Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – March 31, 2014 – Sydney
We all kicked off the day saying goodbye to Melbourne. We will be back in a week but for now it was time to head to Sydney in preperation for our shows at the Sydney Opera House. I’m really excited for these shows. How often can you say you’ve performed at a world famous landmark? Excited to add it to the list of places I’ve performed, up at the top next to The Tokyo Dome in Japan and Lucy’s Laundromat in Silver Lake.
We met on the sidewalk of our hotel and were soon at the Melbourne Airport. After checking our luggage and getting through security, we were soon at the gate. Can I just say how great it was going through Australian airport security? Didn’t have to take off my belt and shoes. Bringing water through was not a problem and you didn’t have to go through a ‘trust us, it’s safe’ machine. Just a good old fashioned metal detector. I actually felt safer.
The flight to Sydney was just under 90 minutes. It was highlighted by the fact that every seat on this airplane, it was a Quantis jet, had an ipad in the seat pocket so you could watch in flight streaming movies and television. Kind of cool.
We landed in Sydney, got out luggage and took off for the hotel. Once we checked in, Brian, Dan and I took off for downtown Sydney. At the start of this trip, Brian had some issues with his computer. So much so, he went and bought a brand new Mac laptop. He figured out he could get by with using just his iPad so he decided to return it in Sydney as the Apple Store was much easier to get to than the one in Melbourne.
We took a great walk across the city to get to the Apple store, crossing Hyde Park along the way. Lots of great things to see along the way such as monuments and shops. It was about a 30 minute walk to what seemed to be the heart of downtown and the Apple store. After Brian returned his computer we walked back towards our hotel taking different streets and seeing different sights. This town looks really interesting but I’m already leaning towards liking Melbourne better. Who knows, perhaps the opera house will change my mind.
On the way back we stopped for dinner, actually, my forts meal of the day, at a pizza place called Dimitris. Brian and I split a ham, pumpkins and ricotta pizza that was decent. It was a little too thin crusty for my liking, but it was decent. Then Brian took off back to the hotel and Dan and I popped into the supermarket to pick up some for for the week.
After that, the rest of the evening was mostly relaxing and prepping for what will probably be a pretty heavy tech day tomorrow at the Opera House. That and finding a decent spot to get good internet as the internet at this hotel leaves a lot to be desired.
Could not be more excited for tomorrow!
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – March 30, 2014 – Final Preview
The place we are staying in in Melbourne is very nice. We are on the top floor which gives us amazing views of downtown. We have separate bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms and a fun living room area. We were also pleased to see that each unit came with a combo washer and dryer. This is one single unit that both washes and dries clothes. It’s pretty neat.
It’s pretty neat except for the fact that it comes with no instructions and it is the single most confusing piece of equipment that has been invented. And this is not just me saying this, all in our company are perplexed by these machines. I even searched out a PDF of the instructions online and it’s still near impossible to figure it out. Not only that the capacity is super small. Want to clean three Tshirts? This is the machine for you! Want to clean four Tshirts? Sorry, no go.
I washed a pair of jeans today and they came out so wrinkled (because the capacity of the machine is so small) I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get them wrinkle free again. It also take a MINIMUM of four hours to do one regular load of laundry. FOUR HOURS!!! You have to REALLY plan things out with this machine.
Needless to say, I did laundry today.
At lunch, Brian, Dan and I walked to a place called Bowery to Williamsburg. It is a great little deli not too far from our hotel. The food was really great and I treated my pals to lunch. I had the pastrami melt. It was great. Came with a small side of Mac and cheese which was decent. And they have great mini pies. I had a pecan with maple cream on the side. Delicious. And I was stuffed for the day.
After lunch we came back to the hotel. Brian paid his taxes while I continued with Laundry-a-thon 2014. We travel to Sydney tomorrow and I just feel better traveling with clean clothes instead of a bunch of dirty ones. Especially since I’m not sure we’ll have access to laundry in Sydney.
After a bit of relaxing, and napping on Brian’s part, it was time to head to the Princess Theatre for our final preview show.
And what a show it was! Tonight the suggestions skewed really dirty. So dirty in fact I won’t relate many of them here in order to keep things family friendly. Let’s just say, it was dirty.
One funny story I’ll relate is that during the first minute of I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face the music cut out. Right after the first line of the song. I just kept cool because I knew they would fix it, but it provided Ted and I a moment to kind of goof around. It was one of those unique moments that only happens in this show.
Alien Barbershop came back into rotation! The suggestion was ‘Morgue’. Here is my rhyme, I apologize in advance, I just said I was gonna keep it family friendly.
I work at the morgue
It’s not a place I dread
It’s the best place for me
Because I like to f*** the dead.
Yeah. It got a great reaction from the crowd.
After the show I found out that the amazingly talented Lana Schwarcz was at the show. She’s a puppeteer I met at the O’Neil Puppetry Conference a few years ago. It was so good to see her and reconnect. We made a plan to hang out a bit after we are back from Sydney. So nice to bump into friends I expectantly. Also talked to a few other folks from the audience tonight who were super interested in puppetry.
