Thriller Flash Mobs

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The Creative City Project came about as a result of a conversation between Cole Nesmith and Terry Olson, the Director at Orange County Arts & Cultural Affairs. The Creative City Project involves gorilla style performances in public spaces every day of the month in October.

The Orlando Ballet had a Thriller themed flash mob on October 12th in the Plaza Theater Courtyard in Downtown Orlando at noon as part of The Creative City Project. I arrived a bit late and there was a crowd of people in business attire milling around the plaza. A 7-11 which recently opened in the plaza was packed. I was afraid I had missed the flash mob but  Robert Hill, the company’s artistic director let me know that there would be three more performances about every 15 minutes. Each performance would be just three minutes. That would be a challenge to catch an entire cast dancing in three minutes. I felt I had bit off more than I could chew.


I climbed the stairs for an aerial view of the staging area. Suddenly I was surrounded by the entire ballet cast all dressed in black. They were posing for a photo in front of the Plaza Theater marquee and resting before the next performance. In the bright noon light they tended to look more like cheerleaders rather than zombies. I considered sketching them, but they went back downstairs just as I started. A woman’s piercing scream shifted my attention to the courtyard. She ran to the center of the courtyard, screaming the whole time. People turned to look concerned. Then Michael Jackson’s Thriller boomed from the sound system. The entire cast danced as zombies and ghouls. People kept gathering to watch. Then as Vincent Price laughed, the performers disappeared. The flash mob was used to help promote Vampire’s Ball which will run from October 19th to the 21st. The show is advertised as being frightening, erotic, and campy. I saw a preview from last year’s show and it looked amazing.


Tonight after 6PM at the City Arts Factory, Yow Dance will also be performing a Thriller Flash Mob as part of Dia Des Los Muertos and Monster Factory. At this flash mob, everyone is being encouraged to join in. So put on your best zombie attire and get out and dance! There will be makeup artists at City Arts Factory in case you need some extra gory wounds.

A Room with a View

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Terry and I took the Paris metro from the airport to Hotel Pantheon. We were delighted to find out that out that we had been upgraded to a room with a view. A municipal building in the square in front of the Pantheon had a wedding ceremony going on.  Colorful confetti was thrown over the coulee as they left the building. A crowd of guests stood in the street afterwards. A wedding photographer took pictures of the couple with the Pantheon as a backdrop. There was no mad rush to get to a reception. A large vintage sedan with its chauffeur was waiting at the corner.

This view was from the hotel window and it was the first sketch I did in Paris after I opened the window shutters. It was obvious from the start that there would be no shortage of interesting subjects in this city. Terry and I went inside the Pantheon to look around. In the basement there were catacombs with crypts. One room held the remains of authors Victor Hugo, 1807-1885, and Emile Zola, 1840-1902. The Pantheon had a huge pendulum suspended from the large central dome. There was an exhibit of original manuscripts from Jean Jacques Rousseau. Terry and I looked through but didn’t linger. Murals and statuary decorated every corner and alcove of the interior. One huge room housed a scale model of the Pantheon itself.

It was good that our hotel was near this major landmark since it helped us navigate back after we got lost on the myriad of angular rooked streets of Paris. Inevitably we were always lost since there was no grid pattern to follow.  Streets would often end at public places and only a few of thee street names ever seemed to actually be on the map. Once while I was trying to read the map, a little old French lady walked right into me to push me aside. She was like an ant unable to consider the notion of walking around. The country celebrates youth even more than America, so perhaps that is why the older ladies seem so bitter. I eventually abandoned the maps and wandered the streets by instinct and feel. Every turn would result in another stunning find so that is when the adventure begins. It only became important to get a feel for where the River Seine was in relation to where we were.

Skill Focus Burlesque Presents: Classis Horror

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I went to a Skill Focus: Burlesque rehearsal of Classic Horror at the Peacock Room. Skill Focus is Orlando’s premiere nerdy burlesque troupe. The Peacock Room has been lavishly decorated for Halloween with life sized ghouls, demons and plenty of spider webs. The rehearsal was just getting started and Ruby Darling, the troupes director, had the performers run through their numbers in the order they arrived to the rehearsal.  On stage Andy Matchett was setting up for the live performance by The Continentals. Andy Matchett, Matthew Mendel, and Shawn Bryant – are Orlando’s
hippest trio of musicians, who bring you all your favorite hits from the
past with tons of style and a whole lot of rock and roll. The other members of the band hadn’t arrived yet so Andy was flying solo. At one point Andy asked if anyone knew how to play guitar. One of the girls knew a few chords, so he handed her his guitar and showed her the chords he needed her to play. Then he asked for anyone who could drum. Count Dracula got on stage and pounded out a beat on the snare drum. Andy had an instant band.The other performers did arrive after a break and the Continentals gave a hip edge to each Burlesque act.

