For her 2016 Theatre Project performance Subject/Object, Naoko Maeshiba, true to form, wanted to turn the theater around backwards: to swim down the ranks of audience seating through billowing plastic waves created by Khristian Weeks, lit from beneath, and to emerge from under the first row of the audience as a newborn creature. Not a problem. Household LED lamps were used under the plastic to prevent heat buildup, and we devised placements that gave the look we wanted. For an appropriately hot look for the "birthing" sequence, small theatrical units were placed in the front row and carefully monitored.
After a second act that was a comedic cabaret, the third section of the piece turned dark and mysterious as the audience, now facing upstage, witnessed a performance tied together by mystery, sound and salt. The piece ends with the performer retracing her path up through the audience seating to the dim expanse at the top of the house.

For this unique noir tale of urban corruption, director Trevor Wilhelms wanted a shadowy, fluid treatment of the lighting that could be controlled by his actors during performance. Four small spotlights of the sort used in store window displays were handheld by performers and controlled from the dimmer system. This unique system of low-tech moving lights permitted many unique effects to be produced, which lent the story the demimondaine aspect it deserved.

Photos by Allyson Washington

"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

One of my favorite works of classical music is Mozart's Magic Flute, a singspiel that is connected, not only to high opera, but to the rowdy German music halls of its time. So I was delighted when, in 2015, Annex Theater asked me to help as music director in staging this gem in a tiny, 30 person theater on North Avenue.

Budget ruled an orchestra out of the question—the score would have to be played on computer and built in software—but it occurred to me to embrace this fact by scoring the orchestra as a collection of sampled toy, mechanical, and a few period and folk instruments. By "period" I mean not only 18th century variants of orchestral instruments, but also samples of authentic 1950s and 60s synthesizers, including the unique Jennings Univox, a vacuum-tube instrument from 1954. The result was an exceptionally warm and unique accompaniment for the singers. The score was mixed in 4-channel surround and played back on computer.

Annex company member Jacob Budenz joined me as director of the singers, and we collaborated on stylistic details; Evan Moritz directed the staging, and Doug Johnson provided magnificent painted backdrops that paged like a giant picture-book to reveal the settings.

Photos by Dave Iden

Playwright Nelson Rodrigues revolutionized Brazilian theater in 1942 with this dreamy, radical story of the death of a young woman in the 1920s. Director Rebecca Holderness and set designer Vicki Davis devised a white, fragmented playing space sliced in two by a sheer curtain that ran diagonally for the entire width of the theater.

The video design for this project was based on a small projector mounted in a housing that mimicked the movie cameras of the day, and allowed projected imagery to play across the curtain, permitting actors to have access from either side, and also to "shoot" video onto actors' bodies, upstage walls and other surfaces.

I also contributed the sound design for this project.

After working with Baltimore's Rhymes With Opera on David Smooke's Criminal Element, we discussed creating lighting and video for operas that are specifically intended to tour in a standard van.

Adam Matlock's Red Giant was an excellent choice for this. Set in a time when the Sun has become a "red giant" and is about to engulf the Earth, this opera follows three individuals who, among many others, have built jury-rigged spaceships and blasted off for destinations unknown, to escape certain destruction at home.

The lighting rig was very simple, a few instruments on either end of the tiny (8' wide) playing area, LED strip lights along the sides of the "rocket," and a scrim upstage that screened the orchestra (a home security monitor provided a conductor's video feed to the singers via a small CRT that was part of the set). Complex colors and imagery were provided by a single video projector mounted behind and above the action, which washed the singers with nostalgia-laden imagery as they sang of their lost home.

Occasionally, I am called on (or inspired) to compose songs for particular scenes in the plays I design. Here are a pair of songs from recent shows.

I have been fortunate to play a number of acting roles, ranging from a composite character in Annex Theater’s Macbeth, who witnesses the action of the play in a drunken post-battle fugue, to a classic role as Father Jack in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, to a funeral director with a twist in Annex’s UBIK. These opportunities have deepened my understanding of the totality of theater on both sides of the footlights.

In addition to those pictured, I have also played the roles of:

• The Announcer (voice-over) in Psychic Readings’ The Failures (2016-7)
• The Old Man in Psychic Readings’ The Purple Flower (2015).
• The Second Messenger in Two Suns Over Thebes, Annex Theater's adaptation of The Bacchae (2013).
• Prologue/Sergeant/Porter/Old Man and Seyton in Annex Theater’s Macbeth (2013)
• Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang in Annex’s UBIK (2012).