On Publicity Photos and Plowing Ahead

At this point, we are quite in the thick of things. Clara is making paper hats and paper swords and pop-ups and paper paper paper. I am sewing endlessly, running rehearsals, and working to make sure everything comes together. It is a busy time three weeks before opening.

This morning, Amanda--our Helena--and I had a photo shoot so we would have a few shots to send out with publicity. So we traipsed about Staunton with pop-up books and paper stars. I thought I would share some of my favorites with you as a teaser for what's to come.

Some pop-up videos!

There are some wonderful resources on pop-up books available freely on YouTube. Here is a seven minute video by the Smithsonian Libraries in collaboration with their exhibit on movable books. It details the process of making a pop-up book. 

Here is a 53 minute lecture by David Carter which he gave at the Smithsonian Libraries, talking about his work in book making. Tidbits include his work on a giant book for an exhibit, his work teaching children about pop-ups, and a lovely question and answer session in which he talked about a pop-up ap for iphone.

And finally, if you'd like to get started yourself, a one and a half minute video on how to make a particularly stunning pop-up card.

Enjoy!

Pop-up Books and their Engineers

In a time when e-readers are becoming more popular, pop-up books and the field of paper engineering mark an important contrast to an increasingly digitized world. In a pop-up book, paper is not the passive canvas on which the text provides meaning, paper is a sculpture, a dancer, a story in itself. I'll be posting several posts on pop-up books, but this first one is mainly to educate about some of the important paper engineers working in the field today. If you click on these artist's names the link will take you to their websites all of which include "how-to" sections, to make your own pop-ups at home.

Robert Sabuda is the world's most popular pop-up artist. Besides some beautiful original works such as Christmas Alphabet or Winter's Tale, he has created pop-up re-tellings of familiar tales such as Alice in Wonderland (left) or Beauty and the Beast or the lyrics to America the Beautiful (above). He often works primarily in white or solid colored paper, which really shows off the stunning artistry of his work.

David A. Carter is a paper engineer and illustrator who has done some really lovely abstract pop-up art for readers of all ages. His more recent books feature bold colors, in dramatic, innovative designs showing off a beautiful intricacy of design as well as some spreads of absolute simplicity. White Noise is book partially about the sounds paper makes as it flutters, or folds, or flaps, or saws. The spreads are united by a free-verse poem which dallies with the sensual beauties of paper. Pictured right is 600 Black Spots, a beautiful book containing exactly 600 spots for those interested to count them all. It's reviewed with more charming pictures of this girl here: http://intheknowmom.net/?p=6856 

Matthew Reinhart works a great deal with Robert Sabuda collaborating on some of the Candelwick pop-up encyclopedia books, such as Encyclopedia Mythologica: Gods and Heroes. He has also illustrated some classics such as The Jungle Book (left). His Pop-up Book of Nightmares, and Pop-up Book of Phobias lend a darker side to the realm of pop-up books for adults. 

Bruce Foster is another name which means a great deal in pop-up circles. He does some beautiful work on pop-ups in a large variety of projects. Perhaps most famous for Harry Potter: A Pop-up book based on the Film Phenomenon, he has also worked on an incredibly beautiful work on Angels, which is soon to be released, and a book holding paper models of some of the greatest architectural wonders of the world. 
 
 I'll post some more about pop-ups soon!

Thesis Festival

This past week we the MLitt/MFA program held our thesis festival, a marathon of scholarship where every MLitt student and every MFA dramaturgy emphasis presents his or her thesis in a combination of scholarship and stagecraft. Though I will be posting some more about many of the ideas in this thesis, I thought I would share Cass Morris' excellent summaries of all of the presentations so that you can read about my most presentation as well as the other exciting work going on in this program.

http://americanshakespearecentereducation.blogspot.com/2012/02/2012-mlittmfa-thesis-festival-session-2.html

Picture by Ralph Alan Cohen, for more pictures of the festival go to the program Flickr account: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbc_sap/

Image sharing and idea sparks

Our semester is already in the swing of things; our colleagues’ productions are coming together, the Mary Baldwin Mlitt/MFA Thesis festival is fast approaching and Linden and I are working hard on designing for All’s Well, and really enjoying meeting with Jenny McNee every week. Some of the work we’ve been putting into this show is looking to find the best means of communicating our research, and we’ve decided to expand outside of this blog. We now have a Flickr account to share pictures of the things we are making as we make them, as well as many images of our sketches and plans for characters and costumers.

You can find our Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/allswellindesign/ 
 

Additionally, Linden and I have dived into Pinterest, an online bulletin board or images, videos and project ideas. Not only has it been delightful to pin photographs and artwork which inspires our thoughts for this project it has also put un into contact with other pinners and their ideas and creations. For instance, one can make ordinary plastic toys look like ceramics with only the help of a can of glossy spray paint click here for details of that project: http://dreamgreendiy.com/2011/08/15/pinspiration-monday-white-horse/

You can find our Pinterest account here: http://pinterest.com/agenttam99/alls-well/ though you will need to sign up for Pinterest if you want to see it.

What is all this sharing and exploring doing for our process? It means not only that we’re getting lots of people to see at least pieces of our work, but that we can shape our ideas by the images we find. Some of our images are not based out of the words the characters say, (Helena will have stars because she is always talking about them) but the characters from other sorts of fantasy stories or fairy tales which the characters remind us of. LaFeu doesn’t share any lines with the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, but those characters remind us of each other, so we’ll give Lafeu a pocketwatch, and maybe have some clockwork decorations on his jacket and his hat. The healing of the King in this play may also draw some inspiration from the Lord of the Rings and the Two Towers’ movie’s portrayal of Theoden returning to health and the costume choices for the king before and after Helena heals him. These images will morph in our ideas for the play as we keep studying its roots and other productions, but finding inspiration in this forum, (and now these others) is an adventure for us both.

Castle images

Because of where we are in the designing process this blog will be passing along a huge number of images in the next few weeks. Here are some of Castles. If you have thoughts about particular castles and what meaning or contexts they convey comment to share with us.

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