This nerdy burlesque tribute will pay homage to everyone’s favorite classic movie monsters of the past, with live music by The Continentals! Come watch Dracula, the Bride of Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and more of your favorite creepy creatures take it off to the hottest songs of yesteryear. Skill Focus is made up of hot nerdy ladies (and guys!) who love geeking
out and sequins, performing saucy, sassy, sultry striptease while
portraying their favorite characters from comic books, video games,
sci-fi, anime, horror, fantasy, you name it.

Hosted by the illustrious Chan Sterling – human encyclopedia and master
of dick jokes – Skill Focus is proud to present a lineup of seriously
talented, seriously nerdy burlesque performers from Orlando:

Ruby Darling,
Cherry Bob-omb,
Rickabilly Bond,
Syber Digit,
Shy Labuff,
Fifi Latio,
Nekkid RoboJoe,
and
Rosita “Queen of Offensive Burlesque” Sparkles.

The rehearsal was insanely fun with satin capes, baubles, glitter and plenty of flirtatious bump and grind. An eight foot stage runway will be added to the room allowing the ladies and guys to walk out into the audience. Guaranteed, this will be a standing room only show. Don’t miss the HORROR!

The show is TONIGHT, Tuesday, October 16th at
10pm. The doors and bar open at 9pm. 18+ only, please!  The Peacock Room
1321 N. Mills Ave., Orlando, with plenty of parking in back and on the side streets.

Tickets are $12 at the door. $2 off for Halloween Horror Nights team members! – If you are an Halloween Horror Night team member, please bring your work ID to the show to avoid extra charges at the door.

Tijuana Flats

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On my way to Urban ReThink, I decided to stop by Tijuana Flats, (8 North Summerlin Ave.), for some Mexican food and a sketch. I ordered a Chimichanga and a Coke. Anytime I eat alone I end up sketching. Two men sat at a table opposite me having an animated conversation about sports. The walls were covered with quirky murals of aliens in UFOs. The murals had an urban graffiti quality to them.

I’m writing this post on a flight back to Orlando from Paris. I was surprised by how much graffiti there was in and around Paris. Of course there is always more graffiti along railroad tracks. It was odd that most tags were crossed out with a single spray painted line. Only tags that were precariously high had any hope of lasting. I suppose graffiti is an ephemeral art. In a city with so much beautiful art, architecture, and history, the graffiti was just an eyesore.

Phantasmagoria

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I went to a dress rehearsal for Empty Space Theater Company’s, Phantasmagoria III in the Patron’s Room at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center. The circular room was magically transformed into a circus ring. Suspended below the circular dome was a circular screen which was used for projections. The rehearsal began with a 7PM fight choreography session. Even rehearsed at 1/4 speed, the sword fight was strangely menacing in the small space.

John DiDona, the director, then circled up all the actors to hold hands before a complete run through of the show. He told the cast, “Every story is important. We are dangerous, we have seen to much.” Someone shouted, “Merde!”, or was it “Murder? The room went dark as actors took their places. Two clowns in simple black suits began wrestling with boxes in the ring to comic effect. John let me know that this was the 13 minute pre-show that went on as the audience filtered in.

The Phantasmagoria cast tells some of the classic horror stories incorporating music, dance, puppetry and drama to sinister effect. The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe made great use of projections on the overhead screen with chipped wall paint patterns and then  giant eye as the narrator discussed the cold blooded, highly thought out plot to kill his neighbor, an old man. The whole cast recreated the sound of the heart with guttural verbalization. It was creepy. The Cold Embrace told the tale off an artist who fell in and out of love with a cousin. Heart broken, the cousin died and then returned to haunt the fickle artist, embracing him with her invisible cold fingers.

