It feels like my life has been kicked into hyper drive this week with the world of entertainment. The final show for the University of Montana opens tonight and I will have to go shoot the archival shots for that production on Wednesday after the show. A dance concert with many pieces opens on Wednesday night at the University as well and I will have to shoot those pieces Thursday and Friday night after they go down. There is a Gala for Bill’s show on Thursday night that I have taken the night off to attend. So I will have to run from his event to the University photoshoot. Then Bill and I are taking his show to a nudist resort in Worley, ID for Saturday night. It feels like I barely have time to breath this week.

I popped over and saw Bill’s show last night and it was beautiful. I sent his stage manager a couple of notes for adjustment this morning and will meet the light board operator some time today to adjust a few of the cues but for the most part it looked very good in this particular space. The show is about Missoula and Montana and the growing pains of being gay in such rural area and was a huge hit with the Montana audience last night.

I am also working on photo images all day. I have not taken on any more shoots this week but am working through all the stuff that I am still trying to catch up on. Yesterday I worked through such an amazing series of images of two young guys that came in to shoot some natural light romance pictures a couple of weeks back. They are just stunning. They will come and look at the images this afternoon. I need to do more of this kind of stuff. I have not done a lot with couples but have more ideas than it seems time to create them anymore. I realize this is a process of evolution and I am really trying to take time and begin to become aware and enjoy the process more. Perhaps it’s just acknowledging that process while I am in it. I do seem to be enjoying it all a bit more because I am trying to become aware of how remarkable my life is to get to do all these projects and still make a living in Montana. I tend to take things for granted too much and not see the beauty of what surrounds me. I need to take a breath, become aware of the moment, and just center myself. See I did learn something in those old acting classes I used to hate. I realize most of my life has run at this pace. I somehow seem to thrive on it all and it’s what keeps me young at heart, body, mind, and spirit.

Yesterday was exhausting but blissful; it was so fun to get back into the theater and work again. I had an amazing support crew of Katie and Kelly who worked tirelessly from 10:00 in the morning until 8:00 in the evening. When I first walked into the theater I must admit I was a bit overwhelmed because I have been away from this type of work for so long. We quickly moved, hung, and circuited lights and had everything focused in about two hours. The place was a flurry of activity; putting set pieces together, painting, and transforming the space into an amazing little show place. Bill showed up from New York about 1:00 and we placed the set pieces and checked the range of his movement throughout the show. After he left my crew spent a couple of hours writing the cues, which seem to go very fast for a 53-cue show. It all just came flooding back to me. I totally felt so at home in this dark space. It’s great every once in a while to step back to something in our lives that we were once passionate about. And this show I am very passionate about. With a lot of adaptation it came together so beautifully, the space is very limited, with very limited equipment and I used it all to its maximum capacity. I was really able to maintain the feel and flow of the original production of the Rattlestick Theater in New York. This is a beautiful production of the soul. Bill bears all and exposes his remarkable life as an artist and the light really helps to define and refine that journey. It’s almost like it’s a movement though his subconscious and so you have the take an audience on that voyage. Very little was compromised. Wow what a feeling to be back in touch with such powerful feelings. At 5 we all gathered with Bill and ran the show cue to cue for the stage, manager and lighting operator to put it together. Again I had put together such a good prompt script, (production road map), that they were right on first attempt with many cues. I just needed to tweak lighting levels and looks and adjust timing for the difficult sequence. After about 2 and a half hours the show was completely up and ready to open tonight. Back the studio Glenn made a homemade Pizza and Bill and I sat there blurry eyed from exhaustion ready for bed.

