Alvin and Fred, the human director brought in to help with the Mikado, got to talking about how relatively easy it was to stage Gilbert and Sullivan.
You never needed a scene change in the middle of an act. Fred talked about some of the more unusual things that he had worked with when the play had called for rapid scene changes. Holographic projectors instead of the more traditional painted backdrops. Triangular pylon walls that flipped at a push of a button. That greek temple made from air bags that deflated into cyprus trees. And of the rotating stage--which was actually written into the insanity of one play's character. In the play, he bought an item from a shop, walked to front center to address the audience, and then turned around to find the shop missing. The set had silently rotated off stage behind him. Alvin, his mind ever churning up past thoughts of life on Jijo, remembered the short science fiction stories about the antique store, curio shoppe, or bookstore that couldn't be found when one tried to find it a second time. >From inital spark to fully realized idea took no time at all. The architectural rendering was a breeze. It could be finished about a month after the Mikado's opening... One square block of what was to become Little Jijo's London Town was slightly altered. Most of the shops were to be built shallower to make room for the great wheel. Five faces; five shops, but only one at a time being on the street and open for business. First there was going to be the souvenir shop. That's the one that was going to be the default "real" shop. Ship models and flags and hoonish Saucy Seaside Postcards and the increasingly popular "I heart heart sailing" tee-shirts. Then the Galactic/Anglic bookstore: In These Hands. Real books on real paper. The Jijo hoonish authors. The book on Hurmuphta's constellations. Huck's tale on Lady Macbeth--if she ever writes it. Which by a simple rotation will turn into Fond Remembrances of the Future Past. It'll have the exact same layout as In These Hands. But the only books will be printings of Earth's pre-contact science fiction. This bookstore might not make money--but so what. For the fourth: You Buy It, You Break It. It is a totally unhoonish idea to spend money for something you intend upon destroying. Which is why it's catching on. Stacks and stacks of plates to smash at your wedding. Wine glasses to throw into the fireplace. Scantily clad plaster female hoons with digital clocks in their stomachs. Naked female humans with the more standard clock face design in their stomachs may come later. As soon as Alvin feels that all of the customers will all be buying an ugly piece of artwork to smash that happens to be in human form, rather than in buying something in an ugly human form that they can then smash. And the fifth face will be Alvin's Little Shottle Bop Where Thimgs Are Always Sold. It may be nothing more than a dummy face unless he can figure out just what it is that he can sell in that shop. But that's the way it is when you have an incredible surplus of funds to go with a wicked sense of humor.... William Taylor --------------------- >From Theodore Sturgeon to Theodore R. Cogswell to gawd knows how many others. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