The dark show was filled with dancing skeletons, a giant bloodthirsty wolf and beings in the darkness that were hard to identify. The ringmaster was barefooted, because corpses are barefooted in the morgue, Brittany Wine explained. Characters at times stood behind me as they whispered their lines sending a chill down my spine. The circular room is intimate, small, with no room to escape. These were classic tales told with drama and effect. Now in it’s third year, the show keeps growing and evolving along with it’s characters, each of whom had a dark painful back-story.

When: October 12-31st,  8:30 p.m.

Venue: Lowndes Shakespeare Center, Patron’s Room

Address: 812 E. Rollins St.

Phone: (407) 328-9005

Web Site: http://www.redchairproject.com

Price: $20

Creative City Project

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Sarah Lockhard invited me to participate in a Creative City Project she was organizing in Lake Eola Park with Brie Hinman. The Creative City Project was birthed out of the belief that artists
can change a city for the better by making it a more beautiful,
meaningful and interesting place to live.

The original plan was for me to do a digital sketch projected live while Brie danced to a Tom Waits poem. Creative project have a way of morphing and we didn’t have any opportunity to rehearse, so I decided to simply sketch the dance event like any other event. Sarah told me the morning before that Brie would be dancing on the grassy peninsula beside the Japanese pagoda. I arrived a half an your early to start blocking in the composition.

Ducks, geese and swans populated the peninsula and the was bird droppings everywhere. I don’t think they had planned for this so I fired off a text to Sarah that simply said, “Bird Poop!” I found a spot near a tree stump and started sketching. I planned to put the dancers in when they arrived. The tree stump ironically had a brass plaque that said thee tree was planted in dedication to the patients that suffered from Cancer at Florida Hospital. That scarred stump was an odd form of education.

I finished the sketch and started populating it with geese. The dancers were late. I saw a girl on the dock next to the pagoda and I figured she was the dancer. The sky’s were overcast and it rained lightly several times but not hard enough to stop me. My sketch was finished when Sarah, Brie and Genevieve Bernard showed up. Genevieve set up a picnic blanket to relax and watch the dance. A small boom box was used to play the sound track from Amelie. Brie was dressed in a light flowing blue skirt and she flowed with the music. It began to rain and Sarah joined the dance with her umbrella. I quickly sketched them into the scene. The rain grew heavier but Brie continued to dance. It was a magical moment.  Soon my umbrella started leaking sending large drops onto the watercolor. II had to pack up and go in order to save the sketchbooks from getting permanently damaged. as I left, Brie and Sarah were still spinning in the torrential rain. Some creative endevours last but a moment.

Disney Security Kiosk

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Before leaving Orlando, performance artist, Brian Feldman wanted to produce a second performance of Thor sketches the Audience for the United Arts, Arts Fest in February . He had the idea of using the theater at Disney University as the venue. I drove down to Disney to meet him and Tommy Wingo. Tommy handled all the tech details the first time around with the projectors and screens. I changed into my nice pants since I figured I needed to fit the Disney look as we met the theater promotions folks.

When I got to the Disney Institute the security guard at the entrance asked me for my driver’s license. I searched my pants and wouldn’t you know, my wallet wasn’t there. I had left it in the old pair of pants. Fay, the security guard couldn’t let me onto the Disney property. I sat with her in her little security kiosk as I called Brian and the Disney folks to try and get in. I think one of the promotions people went out to the wrong kiosk to get me. Security has been this tight ever since 9/11 and I just might be a terrorist. I know I’m an anarchist.

The theater is absolutely gorgeous with plush theater seats
and an old school look, reminding me of the Ford Theater where Lincoln was
shot. We discussed lighting and the position of screens. The Disney folks were
a pleasure to talk to. The first time, I rented the theater space at the Shakespeare
Theater for about $300. In the parking lot near the Disney Theater, Tommy, Brian
and I joked about how expensive it would be to rent the Disney Theater for the
night. We placed bets and I believe I had the high bet at $5000. Much later, we
found out it would cost $30,000 to rent the space. That included renting
several Disney Buses to transport audience members from a distant lot. The
invoice did say that they world throw in a folding table for the evening at no
extra cost. Needless to say, we didn’t rent from Disney.

