Ace Cafe Orlando.

Posted on by Thor

This was my first time going to Ace Cafe Orlando which opened in the former offices of the Orlando Weekly across from the main Lynx Bus Terminal. Pam Schwartz had been here before and she told me that the BLT sandwich was rich and recommended. The menu cover had old historic photos with some of the history of the place. Ace slowly filled up until it was packed around the time the sun set. Ozzie Osborn and other heavy metal bands were shouting on the TVs that lined the dining area. With all the noise, I couldn’t actually pick out any lyrics.

The Over the Top BLT was indeed a monster of a sandwich. The thickly cut Applewood Smoked Bacon was caramelized along with Iceberg lettuce, herb mayonnaise, and vine ripened tomatoes. The Texas Toast was super thick and covered in an extra layer of crispy cheddar crust on the outside of the sandwich which made it particularly messy to eat. I ended up cutting it up and eating it with my fork. The bacon tasted like candy. The sandwich was served in a metal mesh bread basket which made it tough to cut the sandwich up. The solid crust of cheddar cheese on the bottom of the sandwich was particularly hard to cut through. Despite the eating logistics, it was quite delicious. Pam ordered the buffalo chicken empanada appetizer, which she stated were pretty run of the mill. She ordered based on the plan to enjoy one of their alcoholic ice cream shakes. The waiter didn’t inform her until after the meal that the coffee bar/milk shake area was out of commission. That was a huge disappointment. 

After sunset, trucks began to line up outside the restaurant. This was simply an opportunity for gear heads to check out other 4 X 4 rigs. Small jeeps were predominant, but there were several rigs with lifted suspensions and even lights underneath the chassis. I used to own a yellow 4 X 4 Xterra which I rigged up with an Australian deer guard and winch. The winch got me out of several tight spots. I dented up that truck when I was going over a log between two trees and the truck leaned over and hit a tree which smashed a tail light and dented the back chassis. I filled and sanded the dent with Bondo but had to pay to get a decent touch up paint job. Owning a 4 X 4 is expensive, especially if you go mudding often.

My little Toyota Prius got stuck in the mud several weeks ago when Pam and I went to the Thai Festival. She managed to rock the Prius free by pushing on the hood as I eased the accelerator. From my 4 X 4 experience in soft sand, I knew not to gun the accelerator and dig my tires deeper into the mud.

Hurricane Irma rips into the Orange County Regional History Center’s Collection Facility

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After weathering Hurricane Irma, a category 2 hurricane, I helped Pam Schwartz to clean up all the broken tree limbs in her yard. Her property is gorgeously landscaped but that meant she had tons of fallen branches. The pile we built curbside was, and still is, 10 feet wide and as high as my hips. We bagged the smaller branches and those were picked up, but the rest of the debris is still on her lawn killing the grass, but providing home to many snakes. She was without power for the week.

We were exhausted from moving so much debris but late that afternoon she said she had to stop by the Orange County Regional History Center off-site facility. She just wanted to see that everything was OK. The plan was to do a quick check and then pick up some food. We hadn’t eaten all day, there was too much to do.

En route, my phone warned me that there was potential flooding. Within the next quarter mile, sure enough the road looked like a river. Her SUV made it through without a hitch. It was getting near sunset when we drove up to the facility. We were shocked by the view. The large parking lot in front of the building looked like a lake. We parked on the far side of the lake and took our shoes off to wade across. The water was up above my knees in the deepest section of the lot. In hind site we should have checked to be sure there were no downed power lines. Luckily we weren’t electrocuted.

The warehouse is a bit above the parking lot level and the front entry of the facility was clear with no water. Then we entered the conservation room where most of the work to preserve Pulse memorial items had been done. The ceiling panels were soaked, and several waterlogged panels had fallen to the floor. The panels must burst on impact under their own weight because shards were scattered everywhere. Pam groaned.

