PLASA, Event Safety Alliance Work Together to Increase Safety

Stage Directions: PLASA, a global leader in developing technical standards for the entertainment industry, and the Event Safety Alliance, the emerging voice of event production best practices, are formally announcing their mutual endorsement in the ongoing efforts to raise awareness and use of industry best practices and technical standards throughout live entertainment production.

Mimi Gramatky Elected President of Art Directors Guild

www.marketwire.com: Production Designer Mimi Gramatky has been elected President of the 2,000-member Art Directors Guild (ADG/IATSE, Local 800) for a three-year term, succeeding Thomas A. Walsh, it was announced today. Also elected for three-year terms are Art Director Jim Wallis as Vice President; Production Designer Cate Bangs as Treasurer; and Art Director Judy Cosgrove as Secretary. Scott Roth continues as ADG's Executive Director.

Interview with Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Box of Crayons: Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, with a bachelor’s, master’s and PhD in social work. She’s spent the past decade or so studying some juicy emotional issues — vulnerability, courage, authenticity and shame. Brene recently published a book called The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. In the book, she provides 10 guideposts to live a more authentic and wholesome life.

J-O-B TD

Tech Director Flyer by dboevers

The Scottish Play (The Olivier Way)

NPR: Laurence Olivier, whose interpretations of Shakespeare's signature roles were often considered definitive, adapted several of those roles for film. He wrote and directed widely praised versions of Hamlet, Henry V and Richard III. Olivier hoped to bring a fourth Shakespeare play to the big screen: Macbeth. The great actor and director wrote the screenplay, but couldn't raise the money to make the film. The screenplay was soon forgotten and thought lost — until recently. Jennifer Barnes, a university lecturer from the U.K., found Olivier's adaptations at the British Library.

Recording: In The Studio: A Recording Session Checklist

Pro Sound Web: Here’s a recording checklist derived from both The Recording Engineer’s Handbook and Audio Recording Basic Training that, if followed, will pretty much keep any engineer, or musician trying to record himself or his band, out of trouble.

The difference between asynchronous and synchronous motors

Machine Design: The increasing importance of energy efficiency has brought electric motor makers to promote a variety of schemes that improve motor performance. Unfortunately the terminology associated with motor technologies can be confusing, partly because multiple terms can sometimes be used interchangeably to refer to the same basic motor configuration. Among the classic examples of this phenomenon is that of induction motors and asynchronous motors.

Stages St. Louis Launches American Musical Creative Division to Turn St. Louis Into Hub for New Musicals

Stage Directions: The Regional Arts Commission has awarded Stages St. Louis with a $43,000 grant to fund the creation of American Musical Creative (AMC) division. The program will work to “establish St. Louis as a hub for the creation of new American musical theater productions.” The grant will support the addition of staff and scheduling onsite visits to regional theatres, universities and national orgs that specialize in developing new musicals. Stephen Bourneuf, Stages’ new associate artistic director will head up this new division at Stages St. Louis.

All the People

www.artsjournal.com/newbeans: Over on Facebook, my co-worker Sam Hurwitt reports an audition listing in San Francisco that requests “No obvious ethnicity” for a role. His friends, when asked, guessed that statement meant everything from “mixed” to “white” to my favorite: “‘whitable’ or ‘passable’ or ‘non-threatening ethnic looking person’.”

FILMING THE HOBBIT 3D ON A 2D SCHEDULE

www.entertainmentengineering.com: For Rivendell and all the sets on the film, the innovative camera systems Jackson used required an extra layer of design. These cameras capture exponentially more information in each shot but “eat up color,” Production Designer Dan Hennah explains. “So we had to allow for that in our color palettes, especially since we’re creating a brighter and, on the whole, happier rendition of Middle-earth. In the grading, we could take color out, but it’s harder to add it in, so the same thinking had to be applied to all the sets as well as costumes and make-up.”