Art Class

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Christie Miga was an instructor at an art school for kids over the summer. I visited the class to show the kids some sketchbooks and hopefully get them fired up about sketching. At their young age, they are all uninhibited and creative work horses. The lean in and sketch with absolute conviction since no one has curbed their enthusiasm. One of the instructors sat in a chair and modeled for the room of artists. I liked how one little girl flexed her flip flops as she drew. Children’s drawings are often bold with bright colors. There is plenty I learned from them.

Right now I’m in the South of France where Vincent Van Gogh did his vibrant inspired paintings. Some buildings have a reproduction of one of Vincent’s paintings as a claim to fame. One such place in Arles was the Van Gogh Cafe. It looks just like a painting Vincent did of a café at night. The outer walls of the cafe were painted a bright yellow. I think in Vincent’s day those walls were a boring cream or stone color. He painted the bright yellow to contrast against the Ultramarine night sky. Today people try to copy from his fevered imagination. He didn’t paint only the colors he saw; he used colors to convey feelings, emotions and warmth. He always hoped people would sit in a comfortable chair and warm themselves besides the warmth of his hearth. As the sun set over the southern landscape, the warm light made it seem like every tree was on fire, reaching towards the crystal blue sky. The landscape flew by at 70 kilometers per hour. The engines roared as people raced each other to their destinations. But now was he time to slow down and look.

Blog Con

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Blog Con, organized by Bess Auer of Central Florida Top 5, was held at the Orlando Science Center on Saturday September 15th. The event was sponsored by Florida Institute of Technology and it was even bigger then last year’s event with about 120 attendees. I arrived a bit late and ended up missing the keynote speech by Lou Mongello in the morning. When Bess greeted me she helped me upload the conference schedule onto my iPhone. It was an impressive little program specially designed for the conference. The first talk I attended and sketched was Marketing Yourself – How to build Your Media Kit by Callie Cowen. Callie was a working mom from Venice Florida who blogs about her journey to a healthier lifestyle and hopes too inspire a few other “wannabe athletes” along the way. I had never considered making a media kit for my blog although I had seen many kits when I worked in the magazine business. She offered plenty of food for  thought.

Different rooms were set up so break out groups could attend different sessions running simultaneously in different rooms. Mark Baratelli who runs thedailycity.com gave a funny and cynical look at how he finds content that leads to a passionate following. He ironically noted that attending “Tweet Ups and other social media gatherings is a waste of time. Mark used to organize the Mobile Art Shows in Downtown Orlando and he had people gather at local food trucks to sample the menu. The food truck angle eventually morphed into the very successful food truck bazaars that he sponsors now. He lamented that getting people to contribute content t thee blog was usually a wasted effort in which time was spent with meetings to get people involved but in the end the contributions would dissipated since, well, people don’t put in much effort when asked to work for free.

My favorite talk was by Josh Murdock who showed us a whole bunch of fun widgets and gadgets.  There were gadgets for animation, film editing and all of them were free or cheap. Who could ask for more? Justice Mitchell gave a great talk on Storytelling and Problem Solving: The Keys to the Infectious Blog. He made it clear that as bloggers, we are all contributing to an ongoing dialogue by telling stories which is a tradition that began way back in the days of the cave man. He advised on creating content that helps people solve problems noting Myth Busters as an example. On Myth Busters they begin with a premise, they apply science and they form a conclusion. There was one session on Analytics that went way over my head. Apparently there is a numbers crunching attribute to this blogging business that is something I have been blind to. Blogging isn’t easy. But this day was a great way to get informed to try and catch the social media train before it leaves the station.

Spring Awakening

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I decided to finally post this sketch because a dear friend Jeremy Seghers left Orlando to go to New York City. Jeremy directed two productions of Spring Awakening in Orlando and he was always open to the idea of letting an artist sketch the process. He invited me to the auditions for Spring Awakening and I watched the halls of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater fill with young hopeful actors. The first production was a direct staging of the original play set in a turn of the century German high school. The second production was to be based on a Broadway musical adaptation.

I heard a young girl singing in the woman’s room. For most of the actors, this was a chance to chat and catch up of theater gossip. There was a woman seated at a table and she took names. Actors were to have a musical number ready to sing. The pianist hadn’t arrived yet, so actors that had musical accompaniment on a CD moved to the top of the list. When they entered the theater, I could barely hear their muffled singing from my vantage point in the hall. Some actors left the auditition feeling elated that they had nailed their performance while others had doubts. Even so, art is a fickle process and a directors choice involves more variables than just talent.