Pam is the chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center. This is a curator’s worst nightmare, secondhand only to fire. With just two panels missing in the conservation room, the damage didn’t look too bad. Boxes on the floor had soaked up the water. Pam asked me to salvage a box of Pulse related archives, cards and notes of remembrance. I lifted the waterlogged box and then took all the papers and laid them out to dry in the break room. So much work had gone into preserving the memorial items from Pulse. They had been saved from the afternoon rainstorms that are consistent on any summer day in Orlando at the memorial sites. Now they needed to be saved once again.

After cleaning up much of the mess in the conservation room, Pam called me outside. A giant double rainbow now arched above the newly formed parking lot lake. Maybe things were looking up. Then, back inside, Pam opened up the double doors that lead into the main area of the storage facility. She let out a gasp. I couldn’t see around her. The damage wasn’t limited to the conservation room we had been working on. Ceiling panels had collapsed throughout the storage facility. Pam went into triage mode and my first assignment was to save the art which was below a fallen soaked panel. I found large tarps to cover the art as a short term solution. The point of the off-site facility is to maintain a museum standard of temperature and humidity. With the ceilings compromised everything was at risk.

For the rest of the night, I picked up ceiling panels and soaked insulation and made a debris pile in the loading dock area. The small mountain I built was about 10 feet in diameter and about 5 feet high. I decided not to touch any artifacts, I would leave that to the pros. For some reason I paused as I lifted a panel off of this large industrial lamp behind an old citrus ladder. The lamp was on a wooden skid which protected it from the water. Ironically the lamp was in the History Center’s Reflections magazine that just came out this week. The new acquisition was donated by Tom Bessa and is from McCoy Air Force Base. It dates back to the 1950s and a workman removing the item offered it to Bessa. Now it is part of Orlando’s History. Every item in the storage facility has a similar personal story.

Pam called her entire collections staff that night to help get the facility under control. Thank goodness Joe Austin sent snacks for us with Jessica Domingo, by that time Pam and I were running on fumes. Anything on the floor was at risk of water damage. Water was still dripping from every open ceiling panel. I cleared a walkway so the staff could move items from the collection to dryer ground.

We later learned that a metal roof access hatch had blown off and the hurricane force winds had propelled it over the roof. Each time the hatch crashed down it ripped a hole in the roof’s covering.  From there, the water dripped down into the insulation and ceiling panels which would crash down from the weight. Large puddles of water were everywhere. By the end of the night most of the museum artifacts had been moved away from collapsed panels. Much of the Pulse collection was in the worst affected areas, so the need to act with speed was critical with already compromised artifacts.

All of the water has now been removed from the floor and a small army of about a dozen humidifiers is working around the clock to remove moisture from the air. The interior walls that touch the floor all developed mold in their inner cavities. Simply put, black mold isn’t good when you are hoping to preserve historic artifacts. The lower drywall panels were removed from all the affected walls. Plastic encapsulations now separate the spaces with zippers allowing access between rooms. The plastic is intended to protect the collection as workers reinstall drywall and to assist in regulation/stabilization of temperature and humidity. Work is now under way to repair the walls, the ceiling tiles and insulation have been replaced. Conservation is still ongoing to restore any artifacts that suffered from water damage, but every single item of the few thousand affected artifacts were saved. The incredibly fast response of the core collections staff of the History Center helped avert what could have been a much bigger tragedy. With the lessons learned from this disaster, they are offering advice to Leu Gardens Historic Home, which suffered damage after a tree fell on the roof of the home.

P.S. These sketches were created post-event from my photographs. This is an anomaly as that is not the way I tend to work. However, this wasn’t the time to sit down and create art.

Pride Fireworks at Lake Eola.

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On the day of Pride, traffic downtown was predicted to be a major cluster f@!ck. The Orlando Come out with Pride Parade was going on as I taught classes at Elite Animation Academy. That day roads would also be closed for a soccer game at the Amway Center and something at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. I thought that getting to Elite would be a challenge, but streets had not been blocked off yet.

