Hello to Friends, Family, Bird People, Smith People, Sessions People,
Theatre People, Wine Shoppe People, and SeaLife Center People!

September 2, 2007 - Washington DC

The first interesting bird I saw was a heron.   The second interesting
bird I saw was dead.

After spending about 20 minutes this morning lying in a ball on my bed
(my excuse is that I was woken up by my mom very early twice in three
days), I made an attempt to get up, out the door and see something of
this weird place I've voluntarily consigned myself to.   Capitol Hill
reminds me a lot of a squashed East End - lots of townhouses with very
small, immaculately fenced yards, and an assortment of businesses
scattered around.   I visited the Eastern Market, which reminds me of
a big version of the Capitol Market (minus the wine - and no one was
selling any onions, that I noticed).   There was a used book store,
with so many books crammed into one place that it felt positively
claustrophobic.   You get the feeling that one sneeze could send the
entire edifice collapsing down around everyone's ears.   The hotter
part of the afternoon was spent wandering around the Mall moving from
nice shady patch to nice shady patch.   I am enjoying getting outside
- I can sit in the shade and actually ENJOY it - instead of having to
constantly be on the move to keep warm., and it hasn't really rained
here in three days, which is definitely a change.   So, I have the
weather, now what do I do with it?

The birds so far :

Rock Dove
House Sparrow
European Starling
Blue Heron
Mallard
Catbird
Blue Jay
American Crow
Common Grackle
Black-Throated Green Warbler (deceased)

September 6 - Desperately Seeking a Venue

On the work front, three days after I started my job, there still
isn't a whole lot to do, as we are still waiting for our new theater
to get built.    The construction people are about a month behind
schedule.   They are still painting, installing carpet, cutting boards,
putting up drywall, and doing a lot of stuff that creates dust - not a
great environment for our nice, new electronics.   So, mostly, I and
the sound crew have been wandering the building in hard hats, plotting
what we'll do with our gear once (a) the building wiring has been done
and (b) its clean enough inside to actually unpack our gear.   Even
breathing in there is enough to turn your snot brown.   I can only
imagine what its doing in my lungs...   We thought we were moving into
our sound shop today (but its still not painted), and they decided
last night to delay some of the live acoustics tests, as it is still
way too dirty onstage to hang any of the theatrical drapes or curtains
(which would definitely impact the sound of the room.)

And, two days ago (and two weeks into rehearsals) one of the sets for
our October rep shows had to be completely re-designed.   The reason -
our stage configuration was designed to change back and forth between
two different designs (from a thrust stage to a proscenium, for those
of you who care).   But somewhere in the building process, the
architectural drawing got changed, and now there is a giant steel
I-beam where the bottom of the thrust stage was supposed to go.   So,
the scene shop is hacking off half of their set to get it to fit on a
smaller stage area...

	One interesting thing about the new theater is that all of the sound
and audio gear we have came as a gigantic in-kind donation from...
JBL.   JBL is not really known for making high-end,
classical-Shakespeare-company style audio gear.    So we have a whole
giant line array of stadium-sized speakers hanging in the rafters of
this tiny little classical amphitheatre.   (Our audio consultant is
concerned that if we ever run the speakers full out, we would likely
blow out the all-glass front on the lobby.   Limiters are our friends
here...)   Our sound board is a Venue 5, and is the first one of its
kind to be shipped anywhere in the world.   Which is cool, but there
are downsides - such as, we are basically beta-testing the %#^* thing
for the company (Studer) and anything that goes wrong with it requires
a phone call to Austria.    One of the audio guys here has spent the
past two days with it trying to figure it out.   He also tried
intentionally to crash it, just to see if it would.   He succeeded.
Twice.   (Austria says they are writing us a new software update.)
The really scary thing about the soundboard is that it runs on Windows
- blue screen of death and everything...

	Life in DC itself is proving to be a lot tougher than I had expected,
even taking into account the post-Alaska culture shock.   Gah!   Where
are the birds?   Where are the mountains?   Walking home yesterday
(and only a few blocks from the theatre) two guys started a pretty
serious fistfight half a block in front of me.   Where I'm living
seems a fairly safe neighborhood, but I'm not sure how things are
going to go with the theatre area once I start having late-night show
calls.   All things considered, I felt much, much safer in Belfast and
Glasgow than I do here in the US of A.   Which kind of sucks, but I'm
trying to keep  my not-so-fond impressions of the city separate from
what I'm doing here with the theatre company.   At any rate, I think
I've definitely decided that big American cities are NOT on my
list....

Anyway, that's life for the moment.   Take care, wherever you are, and
let me know what you are doing!

Mareth