Stars

I hesitate to write this post, since I don’t want to give away what I think is a deal-clinching idea before I have the opportunity to spring it on unsuspecting future collaborators. But it is such a good idea that I think it will serve as the kind of freedom/creativity I expect my community will bring to the workshop stage of William Blake’s Inn.

Also, it’s a perfect example of the GESTALT > SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION cycle; what kind of creativity guru would I be if I didn’t share it?

CONTEXT: The problem with staging the great central poem “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky” is, obviously, that not only do we have to show the Milky Way but also the inhabitants of the Inn strolling through it. Stars have to fall; there has to be a sense of moving through the vastness of space. What to do?

Indeed, the problem has been gnawing in my brain so much that I had begun losing sleep as the music kept playing over and over and over in my head. How were we going to inspire awe in the audience as our beloved Tiger and King of Cats, et al., walk in wonder through the universe?

In Notebook 3 I had already sketched in an idea for stars, for the “Prelude”:

Etc. (The stars fly apart to reveal William Blake.)

So that idea involved Moravian star kinds of lights, perhaps radio controlled, that could be swooped about on sticks, then hung from the flies until needed for the Milky Way.

But would they be effective in the Milky Way? How many would it take to convey the Milky Way? And if we wanted to do some kind of POV-pivot thing, how mobile would they be and how dangerous would those pointy bits be? Not to mention the long sticks!

Remember how my Lovely First Wife and I began our tour of national parks in Utah by seeing Cirque du Soleil’s O in Vegas? We and our traveling partners all were blown away by the spectacle, the creativity, and above all, the technology of the stagecraft, and we all had the same thought: Imagine what Cirque could do with William Blake’s Inn!

You be thinking on that, because I’ve decided to make this a two-part post. See you Monday!