Let there be Light(s)!

This baby is sitting on a shipping pallet in Detroit. It's a 24 ch dimmer rack (which, for the uninitiated, does exactly what it's name suggests -- offers variable intensity for 24 independent channels of stage lighting). It will be coming into our Spring Hill location sometime next week.

We were lucky enough to find a top-notch supplier, Tom, at his Dimmerrack.com.
Tom is a former lighting designer/technician who was sick of ordering expensive units from major corporations, units that never offered the customization he required. So, what did he do? He started his own company, selling personalized dimmer-rack systems over the internet.

When I call Tom to talk about the system (yes he takes orders personally) you can here the bustle of activity from employees and machines on the shop-floor from which he works. He tells me his business is booming (all without advertising, corporate bloat, or mark-ups) and that he can't expand shop-space and payrolls fast enough.

As it is, Dimmerrack.com is one of the few businesses in down-and-out Detroit that's employing more and more skilled-laborers each year. It's a real triumph of American ingenuity, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the internet's ability to bring customers to the suppliers who truly deserve them.

If it wasn't for people like Tom, 1st Stage would be THOUSANDS of dollars poorer, a handful of Detroit's unemployed manufacturers would be TENS-OF-THOUSANDS of dollars poorer, and we all would loose the Art that so many more can now make at a much-reduced cost... ...and all that art is probably PRICELESS.

This is a real hope-inspiring bright-spot in these somewhat darker economic times. And I am proud to share it with all of you.

Thank you Tom.

Hoaxes, Propagana and Conversation

For those of you who saw me listed on the side of the blog and were wondering, I am the Stage Manager for The Suicide and Mark and Peter thought I may have something to say. It's a little bit of a break from the norm of this blog, but I want to start with how I got here.


My personal journey into theatre is a bit of a strange one. At the age of ten, I became a historical reenactor at Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Langley, Virginia. I spent 5 years there, pretending it was 1774 while I wore a costume, picked hornworms off of tobacco and got progressively more leathery feet. My mother still talks of my first week there, when she picked me up, filthy and exhausted and I blurted from under my white linen cap, "You know what I like about the farm? It's an elaborate hoax."

I left the farm and tried my hand a bushel of other artistic endeavors; cello, singing, tap and ballet, pottery and creative writing. But I always came back to theatre in the end.

When I went to college in 2003, it was with starry eyes and the aspiration of becoming a professional Stage Manager. I was pretty sure I was somehow going to win a Tony for it. Don't ask me how.

I did a lot of theatre in my college career. But somewhere, I lost the drive to keep going. It was too hard. The hours were too long. I had a thousand excuses for why it wouldn't work, for why I was unfit to Stage Manage even crazy people screaming in the park.

So when Mark approached me to do this, you'd think I, knowing all I know, would have hidden under something until the scary went away. I won't lie, I was excited. But the fear came upon me and shook me by the shoulders. You'll fail, it told me. And then what?

And yet, when I approached a friend of mine, Esta, she knew exactly what I had to hear. "Feel the fear," she wrote, "and do it anyway."

This has become my mantra in the past few weeks. Every time I feel overwhelmed or confused or anything of that nature, I just remind myself that I can feel this fear, and I can do it anyway.

First Stage is one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of. I am terrified and elated, worried and calm, frustrated and excited. I am learning, more than I ever did in college, that this is what is right for me. And in the end, it all comes back to a dirty little girl in the passenger seat of her mother's car and her precocious "elaborate hoax."

None of us are prepared for what this show will bring us - we can't be. The more I see of the performances our cast is bringing out, the more I realize that we are subversive and subtle. Every conversation with Mark or Peter or David or Lucas leads me down a new side road of this odd, creative labyrinth. And in the end, if it is an elaborate hoax, if it is scary, if it is done, than it must be right.

There is no reason not to create this art. I've read philosophers who spend volumes trying to define man's need to create. But I want to challenge the idea that it needs a reason. Why, with all that there is in the world, should we not make something wonderful?


I was looking for Soviet Propaganda a while back when I came across a video produced in America in 1948 called "Make Mine Freedom." You can watch it below:


This video stirs so much in me. The blatant fear mongering, the subtle racism and the obvious stereotypes are one of the most wonderful examples I can think of for why we must create. We have something to say, something we need to get out, and once we do, there is someone who must disagree with us. Creation is a conversation, it is a community act. And that, I think is why First Stage is so important. A community like Fairfax County must be in communication. We must be collectively creating. We must find the lies and bring forth truth through creating art. The greatest compliment, I think, would be for there to be a second professional theatre in Fairfax County.

So I'd like to end this with a challenge to all of you; go and find something that makes you angry or sad, and use it to converse. It can be as old as Titian's paintings, or as new as the Olympic opening ceremonies. I ask you to dissent, to argue and to create. Then come back here, and tell me about it.

Continuing our series of internet-found odd but inspired performance...

I give you BEARDYMAN!