Mechanics of the Dance Machine

livedesignonline.com: Lighting designer Clifton Taylor plays a collaborative role in Mechanics of the Dance Machine, a new evening-length piece by choreographer Karole Armitage that premiered at New York Live Arts in New York City

Craig Noel Awards Honor Best San Diego Theatre of 2012

Stage Directions: A total of 22 productions from nine theatre companies were honored at the 2013 Craig Noel Awards, put on by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle to celebrate the best of the San Diego theatre in 2012. An Iliad, a co-production between La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Rep was the big winner, taking home five awards, including Outstanding Dramatic Production (an award also given to Moxie Theatre’s production of A Raisin in the Sun), Outstanding Lighting Design (Scott Zielinski) and Outstanding Sound Design (Mark Bennett; a second Outstanding Sound Design award also presented to Shahrokh Yadegari’s design for Blood and Gifts, also at the La Jolla Playhouse), Outstanding Solo Performance (Henry Woronicz) and Outstanding Featured Musical Performance in a Play (Brian Ellingsen). Moxie Theatre won Braunagel Award for outstanding contribution to the San Diego arts scene by a small-budget theatre, while The Old Globe finished with the most awards for a theatre, garnering 10 for its productions.

AV: Meyer Sound Shipping New Galileo Callisto Loudspeaker Management System

Pro Sound Web: Meyer Sound has begun delivery of the new Galileo Callisto signal processing and loudspeaker management system designed for the precision calibration of Meyer Sound arrays. Building on the company’s original Galileo loudspeaker management system, Galileo Callisto provides a set of new, specialized tools that streamline the deployment of the LEO large-scale line array loudspeaker system and M Series line array products.

Billy Porter on Getting Snatched for Kinky Boots, Being a 'Proud Mama' and the Hard Road of a Broadway Diva

Broadway.com: Broadway powerhouse Billy Porter stopped by Show People with Paul Wontorek to discuss how his leading lady role in Kinky Boots is the culmination of a dazzling but difficult career.

J-O-B ATD

The Programs in Theatre and Dance in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University are seeking an Assistant Technical Director (ATD) to assist with a growing and evolving production program. The Lewis Center produces over 100 events a year, including a major theatrical production, several student-driven theater productions, and several dance performances. The ATD will primarily support Theatre and Dance activities, but may also support other small productions in the Lewis Center.   -Qualifications for this position are a BA or higher degree in theater, or equivalent experience in theater production; ability to supervise production staff, over hire, and students; ability to read theatrical plans and create working drawings in Vector Works; and be able to run the day to day operations of a busy scene shop. Must know scenery construction, rigging, and welding; possess basic knowledge of electrical work, pneumatics, and gearing; have basic scene painting and props craft work knowledge; must understand a double purchase counter weight fly system, and have basic knowledge of theatrical lighting systems.
Must be able to work occasional nights and weekends, possess a valid driver's license, and drive a variety vehicles from a golf cart to a 26' box truck. Prior supervisory experience is essential.  To apply and for more info please see https://jobs.princeton.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=193376

highlighting collaboration in Pittsburgh: NExMW

I heart PGH: One of the questions that keeps coming up at many of the entrepreneurship related events around town – “Are you going to SXSW this year?” There are lots of great Pittsburgh companies that are headed to SXSW and I know there are some Pittsburgh events planned in Austin. So I would like to throw an idea out and see what you think of the idea of Northeast x Midwest (NExMW), a series of events here in Pittsburgh highlighting some of the great businesses, projects, and partnerships happening right here in the 412.

Invest in unknowns to make them stars (reinvent marketing idea)

2AMt » Blog Archive: Thesis: Celebrity is one of the strongest social forces in America. Increasingly, though, people are responding to apparently oxymoronic “Narrow fame;” that is, being highly salient for some quality among a modest sized niche of people. Theatre companies can take advantage of this phenomenon by promoting their currently unknown performers as though they were already well known.

USITT Student Ambassadors

USITT: The 2013 Annual Conference will see the debut of a new initiative linking students with distinguished conference guests. In year one, four students (nominated by you, their professors) will be selected to host three distinguished international guests.

Westminster's Best in Show Hits Broadway: Banana Joe in 'Drood' for a Night

NYTimes.com: You know how these show-business success stories go: one day you’re just a hound nobody’s heard of, the next you’re making your debut on Broadway.

The Enlightenment's 'Race' Problem, and Ours

NYTimes.com: In 1734, Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former chamber slave of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled “On the Impassivity of the Human Mind.” A dedicatory letter was appended from the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Gottfried Kraus, who praised “the natural genius” of Africa, its “appreciation for learning,” and its “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs” and of “divine things.” Kraus placed Amo in a lineage that includes many North African Latin authors of antiquity, such as Terence, Tertullian and St. Augustine.