Here we are arriving at the Singapore Zoo. Notice the suspicious look on Elina’s lovely face? Just after we entered the zoo, a bubbly woman named Julia offered to take our picture then take us on a tour and buggy ride. Elina suspected some huge charge after the fact, but I act unconcerned. In fact, what is that expression on my face? That is my excited face. Because I know what’s to come.
To assuage Elina’s suspicions I told her that once a day the Zoo picks a random group who come into the zoo to give them a free, personalized tour of the park and we were just the lucky chosen today. “It’s a guest relations campaign,” I say. She grins, saying “that makes sense.” We set off.
On our tour, Julia takes us past the naked mole rats, leopards, lions, and giraffes, giving us a zoological story for each. For example, the giraffe’s tongue is covered in a thick, slimy coating that helps grab onto its food:
Eventually we arrive at the Fragile Forest exhibit, an walk-through home to flying foxes, lemurs, multitudes of birds, butterflies (the horror!), and (most importantly) two-toed sloths.
We wander the path for a bit before coming to a raised wooden platform in the center. Here, the zookeepers wait with buckets of fruit and veggies for us to feed the animals. Within a few minutes, they’re everywhere!
Animals fed and Elina distracted, It's time. I take something from my pocket and hide it in my fist. When the fruit is all gone I snare Elina in a hug and tell her how much I love her. I tell her she means the world to me, and how I really couldn’t imagine a life without her.
What she says back to me is perfect: “I so want to live the rest of my life with you.” So at that moment I get down on one knee, hold up the ring, and ask: “Elina, will you marry me?”
She says yes.
Life is beautiful when you are with the one you love.
I have been, for so long, both slave and master to my computer. I've shaped it to my will, and at the same time, it's my absolute default answer to about anything. If I want to see, research, play, read, compute, or learn, I always, always start at my computer. This makes sense to me for a number of reasons: 1. the cost is right (most internet information/entertainment is free or very cheap relative to other sources). 2. It's powerful and flexible. 3: It's self contained. In all, it's my minimalist side's dream-machine. It's even how I communicate. Like right now. As I type this.
But I use it too much. As it's my standard answer, it's my standard action. So for now, every time I sit down at my computer, I'm going to ask myself what I want out of it. If I can't come up with a good answer, I'll find something else to do. Really, I've read shamefully few books for how much reading time I have.
Boring....
Lion King, while relatively lucrative and seemingly glamorous, is not what I want to be doing. I'm realizing this more and more as time goes on. We are assembly line workers for Theatre. The most successful day we (by definition) the most boring day. The best employees for this are able to do the EXACT same thing every day. It's not like we stand at a register or sit behind a desk feeling like we do the same thing every day. It's more than that. We physically do the exact same actions. Hear the exact same sounds. Exactly. It's surreal in its regularity.
Of course, This means I have a decent amount of down time on the job (after setting up and between cues) in trade for a good amount of actually-free free time outside of work. Essentially, I spend long amounts of time doing something I have vague interest in doing, followed by a small amount of time for things I'm really interested in. This must be switched. I either need a time consuming occupation like this one that has much more day-to-day fulfillment for me (like building sets for theatre/film), or else have less time in something like this (ideally ~30 hours per week) with many, many more side-projects; the way I lived in University left me with a great love for having my fingers in a bunch of different pies at once, or else to have the pie taste different with every slice. I am currently dining on a beautiful, gorgeous pie with a delicious crust, but the most bland filling possible. This is fine for now (it's a way to save up for the future and get into paying off my student debts), but this is not OK long term.
Interesting
That said, Elina and I are endeavoring to keep up a regimine of interesting things and are starting to look forward into planning our next move(s). Currently, I'm still working on my Iron Man Helmet (really, really slow process given my various limitations. My Mandarin is pooling into a slightly usable vocabulary of words and phrases. Guitar has fallen a bit by the wayside, but I'm picking it up again soon. Elina is reading a host of plays in search for inspiration. She is learning to roller skate to play in a fledgling Roller Derby team just starting here. We visited Melbourne for her Graduation a few weeks ago and saw a few good shows and wonderful people there (really wonderful, I'm not giving that trip the time it deserves on here). And finally, Elina and I got her a birthday gift of an Accordion. She's in the process of learning how to play, in search for a teacher that can work with her schedule. Yay accordion!
