notlikecalvin news

Later this week I’m off to the Glasgow Comedy Festival, providing technical wizardry to The Penny Dreadfuls‘ four shows.

Aeneas Faversham, Shamwagon, Lost in Time and, of course, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Plot are all being performed at the wonderful Britannia Panopticon music hall.

Each show is on from Thursday through Sunday, and they’re all free. Free. So pop along, if you’re in the area: I’m particularly fond of Sherlock Holmes and Aeneas Faversham, but they’re all worth a gander. For no money.

Nine months on, it’s happened again: my iMac G5 has a serious problem. After a week or so of irregular problems with powering-up, she’s now in exactly the same state as before: black screen and overblowing fans. I’m betting my bottom dollar that I’ll be needing a third midplane board from Apple, as it looks like this is the same problem with the power management unit.

Annoyingly, even with the same quick turnaround as last time I won’t get this fixed until next weekend. But it’s been a while, so let’s recap what I’ve been up to since and during the Edinburgh Fringe:

• Assisted Simon Wilkinson with a searchlight installation for the opening of Perth’s new concert hall [Simon's photos / my photos]
• Lit Crestfall for Nutshell at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow [my photos / Scotsman review]
• Trained staff members at Fairbridge in using Macs for editing their own video projects
• A number of print design projects for CHA [research report (PDF)]
• Real-time reactive lighting and sound design for Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Improvised Plot in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Half of the improvising technical team for The Stand Players’ Fringe show, Completely Made Up

In addition, last week I devised a Murder Mystery evening for the Drama Society, set at Bretton Hall: I’d written a couple of these for the EUTC at the Bedlam, but this was a bit different – great fun, though.

Crestfall also gets another run later this week, this time at the Traverse in Edinburgh. We were all really pleased with the reception it got at the Citz, and it’s going to be another little adventure staging it end-on. Please do come along if you’ve got an evening free for a slice of genuinely contemporary theatre. I’ll buy you a drink.

(When I get a spare moment, part of my work in this final year of degree is to work out what I’m going to do once I get that piece of paper and can’t laze around as a student any more: looking at the list above doesn’t really help to clarify that much…)

Today the Gruniad has an article about Improbable Theatre‘s Lifegame.
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I’m heading off back up to Edinburgh for a couple of days, and one of the many fun things I’ll be doing will be playing in The Improverts in their usual Friday night slot at the Bedlam Theatre – the fact that the Edinburgh Evening News has just run a full-page article [registration required] on the show should in no way up the stakes for my rusty improv brain…
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It snowed last night and when the campus woke up it was still there, thick and crisp:

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Today I authored my first actual DVD that can be played in a normal DVD player. Attempts On Her Life is probably going to have a considerable amount of video projection, and I’m angling to use DVDs for ease of cueing, not to mention quality.
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This is a catching-up entry to deal with the effects of not posting anything relevent today: I still have to uploadify notes from yesterday’s talks and we saw second year dance choreography performances today that I’ve got a few thoughts on.
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