That evening I scheduled the 8th Orlando Urban Sketch Workshop at Lake Eola. With the parade over, I figured some of the crowd would have dispersed. Getting home from work, I skirted downtown by driving around the congested streets. The last few blocks were a challenge but I made it back to the studio fairly easily.

Attendance for the workshop was down. I imagine people weren’t up to the challenge and adventure of trying to park downtown. Pam Schwartz had walked in the parade with members and families involved in the onePULSE Foundation. Since she was downtown, we met and walked around Lake Eola together. I settled on this view of the fountain as my pride sketch for the year. A drone hovered above the lake.

Fireworks were slated to happen at 9 PM which gave me plenty of time to sketch the Orlando skyline. I started to put the tablet away, when the fireworks suddenly erupted with a huge series of blasts. It damn near made me jump out of my skin. The fireworks were large and beautiful and I put a few blasts on my sketch while others shot video and took cell phone photos. I often wonder what becomes of all those shots.

After the show, it was easy to walk back to my place and then slip out of downtown. Although many downtown streets were blocked off for the day, Orlando is still small enough so that I never experienced grid lock.

9th Annual Zombietoberfest

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The 9th Annual Zombietoberfest was just held in Audubon Gardern District. If fell on the same day as one of my Orlando Urban Sketch Workshops, so we used it as our location. With parking sparse, I parked several blocks away and walked to our meeting spot at Stardust Video and Coffee. We were two students short, so we waited for a while in front of Stardust and then decided to get rolling while the zombies were still shuffling about. The quick lesson and worksheets advised artists to do a sheet of zombie studies that focused on gesture and building the figures from simple shapes.

Since this was a very crowded event, the challenge was to find slow moving zombies. Fast energetic zombies would be impossible to sketch. For instance, a zombie taking a selfie would only take a few seconds before they turned and walked away. I decided to focus on Deviant Dollz, founded by artist Linda Janssen. This collection of miscreant dolls seem possessed or the victims of a horror movie.

Several grand parents picked out a doll for their grand daughter who made a magnificent bloody zombie. I didn’t see their choice, but the grand daughter decided she would prefer a bloody and beaten Raggedy Ann doll that looked like she had been abused by Raggedy Andy. Pam Schwartz begrudgingly explained the teddy bears to me. They were tied together in such a way so that their snout was up another bear’s butt. Apparently there is a film called the Human Centipede in which the people can only survive if they eat the excrement from another. The goal was to see how long the people could survive without being fed. I don’t think i need to see that film.

There was perhaps one zombie for every 40 attendees. The most popular zombie costume seemed to be females in bloody prom dresses. I’m not sure a zombie film has been made yet in which zombies invaded a prom, but it cold make and interesting premise.  The Deviant Dollz booth was incredibly popular so I spent most of my
time trying to look around the crowd to see some of the dolls. Keeping track of all the artists in the crowd was impossible, so I let them all wrestle with the sketches on their own. Afterwards, we all met near the bloody zombie snow cone food truck to compare drawings and take a group photo.

The First onePULSE Foundation Town Hall Meeting.

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The onePULSE Foundation‘s first Town Hall meeting was held at the Rep Theater (1001 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32803). 400 people reserved tickets to attend. The meeting was a panel discussion exploring why and how we create memorials and museums, and what is involved in the process. Experts from around the country came to share their experiences. Barbara Poma, the Pulse Nightclub owner and onePULSE Foundation executive director, said, “Building a permanent memorial and museum at the site is the most powerful way to pay respect for the lives taken, and to all those affected on that awful night.” The moderator for the night, was journalist Indira Lakshmanan.

Kari Watkins, the Executive Director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial was the first panelist on the left. The event was being held just one week after the mass murder in Las Vegas. She explained that the community memorials had already begun. An empty lot was acquired from the city and 58 trees were planted, one tree for each victim. At the Oklahoma City Bombing site one tree had survived and saplings were being handed out. 168 people died. Initially, the Chamber of Commerce was not on board with the plans for a museum and memorial, they didn’t want their city to be known as the city that had been bombed. The site is now the most visited tourist attraction in the state.



