Did I mention that I'm a bit of a masochist? In addition to taking the leading role in this little Shakespeare thing going on in April, I'm also still doing the whole freelance design thing. So last night I went to watch a run through of The Crucible, which is my next project. Or one of my next projects, rather, as I'll be bouncing between rehearsals for the Arthur Miller masterpiece of depression and Les Miserable, that Victor Hugo ode to a loaf of bread.
They open the same night.
I mentioned that I'm a bit of an idiot on top a masochist, right? So my plan is to get Crucible hung and focused this weekend, and maybe even programmed, so that lighting can be completely done before I leave town next week to attend the Southeastern Theatre Conference, where I'm teaching three workshops that I know nothing about and freaking out over the ridiculous number of words I have to remember while doing more situps than Jack Lalane for I'll be more Petruchio than Pe-tubby-o in April.
I might be freaking out a little.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
First read-thru
So the good news is that I think I can probably still do this acting thing. The better news is that it's a good cast. And even better, it feels fun again. It's been a long time since theatre was fun, and that's what I've missed.
I enjoy lighting, and I get satisfaction out of making pretty pictures with lighting, but it's not what I'd call fun. It's also largely solitary, with input really only from the director and the other designers. I never really feel like a part of the ensemble as a lighting designer, because I'm not. Those people have been owrking very closely together for weeks to build something that I'm coming into at the last minute. Even the tightness of the crew is something I don't experience, because I'm not on headset with them and not in there every night working to make it happen. I do my bit, get my check, go on my merry way.
This is different. I'm going to spend the next two months with these people. Roughly five nights a week. I'm in the middle of this, not on the edges. It felt good to be there again.
I enjoy lighting, and I get satisfaction out of making pretty pictures with lighting, but it's not what I'd call fun. It's also largely solitary, with input really only from the director and the other designers. I never really feel like a part of the ensemble as a lighting designer, because I'm not. Those people have been owrking very closely together for weeks to build something that I'm coming into at the last minute. Even the tightness of the crew is something I don't experience, because I'm not on headset with them and not in there every night working to make it happen. I do my bit, get my check, go on my merry way.
This is different. I'm going to spend the next two months with these people. Roughly five nights a week. I'm in the middle of this, not on the edges. It felt good to be there again.
Tags:
It all starts again
I was three years ago the last time I walked across the stage as an actor. It was more like 16 the last time I carried the leading male role in a show. It's never happened in a Shakespeare play. To say I'm a little concerned with my ability to pull this off would be an understatement. It's not the acting that I'm sweating. If I can pull off a $100 bluff on the river with nothing but a busted Queen-high flush draw I can handle the acting part of it. It's more the looking retarded because I'm old, fat and out of shape and here I am supposed to be Petruchio.
You're welcome to follow along and see how it goes. I'll try to document the process the best I can.
Day 1 - Fuck me, that's a lot of words.
You're welcome to follow along and see how it goes. I'll try to document the process the best I can.
Day 1 - Fuck me, that's a lot of words.
Tags:
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Opera fini
And after another two-a-day rehearsal that saw me at least leave the theatre prior to the clock turning on a new day, I am done with the opera. It looks really pretty. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. There is one 3-minute scene that I really wanted to tweak a little, but there was so much going on in the room that it was never really feasible to get the lift out and refocus for that scene. There's an upstage corner that's darker than I want, but that's about all I can get out of it with the three days time I had.
I think overall it's pretty. This shot is from near the end, before Dido offs herself.
I'd really like another week to tweak and touch up things, but it's very pretty for the time allotted, and most of my touch up stuff last night was just timing and incremental level stuff, so I was happy. Hopefully I'll be able to get a photo up here or on PokerStage before too long.
Now on the next three things. I've got a theatre conference that I'm teaching three workshops at in two weeks, and then two shows opening the week after, all while I'm starting rehearsals for Taming of the Shrew. It's a busy spring, to say the least. The funny bit is that I have practically nothing lined up for summer, and only one show lined up for late spring. Who knows, some stuff will probably fall into place to keep me busy.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
It's been a long time...
Since I spent 14 hours in one day working on a show. Shit, most of the gigs I get nowadays, 14 hours is about all I spend on the entire thing! I exaggerate a little, but yesterday was a long fucking day.
I still think this director is pretty damn cool. She's got big ideas and isn't afraid to take risks. Unfortunately she has no real production experience, from the technical side, and the opera has received practically zero support from the UNCC Dance and Theatre Department, which is a shame. Yeah, I know it's a music department production. Yeah, I know it runs concurrently with a theatre department show. But just the simple help of offering up some practicum student assistance or even making working on the opera an option for the theatre kids woulda been nice. But in academia, there be turf wars. And this be one of them.
So we rehearsed from 7Pm to midnight last night. Which sucked ass for an hour-long show, but really wasn't that bad when you consider everything that had to happen. We had to get lighting integrated into the show. We had to get the orchestra in place and integrated. We had to get video integrated. A lot of video. Like four projectors and a roving camera lot.
I may have mentioned before, but video is hard. And frequently people that work with video don't often work in theatre, so there's a vocabulary gap there as well. The impressive thing last night was that all the technical folks remained relatively calm, even when the viola player got smacked in the head.
Yup. A chain that was part of a costume flew over the edge of the stage and clobbered the viola player. She wasn't even bleeding, but freaked out all over the place and threatened to quit over it! Geez, if I threatened to quit every time I got hurt on a show I'd never work anywhere! And like I said, she wasn't even bleeding...
But anyway, my lights are in good shape, and there are some very pretty looks in the show, so I'm pleased with it overall. I'd certainly love to have 3-4 more nights of touchup and cueing, but I don't. So tonight is final dress and it will be as good as it gets when I leave. Then on to the next thing.
I still think this director is pretty damn cool. She's got big ideas and isn't afraid to take risks. Unfortunately she has no real production experience, from the technical side, and the opera has received practically zero support from the UNCC Dance and Theatre Department, which is a shame. Yeah, I know it's a music department production. Yeah, I know it runs concurrently with a theatre department show. But just the simple help of offering up some practicum student assistance or even making working on the opera an option for the theatre kids woulda been nice. But in academia, there be turf wars. And this be one of them.
So we rehearsed from 7Pm to midnight last night. Which sucked ass for an hour-long show, but really wasn't that bad when you consider everything that had to happen. We had to get lighting integrated into the show. We had to get the orchestra in place and integrated. We had to get video integrated. A lot of video. Like four projectors and a roving camera lot.
I may have mentioned before, but video is hard. And frequently people that work with video don't often work in theatre, so there's a vocabulary gap there as well. The impressive thing last night was that all the technical folks remained relatively calm, even when the viola player got smacked in the head.
Yup. A chain that was part of a costume flew over the edge of the stage and clobbered the viola player. She wasn't even bleeding, but freaked out all over the place and threatened to quit over it! Geez, if I threatened to quit every time I got hurt on a show I'd never work anywhere! And like I said, she wasn't even bleeding...
But anyway, my lights are in good shape, and there are some very pretty looks in the show, so I'm pleased with it overall. I'd certainly love to have 3-4 more nights of touchup and cueing, but I don't. So tonight is final dress and it will be as good as it gets when I leave. Then on to the next thing.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Opera
Tonight I begin designing an opera for a department at UNCC that has never produced a fully-staged performance before. I don't read music. And I've never designed an opera before.
At least it's in English.
Should be interesting. And in the "God, just what I think I didn't need another one of" department, a buddy emailed me today asking me to light his musical. Next week.
It's my dark week. It's feasible. It's $500. I'm probably gonna do it. Because I'm fucking stupid. And greedy.
At least it's in English.
Should be interesting. And in the "God, just what I think I didn't need another one of" department, a buddy emailed me today asking me to light his musical. Next week.
It's my dark week. It's feasible. It's $500. I'm probably gonna do it. Because I'm fucking stupid. And greedy.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Dance fest - fini
So I'm done with the NC Dance fest, and damn, are my legs tired. That joke never works. so over the course of six days I saw and designed or semi-designed better than 20 dances, many of which I saw for the first time the afternoon that they were to perform.
It was yesterday that I kinda took stock and realized that this is one of the hardest gigs I do each year, because I have so little time to tweak and adjust anything. It's talk through the piece with the choreographer once without hearing the music, then run the piece once with lights, and if we have enough time in their tech slot, make changes and run the piece again with lights. Usually we don't have enough time so I get to see each piece once, sometimes marking through the piece instead of dancing full our and about half the time not even in costume, then run it for an audience later that evening.
Without screwing anything up that the choreographer may have mentioned in passing three days ago.
All the choreographers were very gracious and understanding of the constraints we were all working under, some of them just didn't have the vocabulary to communicate with technical personnel. I find that incredibly frustrating, as we as technicians are expected to understand the nuances of their world, but they frequently don't take the time to even think about learning ours.
As I said more than once this weekend, I want to work with directors and choreographers that fall into one of two camps. I either want to work with people like John Gamble from Greensboro, who has a great understanding of lighting and how to achieve the effects he wants (it doesn't hurt that he was a lighting designer before becoming a choreographer) or I want to work with people like Justy Turnow of [project incite] in Charlotte, who doesn't pretend to know much about lighting, but cuts me loose to be creative and trusts my artistic capabilities.
Most of the choreographers fell into the second camp, and that made them fun enough to work with, but a couple simply couldn't form complete sentences when talking to me about what the piece should look like. That adds time to the process that we don't have to spare in this environment. If you don't have a picture in your head, how did you design the dance to begin with? And especially if you're a touring artist, how can you not know what your dance has looked like other places?
But it was overall a pleasant enough experience. I don't know if I'll do it again next year. There's never a guarantee that I'll be asked, but it's even mor up in the air now, as the woman who has run the tour stop in Charlotte says she's burned out and doesn't want to do it next year. So we'll have to see if it even happens next year before we think about whether or not I'll be part of it.
Strike was after the show, and some of the dancers stuck around to help. I always appreciate volunteers, because there are plenty of things at a strike that just require hands, not necessarily trained hands. We had to strike the upstage two booms on each side of the stage so that the opera that I'm lighting this coming week can load their set in tonight and tomorrow.
A boom is a piece of pipe screwed into a heavy base with lights mounted onto it. At UNCC, these booms are around 15' - 20' tall and have a rope that ties off up to the grid. So we send someone up about 80' to the grid, have them untie the boom, and then try to control the descent of a 20' pipe with about an extra 60 lbs of lighting attached to it. It takes about 4 people on the ground and one in the air. The we strip the lights off the pipe while folks are holding it, and unscrew the pipe from the base. Lather, rinse, repeat four times.
Then we put all the lights on a rack and take them down to storage, then we put the booms in storage, the bases in storage, the cable in storage, then we take up the dance floor. See, dancers, especially modern dancers, can't dance on a wooden stage floor. It's too rough and they'd end up getting splinters in places nobody wants a splinter. For ballet, it's more about traction than splinters, but still no wood floor. So on top of the stage floor for every dance concert you lay down a second floor called marley.
Marley is a thick, two-sided (usually) flooring product that comes in about 5' widths and spans the length of the stage. It's also ridiculously expensive. The dance floor to cover the stage at UNCC is probably upwards of $25,000.00 to replace. So we take up all the tape holding down the marley, and roll all that heavy shit up onto rollers. A single panel of marley once it's rolled up for storage is usually 100 lbs. or so. Repeat eight times to cover the whole depth of the stage. Then move the marley cart into storage.
I left before the marley was done. I was off the clock by then and the UNCC work-study studentia had that bit well in hand. They'll probably find a way to get back at me this week as I do the opera, but I'll take it. Me and my busted-ass toe that I dropped an empty boom pipe on. Owie.
It was yesterday that I kinda took stock and realized that this is one of the hardest gigs I do each year, because I have so little time to tweak and adjust anything. It's talk through the piece with the choreographer once without hearing the music, then run the piece once with lights, and if we have enough time in their tech slot, make changes and run the piece again with lights. Usually we don't have enough time so I get to see each piece once, sometimes marking through the piece instead of dancing full our and about half the time not even in costume, then run it for an audience later that evening.
Without screwing anything up that the choreographer may have mentioned in passing three days ago.
All the choreographers were very gracious and understanding of the constraints we were all working under, some of them just didn't have the vocabulary to communicate with technical personnel. I find that incredibly frustrating, as we as technicians are expected to understand the nuances of their world, but they frequently don't take the time to even think about learning ours.
As I said more than once this weekend, I want to work with directors and choreographers that fall into one of two camps. I either want to work with people like John Gamble from Greensboro, who has a great understanding of lighting and how to achieve the effects he wants (it doesn't hurt that he was a lighting designer before becoming a choreographer) or I want to work with people like Justy Turnow of [project incite] in Charlotte, who doesn't pretend to know much about lighting, but cuts me loose to be creative and trusts my artistic capabilities.
Most of the choreographers fell into the second camp, and that made them fun enough to work with, but a couple simply couldn't form complete sentences when talking to me about what the piece should look like. That adds time to the process that we don't have to spare in this environment. If you don't have a picture in your head, how did you design the dance to begin with? And especially if you're a touring artist, how can you not know what your dance has looked like other places?
But it was overall a pleasant enough experience. I don't know if I'll do it again next year. There's never a guarantee that I'll be asked, but it's even mor up in the air now, as the woman who has run the tour stop in Charlotte says she's burned out and doesn't want to do it next year. So we'll have to see if it even happens next year before we think about whether or not I'll be part of it.
Strike was after the show, and some of the dancers stuck around to help. I always appreciate volunteers, because there are plenty of things at a strike that just require hands, not necessarily trained hands. We had to strike the upstage two booms on each side of the stage so that the opera that I'm lighting this coming week can load their set in tonight and tomorrow.
A boom is a piece of pipe screwed into a heavy base with lights mounted onto it. At UNCC, these booms are around 15' - 20' tall and have a rope that ties off up to the grid. So we send someone up about 80' to the grid, have them untie the boom, and then try to control the descent of a 20' pipe with about an extra 60 lbs of lighting attached to it. It takes about 4 people on the ground and one in the air. The we strip the lights off the pipe while folks are holding it, and unscrew the pipe from the base. Lather, rinse, repeat four times.
Then we put all the lights on a rack and take them down to storage, then we put the booms in storage, the bases in storage, the cable in storage, then we take up the dance floor. See, dancers, especially modern dancers, can't dance on a wooden stage floor. It's too rough and they'd end up getting splinters in places nobody wants a splinter. For ballet, it's more about traction than splinters, but still no wood floor. So on top of the stage floor for every dance concert you lay down a second floor called marley.
Marley is a thick, two-sided (usually) flooring product that comes in about 5' widths and spans the length of the stage. It's also ridiculously expensive. The dance floor to cover the stage at UNCC is probably upwards of $25,000.00 to replace. So we take up all the tape holding down the marley, and roll all that heavy shit up onto rollers. A single panel of marley once it's rolled up for storage is usually 100 lbs. or so. Repeat eight times to cover the whole depth of the stage. Then move the marley cart into storage.
I left before the marley was done. I was off the clock by then and the UNCC work-study studentia had that bit well in hand. They'll probably find a way to get back at me this week as I do the opera, but I'll take it. Me and my busted-ass toe that I dropped an empty boom pipe on. Owie.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Scary shit
One of a technician's greatest fears is that something goes wrong and somebody gets hurt. Last night, during the dance concert, it did, and someone did. I wasn't involved and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, but I was the most experienced technician on the show, so I feel a little responsible anyway.
Here's what happened. UNCC has a cyc lighting pit, a trench in the back part of the stage where the cyc lights are recessed into the floor. It's about 4' wide and bout 4' deep and runs most of the width of the stage. There's a shitload of lights in there, usually very hot, and a buttload of electricity, so between the fall and the shit you land on, there's a huge potential for serious injury to someone falling in there.
And that's exactly what happened. Between the 3rd and 4th numbers of the night, a dancer fell into the cyc pit. I'm still not sure how he managed to do it, since we had put shit in the way to try and block off the pit from people falling into it, but he managed. And this wasn't some clueless kid, this was a faculty member from the college, an experienced dancer who was very familiar with the space, so I'm really confused as to what happened.
Fortunately he's okay. Banged up, bruised and scraped, but nothing broken. He has to dance tomorrow, so we'll see how well that goes, because the piece he's scheduled to perform in is very athletic, and he really beat the shit out of himself. But there's really nothing more terrifying than hearing over headset "a dancer fell into the cyc pit." It made me go cold all over, because I knew something bad had happened and there was nothing in the world I could do about it.
Here's what happened. UNCC has a cyc lighting pit, a trench in the back part of the stage where the cyc lights are recessed into the floor. It's about 4' wide and bout 4' deep and runs most of the width of the stage. There's a shitload of lights in there, usually very hot, and a buttload of electricity, so between the fall and the shit you land on, there's a huge potential for serious injury to someone falling in there.
And that's exactly what happened. Between the 3rd and 4th numbers of the night, a dancer fell into the cyc pit. I'm still not sure how he managed to do it, since we had put shit in the way to try and block off the pit from people falling into it, but he managed. And this wasn't some clueless kid, this was a faculty member from the college, an experienced dancer who was very familiar with the space, so I'm really confused as to what happened.
Fortunately he's okay. Banged up, bruised and scraped, but nothing broken. He has to dance tomorrow, so we'll see how well that goes, because the piece he's scheduled to perform in is very athletic, and he really beat the shit out of himself. But there's really nothing more terrifying than hearing over headset "a dancer fell into the cyc pit." It made me go cold all over, because I knew something bad had happened and there was nothing in the world I could do about it.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The word is VAGINA, you fucking pussy.
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Dance, monkey, dance!
Kinda. This week the NC Dance Festival has its annual stop in Charlotte at the UNCC theatre, and for the second year I'm their lighting guy. It's a little bit of a stretch to call myself the lighting designer, because I'm working with someone else's light plot (the Liz Lehrman dance company just came through) and for half the pieces I'm not even picking out what the lights do. But it's a fun gig and the people are nice, not to mention the extra scratch is always helpful, so I'm working two jobs this week.
What I mean by someone else's light plot is that the touring company that just came through set up the lights for their show. Well, we decided that since they were a dance company, they'd probably have most evrything going on that I need for this gig, so I'd just use their design, with color and pattern changes as needed. So I did recolor most of the rig, and all the gobos are different, but the positioning and front light is all someone else's stuff.
But it's all in how I adapt it to my show. I'm using the same basic plot for the opera next week, but it will end up looking completely different, because I'll change some colors and the cueing will be completely different. Frankly, the dance festival runs over three nights, and if you came to the show on Thursday, Friday and Saturday it would look completely different because it's all different dances and thus different cues and setups.
Some of this is when I do my best work, when a choreographer comes to me and says "just watch it and make it look good, I trust you." So I get to interpret their movement and music and color the stage and the dancers accordingly. I've said it before, I'm not very good at lighting sets, but give me an open stage and some sidelight and I'm gold, Pony, gold!
What I mean by someone else's light plot is that the touring company that just came through set up the lights for their show. Well, we decided that since they were a dance company, they'd probably have most evrything going on that I need for this gig, so I'd just use their design, with color and pattern changes as needed. So I did recolor most of the rig, and all the gobos are different, but the positioning and front light is all someone else's stuff.
But it's all in how I adapt it to my show. I'm using the same basic plot for the opera next week, but it will end up looking completely different, because I'll change some colors and the cueing will be completely different. Frankly, the dance festival runs over three nights, and if you came to the show on Thursday, Friday and Saturday it would look completely different because it's all different dances and thus different cues and setups.
Some of this is when I do my best work, when a choreographer comes to me and says "just watch it and make it look good, I trust you." So I get to interpret their movement and music and color the stage and the dancers accordingly. I've said it before, I'm not very good at lighting sets, but give me an open stage and some sidelight and I'm gold, Pony, gold!
Tags:
Auditions...
I was surprised when I pulled into the parking lot and saw so many cars. Surprised, and a little nervous. I haven't done this in a few years, and hadn't really done it in closer to eight or nine. I figured I'd be a little rusty, but I did have a slight edge over my compatriots in this endeavor.
I knew the director. Of course, so did half the other people auditioning, but I didn't know that from the parking lot.
So I got in, got my audition form, got my sides and sat down next to an actress I've lit a couple of shows for. We made small talk, caught up with each other for a bit 'cause it's been a couple months since we've seen one another, then it was time to get started.
Herr Director did his informational spiel about the show, what the concept was, where rehearsals and performances would be held, all that jazz. Folks seemed pretty excited, and I was surprised to see fifteen people show up on the first night of auditions for a play that we're not getting paid for and that performs in the next state over.
I was more surprised that most of them were good. Usually auditions are hit and miss, especially for unpaid theatre, but most of these folks could act. And quite a few of them were people I'd never seen before, something that would have been unheard of two years ago.
I did my bit, read a few times, knocked the rust off, and I feel good about the audition. Chris and I have worked together several times, he's directed me, I've directed him, and we're the best of friends, so we get along well when we work together. I have a better facility with the language than most of the folks I auditioned with, a by-product of simply having done more Shakespeare, so that gave me a bit of a leg up. I'll know in a couple of days whether or not I got the role I want, but it felt pretty good just to get up there with people I'd never worked with before and act again.
I hadn't realized that I missed it.
If I get the part, this will turn into my rehearsal journal. That will at least give me the excuse to post here regularly.