As to future plans, we're looking into a few things. Our thoughts for possibilities range all over: moving to Chicago or Baltimore and jumping into the theatre scene there; Elina joining a physical theatre school just North of LA while I find work; staying in Singapore to help develop the local theatre scene; move to Paris on a Singapore Arts grant to study at a clowning school; other possibilities as well. The possibilities are really exciting, and we're listening hard for possibilities that blow this way. In any case, it should be wonderful.
Mini-Documentary
While we were setting up the show, there were occasionally cameras around, creating a sort of "Making Of." You can find it on YouTube in three parts. I'm not in it (Elina is briefly), but it does include a smattering of people I work with and a good amount about the show:
That's all for now. I'll try to put a sense of urgency into my life; it's so easy to push things off onto tomorrow when everything is the exact same day-to-day. Even the weather. I'm sure you'll hear from me again....
The I've decided to grab a project that seems interesting (and that I know very little about), and just do it. This is how I've tricked myself into making an Iron Man helmet. In effect, this is what I mean to make:
I started this journey, as I start many journeys, with an enormous amount of internet research. More specifically, I've been spending inordinate amounts of time on two websites: The RPF and The 405th, both movie prop/costume replica diy enthusiast forums. Just the places. There, I found a collection of papercraft files that, when you print on cardstock, cut out, and glue together, you end up with a full-size paper model of whatever it is. In my case, I end up with a paper Iron Man helmet. This is the point of the process I'm on now, having leisurely been cutting/gluing for a week. Essentially step 2 of 50. Excellent.
It looks pretty good, but thankfully it's a low-res picture, so you can't see the oops-bits, nor the fact that the helmet is just a squeeze too small, nor that I used a supposedly innefective type of glue for this kind of thing. Thus, I need to start again with a slightly modified model. But this time I am older and wiser (on a very small scale).
As I do this, I'm researching the next step. I've found an excellently instructive tutorial by a helpful member of The 405th on how to use resin to stiffen the outside, then a mixture of resin and Bondo (i.e. Rondo) on the inside for real rigidity. Now I'm looking into relative merits of Rondo or learning Fiberglassing as hardening methods. Another helpful member of The 405th plainly suggests, "there's a million ways to skin a cat. best of luck on your project." Rondo is heavier, faster, and (as far as I can tell) slightly less strong than fiberglass.
More to come about the rest of what's going on soon. (Elina, board-games, more Iron Man, etc.)
Working as a flyman for a big, big show, I do the same thing every night. Every single night, I wait for the same cues, pull the same ropes, hear the same jokes, and run through some routines etc. I’m trying not to waste all my downtime between cues though; I picked up learning Python for a while. I've worked on learning Mandarin during Act II. I keep in contact with people back home. I play games.
All that said, in so many ways, I’m spinning my wheels. What’s my excuse? I’m tired and I deserve the rest. I (and Elina) worked from 9am to 11pm, six days a week (or more), every week for two months. We’re now finally on a real-life schedule working a mere 44 hours per week. And so, for now, I rest.
On Monday Elina, Me, and a smattering of Lion King people went to see a show at Lasalle Performing Arts school here in Singapore. The show was really, truly excellent. Better still, after the show Elina and I found and talked with Lasalle’s Performing Arts Dean, a superbly knowledgable, ambitious, hopeful, and helpful guy. And he wants to create/augment more programs that are exactly up Elina’s and my alleys. Talking to the guy again sprung up within me creative ambition—the one major thing lacking with my time with Lion King.
This is exactly the kick in the pants that I needed.