Ed Linenthal is a PhD and author of several books such as Sacred Ground, Preserving Memory, and The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory. He explained that the process of deciding what to put on a site is incredibly difficult because you are dealing with an open wound. We need to get rid of psycho babble words like “closure”. People in Orlando will be living along side of the Pulse tragedy for a very long time and that is OK. There is a new “normal”. The process involves many, many people who are very personally involved. Everything is a razor’s edge issue. Should there be 49 hearts, trees, or points of light here?… on and on and on. How could it not be agonizing? Memorials are a protest of the anonymity of mass murder in our times.

Jan Ramirez, is the Executive Vice President of Collections and the Chief Curator of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum in NYC. She explained that the NYC site is an unplanned cemetery. 40% of the close to 3,000 people who died when the towers fell, have no remains. The families never had the comfort of a burial. Our work is never done. Only since the museum opened have many victim’s families decided to share their stories and artifacts.

Anthony Gardner is the Senior Vice President of Government and Community Affairs at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. He became involved after his brother Harvey died in the tower collapse. The process of building a memorial is going to be painful. It needs to be. The reaction to people visiting the 9/11 memorial is universal, they pause and say to themselves, “I am there.” They know it is a tragic story, they know it is painful, but they leave inspired, because this is a story in which the best of humanity responded to the worst of humanity.

Anthony’s brother Harvey loved history. The night before he was killed, he was watching a documentary on WWII. He became a part of the history he cherished just several hours later. Harvey is one of the 40% who were never identified after the towers fell. The family didn’t have anything of his that was recovered. He found himself trapped in that office. The one call that got through to Harvey allowed the family to overhear him comforting his colleagues, who were starting to panic. He was directing people and he was calm and brave in those acts, so the family holds on to that. Anthony values the authenticity of place and setting. He feels some authentic fabric of Pulse should be left behind. Authenticity of place helps people connect that didn’t have that direct experience.

Pam Schwartz is the Chief Curator of the Orange County Regional History Center. “…Typically museums collect, “old stuff”. We  have historical perspective on that… When doing rapid response or contemporary collecting, you have to rely 50% on your training and education, and 50% on intuition, or what we think might be an important historical story…That can change very rapidly. It took 9 years for Orlando to get the title of the worst mass shooting after Virginia Tech. It took just 16 months to give that title to Las Vegas. The history of our event is already changing based on what is happening in Vegas. The question goes from, “How could this happen to us”, to “Is it ever going to stop?…”

Pam explained, a mass shooting is when four or more people, not including the
shooter, are “shot and/or killed” at “the same general time and
location.” This year there have been at least 276 mass shootings in America. That is close to one mass shooting a day. We can’t memorialize every single event, but each time there are people who lost their loved ones, there are emotional and mental scars. Everyone feels the most strongly about the event that affected them. You focus on the stories and try to make it a teachable moment. We are dealing with a lot of different demographics here in Orlando. Our event at Pulse is unique in that it speaks to a broader situation in our world today, in politics an in the fights we are still fighting.


She went on to say that the memorial items come from the community. They are outpourings from the heart. They are often items left because people don’t know what else to do. One thing they collected was a cooler from Pulse. If you went to the Pulse site, you would have seen the big white cooler left by the police. The church down the street kept filling it every day because it is HOT in Orlando. So this artifact was one of support. 

Pam and the History Center staff were out there collecting every single day and  drank some of that water. One day, they showed up and it was just covered in signatures. There were all these signed banners full of love and support, and then people were like,  “What else can we sign?” So they collected this cooler, it is sort of a living history of the memorials. 