I knew the director. Of course, so did half the other people auditioning, but I didn't know that from the parking lot.
So I got in, got my audition form, got my sides and sat down next to an actress I've lit a couple of shows for. We made small talk, caught up with each other for a bit 'cause it's been a couple months since we've seen one another, then it was time to get started.
Herr Director did his informational spiel about the show, what the concept was, where rehearsals and performances would be held, all that jazz. Folks seemed pretty excited, and I was surprised to see fifteen people show up on the first night of auditions for a play that we're not getting paid for and that performs in the next state over.
I was more surprised that most of them were good. Usually auditions are hit and miss, especially for unpaid theatre, but most of these folks could act. And quite a few of them were people I'd never seen before, something that would have been unheard of two years ago.
I did my bit, read a few times, knocked the rust off, and I feel good about the audition. Chris and I have worked together several times, he's directed me, I've directed him, and we're the best of friends, so we get along well when we work together. I have a better facility with the language than most of the folks I auditioned with, a by-product of simply having done more Shakespeare, so that gave me a bit of a leg up. I'll know in a couple of days whether or not I got the role I want, but it felt pretty good just to get up there with people I'd never worked with before and act again.
I hadn't realized that I missed it.
If I get the part, this will turn into my rehearsal journal. That will at least give me the excuse to post here regularly.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Go ahead...
Order the new Harry Potter
book. You might as well, everybody else is, and you don't want to be stuck in line at Borders at midnight AGAIN.
book. You might as well, everybody else is, and you don't want to be stuck in line at Borders at midnight AGAIN.Tags:
Monday, February 05, 2007
Transference
Isn't that what they call it when you move anger or love or whatver feeling you have from the real target to a surrogate? Well, that's sort of the theory here. I don't think transference is really the right term, but more like filling the void.
We got two new cats. Suzy wanted to wait, but I prevailed. I think the emptiness of the house was actually bothering me more than it was her, and she wasn't really 100% ready to get another kitty, but after an hour or so playing with the cats up for adoption at Petsmart, we brought home a boy and girl, both fixed, to try and help heal the hurt that Bela's passing left us.
She is a 2-year old big fat black medium-hair kitty with a patch of about 12 white hairs just uner her throat. Suzy's decided that she must be Ophelia, because she's a very pretty cat, and Suzy's always liked the name Ophelia. I argued that there isn't a good diminutive of Ophelia, and said that I feared calling the cat Ophelia would create an unhealthy predisposition toward rosemary and lakes. I lost. Ophelia she is.
We haven't renamed the boy yet. He's 8 months old, with long black and white hair. No, I didn't want a longhair after Grizabella, but he's so funny that he won me over. Hamlet is the obvious choice, but he's not morose enough. He may end up being called Guildenstern, because so far he doesn't seem too bright.
So they spent last night wandering around the den getting accustomed to us, and hopefully they will become more affectionate as they get familiar with the surroundings. That's at least what the adoption lady told us, anyway. They were plenty affectionate in the store, so I think they'll be good additions to the family when they get used to us. They'll never replace Bela, but they can fill the void a little.
We got two new cats. Suzy wanted to wait, but I prevailed. I think the emptiness of the house was actually bothering me more than it was her, and she wasn't really 100% ready to get another kitty, but after an hour or so playing with the cats up for adoption at Petsmart, we brought home a boy and girl, both fixed, to try and help heal the hurt that Bela's passing left us.
She is a 2-year old big fat black medium-hair kitty with a patch of about 12 white hairs just uner her throat. Suzy's decided that she must be Ophelia, because she's a very pretty cat, and Suzy's always liked the name Ophelia. I argued that there isn't a good diminutive of Ophelia, and said that I feared calling the cat Ophelia would create an unhealthy predisposition toward rosemary and lakes. I lost. Ophelia she is.
We haven't renamed the boy yet. He's 8 months old, with long black and white hair. No, I didn't want a longhair after Grizabella, but he's so funny that he won me over. Hamlet is the obvious choice, but he's not morose enough. He may end up being called Guildenstern, because so far he doesn't seem too bright.
So they spent last night wandering around the den getting accustomed to us, and hopefully they will become more affectionate as they get familiar with the surroundings. That's at least what the adoption lady told us, anyway. They were plenty affectionate in the store, so I think they'll be good additions to the family when they get used to us. They'll never replace Bela, but they can fill the void a little.
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