Kickstarting Aeterno Elementum

This week, we've been working on getting the details of our Kickstarter ironed out.  We've determined that we'll be asking for $10,000.  The initial amount that we'd calculated was a bit higher, but $10k seemed like a more reasonable number, and we can still make some incredible improvements to the show with that sum.  We filmed a bunch of interview footage with some members of the cast and Randy's piecing it together into a remarkably coherent intro video.  I really enjoyed hearing our peers talk about the project and why they continue to do it.  It's always amazing to me how much Ara'Kus has taken on a life of it's own over the past several years.

The official launch date for the Kickstarter is the 16th of August, and we'll run it through the 14th of September.  The dates were chosen intentionally to coincide with military paydays and to end on a Saturday, which tends to be the best day for contributors.  We've sent out our soft launch press release, and are getting ready to blast all of our social channels with information about the campaign.  I think it's pretty realistic for us to achieve our goal, but I have to admit I'm still pretty nervous about it.  Whether we succeed or not, though, the show must go on. 

We had a tech meeting last month where we discussed some of the improvements we're hoping to make to the show.  One of the things I'm really excited about is creating a more dynamic set.  We're hoping to have some destructible objects, like pillars that can burst apart, and walls that crumble.  We're also looking into things like projected backdrops that we can fully animate, snow, rain and improved fire effects.  I'm not sure that we'll get all of that up and running, but at the very least we've stimulated our creative juices. 

So when we say our cast is large, we aren't kidding.  This shot
doesn't even include our tech crew.

 I just finished up a couple new musical pieces for the November shows.  One is an instrumental that will be played over the curtain call.  Randy had suggested this awhile back.  He's always felt that curtain calls were a really unpleasant experience for the audience, and often times just dragged on far too long with nothing interesting going on.  Recently he saw another show where they had music incorporated into the call, and it made the entire experience much more bearable.  So, with that in mind, I composed a new piece that reprised a lot of the themes from the show.  We're scheduled to start rehearsing it tonight.  I'm excited to hear it start coming together.

Here we see the Demoness giving our
Lead Soprano Vivian a tasty mid-show
snack of fire and brimstone. 

The other piece I composed was a classical guitar and violin piece.  It will be replacing the only non-original piece of music in the show, Koyunbaba (Carlo Domeniconi).  Historically, Randy has played this song during the first Act of AE, and we've always struggled with a way to make it fit into the story, since it wasn't written with our show in mind.  This the first piece I've written for classical guitar and violin, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It will serve to expand on the story between the Priest and Demoness slightly, serving as a link between the scenes in Silence and Darkness and Tapestry of Fate.  I've named the piece Tenebrous Absolution.  Randy has looked it over and feels confident he should have it ready to play before November.

Next Sunday we're getting together at the Historic Everett Theatre for a full cast run through.  We haven't had any rehearsals like this since last November, so I'm expecting things to be pretty rough.  This is mostly just to shake off the rust and get psyched for the rehearsals we'll be starting in September.  It also should be a lot of fun.

One of my priorities over the next week is to try and fill a few empty roles we have for the November run.  Most of the people in Lure of the Flames won't be able to join us this year, so we need to bring on a new Fire General, a new Samurai and a new Shogun's Wife.  We've been distributing casting notices and have a few responses so far, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.