The History Center staff also went into the club after the site was released back to Barbara Poma. Pam approached and asked if things could be collected from inside. That might seem a bit macabre, but think of it as Abraham Lincoln’s hat or the artifacts you might see at the 9/11 museum. These are very real artifacts that tell a story. Should they be displayed now or put them on exhibition, no, but in 200 years there will be people who were not here, did not experience it, and it is very real evidence that this event truly happened to people. The History Center also has items from Pulse before this event. Pulse has a very rich history before June 12, it was home to so many people.


In response to a question from the audience about ensuring the process is inclusive, Pam explained that this series of community conversations are the first link to inclusivity for everyone. Everyone should fill out the online Survey for the Memorial. The results of which will become the design brief that will go out to the potential designers for the memorial and museum. This is not a fast process. It takes time, so we have several years to figure this out together. This is at its heart a community event. It happened to us all in some way shape or form. It will be a community conversation and ultimately a community decision in how we move forward. That is why they are starting to have meetings with families of survivors and other community members. Talk to onePulse Foundation members. They want to know what everybody is thinking. They do not have all the right answers for what this can look like or what it should look like right now, but they are beginning the process and want everybody who feels attached to this to be involved.


In other Pulse related news, the City just approved a temporary memorial designed by Dix.Hite + Partners which will add landscaping to soften the area while replacing the fence with more aesthetically pleasing elements. A rainbow colored sidewalk crossing was also approved by the City and already painted into place.  I filled out the survey and it took no longer that 10 minutes. Be sure to fill out the survey as well. Your voice matters, your opinion matters. Help shape the future of the Pulse memorial site. Earl Crittenden offered a quote that pointed the way towards a solution, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Abe Lincoln

One Orlando Alliance organized an Orlando Vigil for Las Vegas

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The lawn in front of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts was packed with thousands of people 16 months ago after the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Tears were shed and strangers hugged one another in a truly moving vigil to honor the victims of the nightclub shooting. Days after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, the same stage was erected in the Dr. Phillips lawn to show solidarity and support for that city which is now the site of the largest mass shooting in American history with 58 victims to date. 515 others are injured, so that number may well rise as people fight for their lives.

Pam Schwartz and I arrived a bit early expecting to find the lawn crowded with Orlando citizens who who would show their support for such a tragic event. The lawn was strangely empty. One third of the lawn was a construction zone for the new Dr. Phillips theater being built.  The entire area was surrounded by temporary concert barricades. There was no crowd to contain. A single wreath stood on a tripod in front of the stage. The press huddled together on the walkway opposite me. Desperate for some sort of story, a young reporter asked to interview me, but I explained that I had a limited amount of time to finish my sketch so I couldn’t stop to talk.

The green lawn remained empty the entire time I sketched. I had looked at some of the video footage from Las Vegas earlier that day and recall seeing people running for their lives or lying on the grass hoping not to get hit by the bullets raining down from 32 stories above. The Dr. Phillips lawn, surrounded by humble Orlando high rises, wasn’t much different than the Las Vegas field where concert goers were massacred. One Orlando high rise had several windows blown out from hurricane Irma, just as the Las Vegas gunman had blown out his hotel room window to massacre the crowd below.

Dozens of people showed up to the vigil held in Orlando. Any photos of the vigil show a few people together in closely cropped shots.  Perhaps it was just to soon. The staff at the History Center said that they just weren’t ready to accept or digest that such a horrific incident had happened so soon after the incident at Pulse. Days after the Las Vegas shooting, rainbow flags appeared on all the Orlando downtown street lights. I thought this was in solidarity for the Las Vegas shooting but it might just have been in preparation for the Gay Pride Parade coming up next week.

Someone removed the metal steps that lead up to the stage. A source at The Center said that a permit had not been applied for and thus
no one was allowed to go up on the stage. How amazing that such red tape should
come from a city who had just experienced mass murder 16 months earlier. One Orlando Alliance organizers stated that a radio station set up the stage just for the amplification and they didn’t want any speakers.

