January 9, 2016
I took a break from garden building for the first week
of the new year. Rob engaged me for one week as a laborer with the House
Theater where he is currently the technical director. In show business, jobs
are called calls, so when you are confirmed to work, you are ‘on the call.’ I
was on the call for the world premiere production of The Last Defender. It is
an interactive experience where participants enter a subterranean command
bunker and must solve a series of puzzles in order to avert a catastrophic
attack. My week’s work was to help fabricate the consoles that house the
computer elements of the experience. The consoles are made of sheets of
fiberboard with underlying frames of wood. The production design reminds me of
the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Five of us were on the crew, with various backgrounds in
stagecraft. I was somewhere in the middle in terms of skills. My regular gig
calls for precise cutting of lumber and timber, but I am less experienced
custom cutting sheets of material and with framing things squarely to the
standards of cabinetmakers. I felt like I was getting schooled, which is
uncomfortable but always a good place to be.
The production is housed in the Chopin Theatre in Noble
Square, Chicago. This venue is a byzantine labyrinth painted in shades of red
and decked out with Victorian-eclectic kitsch. The proprietor is Zygmund, a philosophical
impresario with populist political views. There are two performance spaces, an
upstairs mainstage and a sort of blackbox space below. We installing in the
lower space. Our breakroom was the adjacent bar where theatergoers buy their
drinks at intermission. We would lounge on the upholstered divans and snack,
reading our phones and chatting.
Twice during the week our work was stopped so that producers
and scouts from the TV show Empire could inspect the facilities. The show
features musical numbers, and it was surprising to learn that they and they are
thinking of shooting one of them exactly where we are building all of this
scenery. “Any possibility of a buyout?” their honcho asked Rob. Of course it is
a possibility, if the price is right. In jest I bragged that I had reached out
to Terrence Howard personally on Twitter and that the
deal was assured.
I had a lot of fun working with a new crew and building
these strange looking video arcade cabinets. The main downside to the job was
the foul miasma of dust that infected the air. The resins in fiberboard are
known to various state and medical authorities to be cancer-causing, and we
were actively turning sheets of it into airborne dust with tablesaw, skillsaw,
jigsaw, and router. My regular work puts me in regular contact with cedar dust,
not itself particularly beneficial to the cardiopulmonary system, but I think
this more toxic. Jeremy told us a horror story about an infection caused by
breathing OSB dust that moved up his sinuses and encroached on his brain before
a doctor prescribed antibiotics. “That stuff is gonna turn out to be the next
asbestos,” he said. I wore my respirator continuously.
The other bad part about the week was the morning commute. I
have deliberately situated my domicile less than a mile from my regular place
of business. This puts me out in the doldrums of the suburbs, yes, but I escape
the trap of daily immersion in a swath of soul sucking autos. Making the track
into the city for a 9am start is about an hour commute. I checked out some
audiobooks in the library before the week started. The first one I listened to
was We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a gothic tale of family dysfunction by
mid century American master Shirley Jackson. I hung on every word. For whatever
reason the next one I tried, a cultural history of rabies, was not as
satisfying.
Long commute and poisonous dust aside, I am very pleased
that I got to take part in this special project. The opportunity to visit a
bohemian milieu, to meet and work with dedicated and skilled craftspeople, and
to learn new skills all made for a pleasant change of scenery.
#HouseTheatre #ChopinTheatre #TheLastDefender
