TCI articles from January 1993

TCI archives from January 1993

All hands on deck. (set design for 'Captains Courageous')
January 1, 1993... Christopher Barreca took on a variety of challenges in designing the set for Captains Courageous, a musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's novel and Victor Fleming's 1937 film. The new musical recently received its world premiere at Ford's...

Return to Oz. (set design for new stage adaptation of 'The Wizard of Oz')
January 1, 1993... Thanks to its annual television showings, the 1939 movie musical The Wizard of Oz has become an American ritual. The film's classic story and score and the technicolor look of it's M-G-M fantasy design (credited to Cedric Gibbons and William...

Leolo.
January 1, 1993... The 1992 New York Film Festival, held September 25 to October 11 at Lincoln Center, was notable this year for several entries with strong design components. From France came Les Amants du Pont Neuf, the story of homeless lovers who take up...

Synergy With Synergy. (Sydney, Australia)
January 1, 1993... A dancer partners a cherry picker; musicians levitate, not by magic but by forklift truck. Banks of instruments are flown onstage, rolled around, and elevated, while musicians play on and dancers move in, around, and below them. Synergy With...

Theatre Projects' song of Singapore. (Theatre Projects Consultants; Singapore Arts Centre contract)
January 1, 1993... Just in time for its 35th anniversary, Theatre Projects Consultants have been appointed consultants for the new Singapore Arts Centre. The company, working in association with Technical Planning International, will advise the Government of...

Trade show report: LDI, part 1. (Lighting Dimensions International exhibition, Dallas, Texas, November 20-22, 1992)
January 1, 1993... Lighting Dimensions International returned to Dallas, where it all began, for this year's show, held November 20-22. The first LDI was held in Dallas in 1988; this year's exhibition nearly tripled the size of the original, with 7,000 attendees...

The harmonics controversy. (noise in modern dimming systems)
January 1, 1993... The Shubert Organization and the four major lighting suppliers in the New York area--Bash, Four Star, Production Arts, and Vanco--are debating how to handle the harmonic currents and voltages induced on the electrical power distribution system...

The return of Marjorie Romans. (Olesen Co. president)
January 1, 1993... Marjorie Romans, president of the Olesen Company, is happily back at work after two and a half years of retirement. "We did all these really terrific things," she says. "We went to the Pasadena championships for the Society for the...

Salzburg Festival. (Salzburg, Austria)
January 1, 1993... This summer, the Salzburg Fesival, which ran through late August, had a new look and a new atmosphere. As this was the first season planned by Gerard Mortier, Herbert von Karajan's successor as festival director, the scrunity of the press was...

1993 technical literature guide. (theatrical technology) (Directory)
January 1, 1993... How can you find out more about being a better followspot operator? What school do you go to learn that? Theatrical Technicians, Inc., the manufacturers of the Perfect-Pickup followspot sight, have a little booklet that will tell you all you...

Wally Russell: a tribute. (lighting designer) (Obituary)
January 1, 1993... Richard Pilbrow: Wally Russell died on October 30th after a brief illness. He was head of the Los Angeles office of Theatre Project Consultants, past president of Theatre Project's US company and Strand Lighting, and a director of Vari-Lite...

The WholeHog. (personal computer for programming stage lighting) (Evaluation)
January 1, 1993... "What we set out to do was to create a desk that would make it easy to run dimmers, color scrollers, or moving lights," explains Flying Pig Systems' marketing director Nils Thorjussen. "We wanted to make the differences among fixtures...

Indochine: Jacques Bufnoir recreates the colonial world of French Indochina. (movie production design) (Cover Story)
January 1, 1993... Indochine, production designer Jacques Bufnoir's 45th film, is a sweeping melodrama set in French Indochina in the 1930s. Bufnoir, who won an Emmy in 1990 for his work on Tony Richardson's The Phantom of the Opera, had never set foot in...

An Australian Nutcracker. (dance production design by Kristian Fredrikson)
January 1, 1993... Christmas cards picturing snow, robins, and holly mean little to Australians. Here at holiday time we swelter in midsummer heat and are more likely to be picnicking on the beach than indulging in roast turkey and Christmas pudding. The...

Up, up, and away with Mary Kay. (industrial show production design)
January 1, 1993... Lights flash, followspots swirl, music pounds, a kickline of dancers struts and sways. At the crest of a glittering stairway, doors swing wide to reveal the star, who poses dynamically and beams like an angel. While the crowd screams its...

A Ford in your future. (industrial show production design; Ford Dealer Announcement Show 1993)
January 1, 1993... Hotopp Associates and Caribiner design Ford's new product launch In the world of industrials, autumn is the time for the automotive industry's new product launches. At these shows, each company's new model cars are given a glitzy showcase...

Catalan teamwork. (theater production design; Isidre Prunes and Montse Amenos)
January 1, 1993... Of the current Spanish stage design traditions, the strongest is the Catalan style, centered in Barcelona. Two of its most active practitioners are Montse Amenos and Isidre Prunes, who met in the early 70s while students of set and costume...

Degraded reality: designing with the Brothers Quay. (theatre/film scenery; Timothy and Stephen Quay)
January 1, 1993... "We sort of rub people's faces in some dirt." Thus speak the Brothers Quay, filmmakers and stage designers. "That's our natural preponderance, towards dirt and especially detail and texture." So sums up the design aesthetic of this artistic...

AES 92. (Trade Show Report: Audio Engineering Society 93rd convention, October, 1992, San Francisco, California)
January 1, 1993... The 93rd Convention of the Audio Engineering Society in San Francisco October 1-4, 1992, bustled with 14,538 attendees and over 300 exhibitors and manufacturers. This was the first time that AES has held the annual convention and trade show in...

Edwardian Hats: The Art of Millinery.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1993... Mme. Anna Ben-Yusef was a prominent milliner who also taught this skill, first in London, and later at the Pratt Institute in New York. The Art of Millinery, first published in 1909, consists of "a complete series of practical lessons for the...

Karl Friedrich Schinkel Buhnenentwurfe.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1993... Buhnenentwurfe, Stage Designs is a beautifully printed and boxed two-volume work about Schinkel's life and stage designs. Schinkel was an architect, painter, and designer of dioramas and stage settings who is perhaps best known as the principal...

Silk Painting Workshop.
January 1, 1993... Fiber artists Jan Janas and Diane Tuckman's pleasure in their craft comes through loud and clear in this three-hour introductory video. Their enthusiasm and encouragement leaves the viewer confident and eager to start experimenting with silk...

The Technical Production Handbook: A Guide for Performing Arts Presenting Organizations and Touring Companies.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1993... If you are a regular reader of TCI you probably do not need to read The Technical Production Handbook. But perhaps another person in your performing arts organization does need to read it--and certainly, if you have done any touring, you have...

Pal Joey. (Designer Sketchbook; costumer Toni-Leslie James)
January 1, 1993... Joey Evans is back, and he's a changed man. The Huntington Theatre Company's recent revival of the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, directed by David Warren, boasts a newly adapted book by Richard Greenberg in which sleazy but...