Getting the Ball Rolling

147 days until opening night of the sixth run of Aeterno Elementum.  That’s exactly 21 weeks to get all the little details pulled together and get everything polished and ready for public consumption.  That may seem like an excessive amount of time for those who’ve never produced a show of this size, but experience has shown us again and again that this is a deceptive perception.  A six month lead is usually a good minimum.  That’s essentially where we started for this run.  Now, a month into our planning efforts, it becomes really clear exactly how much work is ahead of us.  We’ve got a two and a half hour production with over 50 people involved to fully cast, rehearse and stage and 3,200 seats to fill over four nights on a shoestring budget. 

This week is a burst of activity as we start to get our ducks in a row.  Monday saw myself, BJ (the Priest), Carrole (the Demoness) and Richard (Wretchard the Imp) heading out to Bainbridge Island to do some filming for a promo video with Garrett Gibbons.  I’m always extremely impressed every time we do any work with Garrett.  The location he chose was a little stretch of forested land on a friend’s piece of property and it had some picturesque spots that made for some compelling footage and photos.  Between Carrole’s fire dancing, the Imp’s antics and the Priest’s overall presence, I can’t wait to see what Garrett is able to piece together from it all.  I imagine we’ll see a finished product sometime in the next few weeks. 

Let me tell you, this was a whole lot
less awkward than the painting session
that followed.

As an added bonus, we got some pretty amazing cell phone pictures on the ferry ride back to Seattle.  Imagine ‘Titanic’, but replace Leonardo DeCaprio with the Demoness and Kate Winslet with Wretchard the Imp and you have a general idea of the level of strangeness going on.  All in all, a very enjoyable, though very long day.

 Part of the afternoon Tuesday was devoted to laying some guitar tracks on the Aeterno Elementum album.  I won’t go into the history of the album in this blog entry (though I think that will be a topic in the near future), but suffice to say it’s been a long and convoluted trip.  We’re experimenting with recording guitars using direct input, and so far the results have been pretty promising.  Randy’s got some good ideas for how to get everything polished up and sounding great, so we’re hopeful that we could have a finished product very soon.

Tuesday night we had a meeting at Café Mox in Ballard to discuss promotions for the show and the Kickstarter we’ll be launching in August.  The meeting went really well, but we ended up having to park quite a few blocks away from the café just as the heavens decided to unleash their full fury in the form of torrential rain.  Of course I hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella, and then we got turned around trying to make our way to the café, so we ended up walking about 15 blocks instead of the 5 it should have taken.  I felt like a drowned rat walking into the meeting.  I’m still trying to dry out my shoes today. 

The meeting itself felt really productive.  We discussed a lot of ways to utilize social media a bit more effectively and laid down some very preliminary plans for a couple smaller shows during the summer, including a benefit show.  I’m really excited about the prospect of getting back on stage, and a benefit show is something I’ve wanted to do for a few years now.  Fortunately we’ve got a few people with some experience in staging them, so it could realistically happen. 

The Kickstarter will be launching in August, and we’re hoping to reach out to a bunch of other organizations to help get the word out.  Succeeding at a Kickstarter for a theater company seems like it’s a bit more difficult than with other types of projects – probably due to the limited geographic region you can really market to.  It’s tough to convince someone to contribute to a project in Seattle when they live in New York and will probably never get a chance to actually watch the show.

Next week we meet up in the theater to discuss set design and tech for the show.  I’m really looking forward to it, I have to say.  We’ve advanced the show by leaps and bounds every time we’ve staged it, and I think with the experience we picked up over the last few runs, we’re going to be able to put together some really incredible stuff this time around, especially if we can pull off a successful Kickstarter.