Canceling Burn Disc, this may take a minute.” Then it spits out the disc and I get the error message “The attempt to burn a disc failed. The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.”

Spec’s:
Machine Model: iMac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 512 MB
OS X (10.3.5)
iTunes v 4.7
CD Burner; Matshita DVD-R UJ-825
Quicktime 6.5.2

More details: Out of the 13 songs, when I go to get info, I see that 9 are Mpeg, and 4 are AAC. Is that a bad thing, and how do I fix it, if it is?

Are the CompUSA discs the problem?

I checked the songs in their folders, all are listed as Read & Write in Permissions.
I’ve done the iTunes software update from Mac.

I’m gonna hate having to lose my computer to take it into the shop to figure this out!!! Help! 🙂

Our friend Chip invited us to go with her and her son Parker to the UofM campus on Monday, to listen to a Carillon concert.

“A what?”, you may be asking. I know that’s what I asked.

A carillon is, in very basic layman’s terms, a musical instrument that most of us would consider “Bell Tower Chimes”. It’s played like a huge piano that has bells instead of strings, and although it’s played somewhat like a piano, the ‘keys’ are big wooden batons that are struck with an open fist, and there are a lot more pedals on the floor.

It was really amazing. The concert we attended was at 7pm, on a beautiful evening. We sat in the shade on the grass, and the carillonneur played an hours worth of music, a mix of classical, disney, swing and Broadway! She was up in the tower, of course, but they had set up a TV monitor at the base of the tower and if you wanted you could sit close and watch her play on the monitor!

The kids loved it, I was surpised how into it they were. After the concert, we met the carillonneur, Lisa Lonie, and got a tour of the Lurie Tower, which houses the carillon. It was quite spectacular.

Check out the website for the Lurie Tower Carillon. There are some great pictures, and a link to listen to recorded music AND live sounds from the carillon all day long.

I know it’s been a couple weeks, but I can’t resist posting more of these pictures from the fabulous All-Star Game. (Besides, we got our hi-speed connection today, and I’m celebrating by posting some pics to see how quickly they post!)

Since the last shots were “on the field” shots, I’ll do a few different ones here…

If you’re interested, Click here for the pics!

In a Past Life…

You Were: An Evil Fortune Teller. Where You Lived: Poland. How You Died: Consumption.

Well…it’s not what I expected…at least, not the Poland part…I kinda like the Evil Fortune Teller!

You must all click on the link above, take this test, and post here what your past life was!!

Sunday’s preview for Take Me Out went very well – the cast rocked, the audience was into it. It took 4 previews, but we finally hit a nice groove. Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll polish a few scenes, restage a couple, and tweak a handful of small moments and wrap this puppy up.

Some folks had asked about the lessons I’d learned during the experience of taking this show over. Needless to say, I had a great time. Good group to work with. Once again, as with every show, I’m reminded why I love what I do for a living, and how lucky I am to be doing it.

The specific lessons for this show, however:

Directing Lesson #1: Coming in, my goal was to honor Jim (the director I replaced because of illness), and his intentions and vision of the show as much as possible. I had discussions with the Artistic Director (Carla) and Jim’s Assistant Director (Gary), who were very helpful thru the whole process. I got from them as much as I could about the “Why’s” and “How Come’s” about the direction Jim was taking the show, and I tried to stick true to that. What I learned was that you can only do this to a certain point. It took me about 5 days too many to acknowledge that during any rehearsal process the show and vision grow and change, and we upgrade our plans to accomodate this. In my desire to ‘honor Jim’s intentions’ I almost killed the show, because I wasn’t acknowledging things that simply were not working: some moving wagons, the video screen/video playback moments, a few other little things. I was thinking “Man, this is a great concept, but it’s just not working cleanly, or effectively. Still, it’s Jim’s vision and I guess we’ll live with the best we can get.” That was my mistake. I was unhappy with it, but allowed it to be there. Finally, when I realized “Jim’s been directing many more years than I have – he would’ve seen this not working and re-booted the scheme. Why am I not doing that?!” Carla and Gary agreed with this assessment, and I made a few sweeping changes and a bunch of minor ones, and now we’re back to Telling The Story cleanly and effectively. So, the lesson? Remember to allow for change and growth. Usually I’m the one preaching this, but I allowed the out-of-the-ordinary circumstances to cloud my judgement until it was almost too late.

The other lesson:
Producing Lesson #1: Big Lofty Ambitious production goals are marvelous. However, poor execution of these goals due to lack of time and resources is not the same thing. This show was very ambitious – 11 actors, video screen with pre-recorded segments mixed in with live video feeds, several giant moving set pieces, 6 running showers, operating scoreboard with flashing lights, big sound and light designs. If the company had a tech crew of 8 and 3 times as much money for each budget, all of these things could’ve happened and looked tremendous. As it was, much of it was happening but it was happening poorly. NOT due to anyone’s lack of effort, or skills, or dedication. Time and Money and Amount Of People were the culprits here. So, the lesson? Big goals are great, but only if you can achieve the same level of professional quality on each element of the show. If not, simplify. Addition By Subtraction was the phrase that became important during this week of our production. Better to have a small show that looks polished and spectacular than a big ambitious show that looks like it almost came together.

Feel free to add any thoughts or comments, or debate any of my ramblings! And for goodness sake, have a nice Monday!