There was a bit of hanging out after and then I took off for bed to be prepped for tomorrow’s flight!
Goodnight Melbourne. I’ll see you in less than a week. I can’t wait to be back!!
Creative Mondays #013 – Consider the source of the advice.
I talked earlier in this blog about keeping your plans secret. Don’t tell others what you are doing because they will taint your ideas with phrases like, “You know what you should do instead?” But, there are times in your creative career where you will solicit advice from others. That is perfectly fine as long as you keep one thing crystal clear in your head: consider the source.
We started working on Dr. Floyd way back in 1999. It wasn’t a podcast back then, it was a public access TV show. Even though we were limited by the technology of the time, the whole creative world seemed wide open in terms of what we were able to do. While we were working on the show I began cobbling together a script for what, I dreamed someday, would become a Dr. Floyd feature film. Look, it’s Hollywood, everyone has a script in a drawer somewhere.
Before it was finished I gave it to someone to read and this person came back telling me that I didn’t write the script properly. Not in that it was formatted incorrectly, but that I was “being too descriptive in the details” and that I was, “writing out things that should be left up to the director.” Hearing this bummed me out and I never finished the script because I felt I was doing it all wrong.
Years later, I was thinking about that script and about what that person had said and then I realized that the person who gave me that advice had written a script but never had one produced (outside of doing it for himself). So, what right did he have to tell me I was doing something right or wrong when he’s never done it himself? How did he know I was adding details that would be left up to the director?
Consider the source.
If you’re trying to do something and you get advice, consider who is giving you that advice. If you’re trying to publish a book, is the person giving you advice a published author? If you’re trying to get your first art showing, is the person giving you the advice and artist who has had gallery showings before? If you’re writing a script and someone who has never had a script produced is telling you you’re doing it wrong, should you listen to them? No.
Now, the flip side to that is that if the person HAS done what you want to do, listen to their advice.
I wrote a novella a few years ago and a friend of mine, who is a published author, graciously offered to read it. This person then pointed out several things that could be changed to make the novella read better and I took that person’s advice because they had done what I want to do.
Consider the source. Who is giving you this advice? Have the done what you’re trying to do?
In the end, it is up to you to take ANY advice you are given. Whether it be from someone who has done what you’re trying to do or someone who hasn’t. Only take the advice if it feels right for you and what you are working on.
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Do you consider the source when getting advice? Has someone with no experience in what you are trying to do ever given you advice that derailed you creative goals? How did you deal with it? Let me know in the comments below!
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – March 29, 2014 – Preview 3
Today was a very lazy and, as I’ll be the first to admit, boring day. At least until the show.
Woke up around 9:00 AM and headed down to the gym for my thirty minutes on the treadmill. I went a little easier on the treadmill today because last night in the show, I tweaked my back a bit so I didn’t want to hurt it further.
After showering and shaving, Dan and I walked over to a small Indian food place called Funky Curry. It’s an interesting little place that seems to want to honor Bollywood. On the back of each chair there are words like: Director, Producer, Hero, Heroine. Then all around the walls there are movie posters of Bollywood movies. Real interesting but the food was just okay.
After lunch, I walked down to Target to get some ibuprofen for my back. I learned that, unlike Target stores in the USA,they don’t sell drugs like that there. They sell them at Chemists. Luckily there was one nearby. I got some ibuprofen and some of those heated back patches. After my thrilling shopping excursion, I headed back to the hotel and just tried to relax my back. Also got some laundry started too, very cool we have a combo washer/dryer in our hotel rooms. After more lying around it was time to head back to the Princess theatre for tonight’s show.
We had an earlier tech call than previously because we are still finessing a few of out more technical pieces. As I’ve said before though, the crew here is amazing and they are so quick to get what we need and make sure we look right. We were also works hopping a few pieces that will be folded into the show when we head to Sydney next week.
I also got to spend some time finessing Java. I feel it can always be better and, as I said last night, I really want to focus on my puppetry. The early versions of Java were very loose and fun. Our version tried to pay tribute to those versions so we study them thoroughly, breaking down each beat. In doing so, however, we sometimes loose some of the ‘looseness.’ It’s also difficult to work on when the only chance you get to do them is during the show, so I look forward to these chances to refine even if I have done it a bunch of times. After these brush ups it was time to get ready for the performance.
The show was really great. The suggestions for the crowd were really fun and we had a blast. The Hot Dogs ran a relay race, we saw a scene about Australian Parliament, and a wacky version of Alice in Wonderland. Just a fun show from top to bottom.
After the show there was a small reception which was a bunch of fun. I chatted a lot with some of the people who’d just scene the show and also got to talk a bit with our puppet wrangler Bec.
Afterwards, we had a small group gathering at one of our rooms and then it was off to bed.