This rekindled in me a need to create, explore, and improve, things that I had become used to pushing aside for time’s sake. This need is driving me to once again work on learning Mandarin (with a new vigor), and today I picked up Elina’s guitar to learn. My goal is to be relatively semi-proficient in both within three months. Be able to play songs and hold basic conversations. Achieve. Learn.
The Spidey Project
As a second part to this post, I'd like to mention something that I found on the internet the other day (The Spidey Project), but to tell that story, I must tell this one:
More than ten weeks ago, Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, a new theatrical, musical spectacular started previewing in New York City. Since then, the official opening night has been delayed six times, there have been accidents and mishaps, major staff and actors have left the production, costs have risen to the highest of any Broadway show ever (more than $70 million), and theatre critics have called the show a terrible mistake of a show. In short, it's an expensive mess of commercial theatre gone wrong. And it continues to go poorly.
Seeing this, members of NYC's off-Broadway theatrical community have come together to produce something they call The Spidey Project. In just a month, on a budget of exactly zero dollars, a Spider-man origin-story musical went from vague idea to performance. And it's actually really good. That's insane. The music and script written, choreography and blocking created and taught, actors found, cast, and rehearsed, tech acquired, designed, and staffed, props, costumes, and a venue found, and marketed and reported in the press. All in a month. All for exactly zero dollars. That's completely insane. And like I said, It's Good!
If you want to set aside the hour to watch it, the musical's creators put the whole thing on Youtube. It's worth it if you've the time. Some bits are a bit hard to hear See below for part 1 of 4 (it links to parts 2 through 4 at the end):
That's the kind of creativity, dedication, and heart that is amazing to me. Excellent.
This blog is funny. I feel like I want to include everything of note in my life, and that's intimidating. When I get busy (like currently), I have to keep putting it off, and the more I put it off the harder it is to return because the returning post would have to be epic to have the scope and detail I want. Thus this time I think I might be a bit general, then not wait quite so long to update next time. But you know what? As they say, Hakuna Matata.
This is the face of my current quest: a cartoon lion made physical. A pop-culture phenomenon turned into a pop-culture phenomenon. Theatre of a brilliant scale. Where am I? I am in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands, working on The Lion King.
First question: why the hell am I in Singapore? What brought me to this distant, global spec? Anyone who knows me should know the answer already; love brought me here. Elina and I have been together more than two years now--and when I say "together for more than two years," I should clarify: we have been in love for two years, together for seven cumulative months, and apart for seventeen months. We lived 10,000 miles and 13 timezones apart for so long, and when able, there was nothing that was going to keep me from being with her. So we plotted and schemed and found a way to be together through the fog of visas, passports, and work permits. The way was in Singapore. Lion King was hiring. We both got jobs. We both got happy.
Singapore
To be honest, I haven't seen all that much of Singapore. I've been working 14 hours per day, 6 days per week (except for two weeks, where I worked all 7 days) since three days after arrival. My off days have been rest days. I do have a few pictures to share from the first couple days here though. See here, a sunrise on the morning after our arrival:
This is normally where I would say "this is a beautiful place." But you can see for yourself.
The Lion King
One might wonder what it's like to work for such a show as The Lion King. Simply put, it's fascinating, yet exhausting. We're still tweaking the set more than a month-and-a-half after load-in started. It's an immensely complex production with more stuff and less space backstage than any I've seen before. There are 54 cast members, and about as many crew/dressers/makeup/etc. Every element must be precise and concise; we use dry ice and rope splice; we eat white rice and fish slice. I'd love to say more and post pictures, but then I'd have to kill you. And I'd like to avoid that.
This production in particular is notable to me as well for the absurdly international cast. In a single day, I hear accents from Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, The UK, South Africa, a smattering of other places through Africa that I can't identify, France, and the US. Our Mufasa was Paris Idol. Our Zazu and Timon's are absolutely perfect. There may be others on the show, but I don't work with quite everyone. It's an astounding experience to hear and see so much variety in the people, as well as hear each of their individual stories. Truly fascinating.
And where do I get to work? In a beautiful marvel of engineering:
