Fighting with a tree...

It is spring and spring means dance production season.  I have worked the longest for the Leatherstocking Ballet, a local children's ballet company.  I got started doing this because my daughter was an original member of the company.  This year was the third time, (I think) that they did Alice in Wonderland.  I tried to get some pictures but once again I did not get as many as I wanted.  It is hard to photograph my stage work because I cannot always be at the actual production.  I was hoping to get my large garden drop, but they chose to use the smaller drop which was the first drop I ever did, (or maybe the second, because I think Humpbacked Pony came first.)
I like to use teenagers to help me paint these drops.  I like working with young people.  I actually like working with anyone who wants to try their hand at doing such a thing.  It is fun to help people create something, especially something big like a backdrop.  I have had interesting experiences with help, like the young girl who spent part of the time painting her feet.....with socks on.  I'm sure her mother was thrilled.  Of course I always have painted socks when I do a drop since I tend to wear a pair of socks while walking on the drop and at some point I always step in paint.  The rest of me gets painted also, I use my clothes for brush rags. 

There is something quite relaxing about drop painting.  I'm not sure relaxing is quite the right word, because it is very hard work, but your mind gets in a zone where it seems to hum along quite nicely and time flies by.  I paint standing up with either a roller or a brush at the end of a bamboo stick.  Bamboo works amazingly well.  It will split to hold the brush with rubber bands which keeps the flexibility of your painting instrument.  You can stand quite straight and you don't kill your knees or your back when you do it correctly.  The best drop painters can be amazingly detailed and exacting with that brush on the end of the bamboo pole.  But this world is changing also as more and more drops are being digitally printed. 

Alice involved quite a few pieces to be done, like the teaparty set.  There were moving doors, a floating leaf, rose bushes, and a tree.  The Cheshire Cat needed a tree.  It also had to be able to go through a door and be fairly easily moved onto the stage.  So using a ladder, chickenwire, muslin, and fake greenery, I constructed a tree.  Not quite the tree I envisioned, but it worked.  But sometime in the years of storage it got crushed and had to be repaired.  It was looking quite sad.  And I don't think it wanted to be repaired, but somehow it got there.   It is amazing the effects one can get with quite inexpensive materials.  The stage is truly a place of illusion...and lighting can change everything. 

I wonder often about the world of the stage, where ordinary people can become quite magical with the right costumes, props, makeup, scenery, and lighting.  And among these people are those who do have that inexplicable quality called talent that adds truth to the fantasy.  I love the storytelling and the magic, but I still wonder why we become so  enamored with the illusion and the people who populate it that we miss the real and true magic of people living everyday lives.  Maybe because we try so hard to perpetuate false impressions in our own lives, that we are something we are not.  Or maybe we need these people to act out these possibilities before us.  Or maybe it is just because the real world is hard to live in,  often painful and disappointing,  and this make believe world is so much easier for awhile. 

We work very hard to build a beautiful shell around ourselves, but like my tree sometimes that shell gets crushed and we end up being very lopsided and droopy.  I know I am constantly fighting with the tree that is me....I want me to be real and not illusion,  but oftentimes I just am chickenwire and muslin with the right lighting that makes me look good.  Instead of being authentic, I hide behind a facade, trying not to let my cracks show.