Five or six of the 49 angels in action arrived and stood silent in
front of the stage, their fabric wings flapping in the breeze.

 one PULSE Foundation president, Barbara Poma, spoke to the small group gathered from behind the stage. Her online statement read, “Finding words to convey the depth of horror we are all witnessing in
Las Vegas is just impossible. It is unimaginable that another mass
shooting of even greater scope than that of Pulse Nightclub could occur
again in this country, but indeed, it has. We must work harder to stop
these crimes that destroy human life. We pray for those whose lives were
taken, as well as for the wounded and the hundreds who will forever be affected by this monumental tragedy.”

The Orange County Property Appraiser arrived to get his picture taken in a tuxedo in front of a banner which people signed in support of Las Vegas. Mayor Buddy Dyer made a cameo and disappeared quickly. I recognized some of the Pulse family and activists like the Eskamani sisters who truly made a difference in our city following the Pulse shooting. A GoFundMe set up by Ida Eskamani for Equality Florida raised more that 2.4 million dollars for Pulse victims families. With Hurricane Maria causing so much damage in Puerto Rico, many Hispanic activists are perhaps occupied with that cause.

The Vigil held at the Dr. Phillips for Las Vegas was a small gathering by a few of Orlando’s core activists but the impression it left with me was apparent indifference by the community as a whole. The Methodist Church bells rang for each victim of the
Las Vegas shooting. I left disheartened.  The faces of the beautiful people lost in Las Vegas are just now
appearing online. All of those lost have not yet been identified. Perhaps people stayed home because mass murder is now the norm. A mass murder is defined as 4 people dying in a single gun related incident. Close to one mass shooting happens every day in America.

Pam was going to the Savoy to be a Celebrity Bartender. That event would raise funds to help The Center which is a refuge and family for the LGBT community as well as playing an important role in testing and treating sexually transmitted diseases. Sketching that event felt more supportive to an organization that makes a positive change in the Orlando community. Life goes on as social services struggle to stay afloat. I needed a stiff drink. How we memorialize is becoming increasingly important as these shootings are becoming more common.

P.S. Justine Thompson Cowan, one of the events organizers reported that
City representatives were willing to do whatever it took, helped with
permitting, and opened up garages for free parking, spending staff
resources to pull it together. He stayed
until the end and joined with what he estimated to be about 250 people as
they heard the bells toll, the Orlando Gay Chorus sing and spread out
into the audience with their voices that touched their hearts. She felt
solace. She felt companionship. And maybe even a bit of hope.

Little Orphan Annie at the Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center in Sanford.

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Pam Schwartz and I went to the Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center
(201 S. Magnolia Ave
Sanford, FL 32771) to see  dress rehearsal for the musical, Annie directed by Cynthea Fuoco. With equal measures of pluck and positivity, little orphan Annie charms everyone’s hearts despite a next-to-nothing start in 1930s New York City. She is determined to find the parents who abandoned her years ago on the doorstep of a New York City Orphanage that is run by the cruel, embittered Miss Hannigan. With the help of the other girls in the Orphanage, Annie escapes to the wondrous world of NYC. In adventure after fun-filled adventure, Annie foils Miss Hannigan’s (Amy Hughs) evil machinations… and even befriends President Franklin Delano Roosevelt! She finds a new home and family in billionaire, Oliver Warbucks (Stephen McPherson), his personal secretary, Grace Farrell, and a lovable mutt named Sandy.

I have never seen the play although I have seen examples of several of the comic strips. We approached the theater, walking down a narrow alley way to the stage door. We walked right into the dressing room and had to make our way back into the house. The first order of business was the sound checks for each actor. Everyone had on a microphone. Clearly the number, “Its a hard knock Life” had been rehearsed often. The kids scrubbed the floor while singing the song, and they would bang down the buckets to the beat of the music.

There were some rough transitions but this was a rehearsal so I am sure any kinks will get worked out before the show opens. My favorite scene was when Annie and Sandy, the dog (Olive Garvey) she had just found, confront a cop (Rob Dove). He pulls the dog aside and tells Annie to call the dog by name. If he doesn’t go to her than clearly it was not her dog. She whistled and called Sandy and the dog took off towards her. But then he ran right past her and down the stage steps into the audience. The police man stayed in character and said, “See that is most certainly not your dog.” It was a hilarious moment and I hope the dog continues to stray from his mark.

