About David

Baltimore City - Station North A&E District

From an undergrad fascination with English ritual street theater and Peter Brooks’ THE EMPTY SPACE, through my years in Washington crewing with Peter Sellars’ American National Theater, then as one of the first sound designers on the mid-Atlantic theater scene, to my 27 years in Baltimore, I’ve been interested in theater “in the wild.”  I’ve pursued theater that lives in the interstices of commercial, academic, and regional theater spaces. In this, I have leveraged an outsider point-of-view… more

FÊTE OF MISTAKES: lighting design, projections engineering, performer

"In The Fête of Mistakes, Psychic Readings Co constructs an abstract fairground littered with the overwhelmingness of despair and the sustained tension of hopefulness." 

This production, produced by Psychic Readings Theater, given at Baltimore's Le Mondo in December 2016, presented a number of interesting challenges and opportunities.  The performance space, having no existing lighting system, grid or other infrastructure, was adapted into an intimate, even claustrophobic theater that opened out into the wider space of Le Mondo for a spectacular finale demolition derby. Lighting instruments, ranging from LED flashlights to clip lights to standard theatrical fixtures, were used to create a shadowy, subterranean space situated (or not) beneath Niagara Falls.
 
Projections were carefully prepared to create a seamless, hypnotic moving mandala and other apparitions which helped propel the plot of this all-American demimonde.
 
In addition, I appeared (as David J. Crandall) with a prophetic song in the penultimate climax of the evening:
 
“But you must hurry! Don’t you dare be late!
The engine of fate has no governor! Get what’s coming to you! Go! Go!”

Photos by Dave Iden

  • Fête of Mistakes: The Fortune Teller
    Fête of Mistakes: The Fortune Teller
    Myself as David Johannes Crandall, Guesser of Obvious Fortunes
  • Fête of Mistakes: Taking a moment
    Fête of Mistakes: Taking a moment
    Ric Royer as The Actor. Photo by Dave Iden.
  • Fête of Mistakes: The Long Armed Lady dances
    Fête of Mistakes: The Long Armed Lady dances
    Fiona Crowley as The Long Armed Lady. Photo by Dave Iden
  • Rehearsing with Jesse
    Rehearsing with Jesse
    Ric and Fiona have a moment. Jon Jacobs, as Jesse Heffler, looks on.
  • Weird Bingo
    Weird Bingo
    Some weird bingo, with projection and Hypno Booth
  • Fry Daddy!
    Fry Daddy!
    Ric and Fiona sing the praises of the Fry Daddy
  • Bingo & Zeppoles
    Bingo & Zeppoles
    Actual bingo and zeppoles, with Jesse Heffler assisting.