all the world's a stage

In an alternate universe, I'd be a theater tech geek designing backdrops and working the lights. Once upon a time, my mom enrolled me in community theater as a very young kid for something to do in the summer. I loved the mystique of stage makeup and spotlights, but was shy about lines and thought that the repertoire was corny, because after all, we were seven years old.

One was about dinosaurs, and there's a VHS tape in the basement that involves yours truly in a lavender stegasaurus costume with orange felt spikes down the back and huge specks of glitter. This is also the only time my hair's ever been fire-engine red and glittery, which was crazy hard to wash out before school the next week. Next year the musical was about deer in the suburbs and the humans that didn't understand that they want the land too. I thought this was kind of stupid, and we ended up moving shortly after, and that was the end of my theatrical career pretty much.

I had a guidance counselor at the community college be convinced that I was going to have a career path in theater tech, and the whole world still fascinates me even if it's from a distance. One of my coworkers used to build sets at Karamu House and told me about how he'd start the designs on the way out of the dressing room so that by the time the actors were onstage, they were already in character. I'd never thought of that before.  I don't do plays very much, most of the time because they're kind of expensive and usually don't look super interesting and are sometimes terrible, but I do try to do at least one Shakespeare thing a year, because picnics and the Queen's English tend to go well together...

Alexandre Benois:

 

leon bakst

ivan bilibin