One of the things I was aware of though out the day was how amazing these folks in the Montana Actor’s Theater group are. They are such a dedicated group of people who work in such harmony together. The space was filled with a flurry of people in and out, solving issues and problems. They are so filled with absolute love and commitment in their hearts to pursue something they are utterly passionate about. It becomes infectious to everyone entering the space. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday afternoon outside and yet we all worked in this dark space completely oblivious to everything else. In the darkened theater time completely seems stands still. It is a world where you are drawn deeper into the subconscious of the process. I used to also get this feeling when I worked in the darkroom, but then I was in total isolation. I got away from the theater many years back because I was tired of the collaboration and wanted to create something that was of my own expression. Photography was the perfect segue into that self-expression. But yesterday I was overwhelmed by the collaboration and that sense of community. It brought back such feelings of joy and pleasure to bond so tightly with others so quickly. It is such a unique experience that I know now I somehow want to become involved with that world again. I realized how isolated my life has become as a photographic artist rarely leaving my studio, most of my communication through the internet. This one little day in the theater made me feel so alive and vibrant and it reminded of the beautiful bounty of my extraordinary life. It was a perfect Easter celebration for me. Rebecca the director of this group told me a couple of days ago when I realized we would be spending our Easter on this process “this is our religion”. Please come see this beautiful show It Goes Without Saying because, you the audience, is the next step in the evolution of feeling this infectious process of discovery. Thanks Montana Actor’s Theater for allowing me another extraordinary day of bliss as I connect to this journey of my inner artist.

It is early Sunday morning, and I had completely forgotten it was Easter. I have only got a couple of hours to pull myself together and be at the theater to set up the Bill Bowers’ show. I scouted the theater a couple of days back and at least saw the configuration of the stage from the last show, so the lighting shouldn’t be too bad. There are less lighting instruments and circuitry to do a completely full set up, so today will be a challenge on adaptability. The number one rule of theater on the road is adaptability. You must maintain the integrity of the original concept using the tools you have at your disposal. This show was designed to be put together in a day in any space; after all it’s about supporting the performers. I had found the old files of my notes from my original design 5 years ago and have been reviewing them. Wow they were so thorough; I forget what a talented guy I used to be in this area of expertise. My notes were so precise that it all flashed back exactly how the lights must be hung and focused. The elements of the show instantly popped into my head and it was like I had never stepped away from it. Now my excitement is beginning to grow to be back in this environment. I am a bit nervous because it has been 5 years since I’ve worked on a show and I’m not sure of my technical support backup to help me work through issues I may encounter. But life in the theater is about adaptability. Theater as, most forms of art, is a fluid movement in time. You may have an idea or a concept in the beginning, but end up some place completely different than what you intended. It’s the same with phototherapy and I rarely end up with exactly what I envisioned in the beginning. The process itself needs to be an evolution. If you are not open to follow where it will eventually lead and are ridged in the structure of the way you think and process, you will have great difficulty in this world. I am also a supervisor at UPS in the evenings and these tools have been essential for my survival in this corporate business model as well. My supervisors at UPS marvel at how I solve issues from such unconventional approaches. Though the company is very ridged in its procedures and policies and because it’s so massive, they have given me wiggle room to creatively solve issues and make it my own. Because everything was so clunky and awkward, it drove me crazy at first going into such an environment. When I began to make it my own, the job actually become fun and I was able to simplify and find new solutions. It’s the way with life.

I feel like I have always been adaptable especially in relationships. It always kills me when I see so many people out there complaining about they can’t find anyone to date or have a hard time with relationships. Then I start to ask them what they’re looking for. Well basically they are looking for the porn star guy that has the abs and chiseled face and piercing eyes. First of all, it’s an illusion that the commercial world wants us to by into. Perhaps there are only about 5 percent of the population will fit that model. So they go for years and years dreaming about a fantasy Prince Charming that will never appear passing up scores of truly remarkable people who are smart, witty, charming, intelligent,and sexy. I see years go by and they are still lonely and then the bitterness settles in and they become bitchy and spiteful. It amazes me how so many people can go through life without connecting to their passion. I am not saying everyone needs to be in a relationship; some of us are just meant to be alone. Adaptability has always worked for me. It is has taken me to some of the most unlikely of places and I have often never ended up where I intended, but at least I made the leap and gave it a chance. My life is always up for a new surprise. So I think for today, though I have a bit of an apprehensive feeling in my gut, I am excited to be on another journey of adaptability. After all the show must go on, either with you or without you. It’s a hell of a lot fun er if you are willing to see where it will take you.