The play is clearly a wish fulfillment for a country that was suffering from the great depression. It seems a bit far fetched that Annie singing, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” would help inspire Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (Russell Trahan)  New Deal. The young actress playing Annie (Lily Dove) did a great job. One little, Molly (Irelyn Silvestro) also stood out as she joked and played with Mrs Hannigan.

Tickets

When: Remaining show dates, September 30, 7:30-9 p.m., Sundays, 3-4:30 p.m., Oct.
6-7, 7:30-9 p.m. and Sat., Oct. 7, 2-3:30 p.m. Continues through Oct. 8

Phone: 407-321-8111

Email: info@wdpac.com

Price: $20-$27

Spotlight Cabaret Series featuring Janine Klein.

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 Janine Klein returns to the Winter Park Playhouse Spotlight Cabaret Series
premiering her latest solo cabaret, “Nobody Does It Better.” From “Dr.
No” to “Spectre,” James Bond films have given us some of the most iconic
movie themes of the past 50 years. Janine takes her audience through an
evening of popular Bond theme songs and stories that will definitely cause some laughs.

Pam Schwartz and I went to a rehearsal. It turned out that it was Janine Klein’s birthday. She put on a gorgeous sequin gown and had Christopher Leavy, the musical director at Playhouse Theater, zip her up. He was wearing an orange t-shirt and asked me to sketch him in a dress shirt. He then discovered that he had a dress shirt in his office. In theater you always have to be ready with a change of costume.

Janine gave a hilarious and irreverent performance. She gave a hilarious list of some of the Bond Girls, like Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, Xenia Onatopp and her favorite Octo Pussy. She was at ease and the show became largely a comedy as she lambasted the Bond mystique. She might reign in the irreverent jokes when there is a full house, but I hope not. The microphone was only a prop. It wasn’t live, so for some numbers she spared her voice. Even as she glossed over the difficult passages she was always entertaining. She was even more entertaining as she growled out some lyrics and held the microphone provocatively.

The cabaret
showcases a different professional singer each month up front in the
beautiful lobby bar. A truly “New York-style” cabaret, each performance
is approximately 55 minutes in length with no intermission. Shows are September 27th and 28th at 7:30pm. Doors open
at 6:30pm for General Seating. Tickets are $20 for general seating.

The Ultimate Art Project

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Tamera J. Rogers made me aware of The Ultimate Art Project which was slated to happen days after Hurricane Irma struck Florida. This program was planned for the Square in Downtown Tavares, America’s Sea Plane City.It was an opportunity to catch artists in their moments of creative glory. There were to be actors, painters and singers and potters and poets and
jewelers and dancers, sculptors, and weavers and crafters, musicians and
magicians and libations and food.

I decided to make the event one of the locations for the 10 Urban Sketching Workshops I have been offering. This was the 5th workshop. Progressing from small stories to medium stories and ultimately big stories.  Pam Schwartz and I took the one hour drive to sketch the Ultimate Art Project. The sun was setting as we approached the town square. The event was easy to find because of all the white events tents.

The grassy area was about the size of half a football field surrounded by wrought iron fences. The first tend we saw had kids doing four inch square paintings. In a corner of the field was Karaoke which dominated sound scene. Mixed in was a pan flutist, in the center of the field. One lady stood listening and then chatted with him. I decided he wasn’t a sketch option since she was keeping him from performing. A van was painted black like a chalkboard and people could do chalk drawings on the vehicle. This is a pretty awesome idea and I wouldn’t mind setting up mu Prius as a chalk board. There
was the option to take a selfie in “paintings” of the Mona Lisa, The
Scream, American Gothic, and Girl with a Pearl Earring but we never got around to taking those selfies.