I am having a hard time being focused today. It is amazingly beautiful and nice out side I just want to get outdoors. I had a portrait I spent the morning working on. I have also been working on the adaptation of the lighting for Billy’s show we will hang and set tomorrow in the theater. I feel like I have already put a whole days worth of work in and it’s only mid afternoon and had not written or posted anything today. Tomorrow will be a full day of tech on the show so today is my only day sort of off and I am just wanting to escape for the afternoon. Sorry I don’t have much to say today.

Today is exactly a month out to the big 50. I am feeling a lot better now than I was when the year began about this upcoming event. We are planning a party for the Saturday before at the studio, where all are welcome, because the big day, Monday the 23 I am still planning to sky dive. I think sometimes the older we get the more we become desensitized to our existence and lives and we must rattle the cages to feel we are still alive. Falling is one of my greatest fears and phobias so I feel it is about time to face that fear and I can’t of any better way than jumping from a plane and come crashing to the earth. As most of you know about me by now I don’t do anything small.

Wow this is the first time since this project began that I haven’t yammered on about something!!!

I eventually did get back to school at the University of Montana and got my BFA in theater arts with an emphasis on directing and stage management. Taking some time off from that disastrous first go-round at college proved to be helpful in figuring out what it was I really wanted to do. A couple of years later I was ready to jump back into the theater. This time I focused my energies more on the technical side of the art. I fell in love with lighting and began to design shows and worked on every project I could that would teach me more about light. The keys to good lighting design for the theater come from observing the natural light as it changes through out the day. Know what and where the light source is that you are trying to recreate and begin your design process from there. I really began to pay attention to the properties of light. How the sun, streams though the window. How it changes color and intensity through out the day. How all the various sources of light have their own properties and qualities. I loved how you could say so much within the scene through the color and position of the light. Of course it’s quite subliminal to an audience and this made it what makes the process even more intriguing. I fell in love with theater history and drama literature. I became consumed with reading all the works of great writers. I loved the structure of how scenes were written and put together, discovering the arch of the characters and the play. Plays were not just mere words written on the page, they were entire microcosms of a universe that were self contained within their own specific set of parameters. I loved the way characters could reveal themselves through action and then finding the richly layered subtext that was often opposing or a contradiction to their actual motivations. I adored the writers’ Tennessee Williams, Herrick Ibsen, and Anton Chekhov scripts and the complexity of their characters and taboo themes of plot and structure. I became a master at script analysis, which then led me into directing. There was no undergraduate program for directing and so most of my work was done with graduate students and I would become the only undergraduate to get my degree with a directing emphasis. Then, of course with my background and passion developed in all other phases of technical theater, I turned out to be a very good stage manager. In fact this kind of become my bliss, because I had such great communications skills with all side of the theater spectrum. It was a perfect balance of my right brain/left brain activity. I could translate all the various departments into the single final element of the show. I became like the conductor of a symphony blending all the elements of the production into a perfect harmony. I became so proficient at it that I was always assigned to the guest artist who used to come to the University to teach or direct for a semester and absorb all the insight they had to offer. One break I flew to Paris because I had become so obsessed with the absurdist existentialist movements of such writer as Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett and I wanted to see the roots of their origin. I had finally found my passion and it was defiantly in the world of theater. I finished my senior project by directing a full stage production of “The Glass Menagerie” on the main stage at the University.

Now for one week my friend Billy is coming back to Missoula and I will get to dabble in those talents again. Bill’s show is so amazing, possibly one of the greatest things I have seen or been involved in for some time. He speaks from his heart and the depth of his soul the journey of his process of creation. It is honest, compelling, bust a gut funny and tragic. He has now taken this show all over the globe. It is truly one of the shows that elevate the craft to an art. I highly recommend those that can see it to do so. If you like the style of structure of my blog, his show is based on the same style. Here is the contact information for the Missoula show.