I stopped when I heard this father (James Whitehead) and daughter team singing in the artists tent. They referred to themselves as Southern Roots. She had an amazing voice. They were strictly acoustic so their music had to blend in with the karaoke and Pan pipes across the way. Dad explained to me that his daughter really had to stress her voice to be heard. He was afraid she might not perform her best at next weeks church service. The set abruptly ended when the free movie screening began of Woody Allen’s

Midnight in Paris.

Conversations among the artists were mostly about the recent hurricane. The Tavares marina was destroyed by Irma and all the boats piled up by the high winds. Sections of the park were cordoned off due to hurricane damage. The Ultimate Art Project was a chance for the community to get out after the hurricane and have a relaxing evening on the town green.

Man of La Mancha brings starry eyed ideals to the Shakes.

Posted on by Thor

I had sketched the set being built for Man of La Mancha, at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater (812 E Rollins St, Orlando, FL 32803) so I was curious to see the show. I knew that a large hole had been opened in the stage floor to allow for a rotating stage and trap door. For that reason, I was very curious to see the set in action. The stage is set in the round, meaning the play can be seen from all sides. Pam Schwartz and I sat in the Bard section which was a new section set up for this production. The orchestra was hidden behind prison bars on a platform behind us. Much of the staging had the actors facing the center section which was across from us but there were only a few times when it was uncomfortable to have the action facing away from us.

In the opening scene, Cervantes, (Davis Gaines) is exiled to a dungeon. Inmates of the prison go through his possessions and plan a trial so they can take everything. In his defense Cervantes stages a play and invited prisoners to take parts in the production. He opens a theatrical make up case and turns himself into Don Quixote who is an idealist, a dreamer who imagines himself living a virtuous and heroic life. Sancho Panza, his companion (Matt Zambrano) followed dutifully on his adventures as squire. Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from the plain. Don Quixote fights the windmills that he imagines are giants. “The scariest dragons and fiercest giants usually turn out to be no more than windmills.”


The staging for this production was pretty amazing. A large drawbridge lowered down to the stage with loud and sinister sounding moving gears. The entire theater felt dank and foreboding. The sounds of water droplets falling echoed in the space as the audience took to its seats. The center stage area could turn like a record on a turntable allowing characters to march in place, or circle. The center area was a rising platform which Don Quixote stood on when he triumphantly proclaimed his ideals and love. The beautiful Aldoneza (Laura Hodos) was a dispassionate and callous woman. She considered all men to be the same, all wanting just one thing. When Quixote saw her he was smitten and imagined her to be the most virtuous woman he had ever seen. He called her Dulcinea. She was annoyed that he didn’t see her as she was, but ultimately she let her defenses down, needing to understand his ideals despite the everyday horrors.


This was a fun night of stellar theater. I was very impressed with the production. Donkey’s were portrayed with
large paper mache heads. They pulled tiny carts that acted as the saddle
for the heroic protagonist and his side kick. I have to confess that I had to wipe away tears as Aldoneza proclaimed herself to be Don Quixote’s idealized Dulcinea when she sang to him in his darkest hour.


The signature song in this musical is “The Impossible Dream” and Davis Gaines singing at the end of the first act brought the audience to it’s feet. I scratched away at the page in the dark, not sure of the result and hopeful anyway. As the lights came up, I saw the results and quickly strove to make sense of the madness.

Go see this show. For a magical moment escape from your everyday reality. “Too much sanity may be madness – and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”  -Don Quixote. 

The show runs through October 8.

Sunday, September 24, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Tuesday, September 26, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Wednesday, September 27, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Wednesday, September 27, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Thursday, September 28, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Friday, September 29, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Saturday, September 30, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Saturday, September 30, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Sunday, October 1, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Wednesday, October 4, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Wednesday, October 4, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Thursday, October 5, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Friday, October 6, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Saturday, October 7, 2017 – 2:00 PM

Saturday, October 7, 2017 – 7:30 PM

Sunday, October 8, 2017 – 2:00 PM