Monday, April 9, 2012

The Weekend that was

I spent the last weekend visiting my family in Eastern Washington.  Took the train over.  I usually enjoy the ride. The scenery in going over mountains is breathtaking.  When we hit Wenatchee, the sun had gone down and the full moon had risen.  It was a vivid golden moon, peeking out of the clouds.  Then it burst out in all its beauty over the top of the buttes of central Washington.
   Fortunately I had taken my MP3 player with me. I used it to drown out the total rudeness of some of the passengers.  There was a man who thought he was Washington's answer to Larry the Cable Guy.  Don't get me wrong, I like Larry and the rest of the Blue Collar Comedy team... but there is a place for it and it is not with a captive audience.  The conductor had to warn him several times to tone it down.
   But I side track.  What I wanted to talk about is my sister's work in her theater group. She has been involved for years with the Masquers, a group out of my childhood town of Soap Lake.  She is currently involved with the set decoration for their upcoming play, Chapter Two. Usually she is acting or directing  in the plays, but with Mom's health issues, she is taking a backstage role that is less demanding on her time.  I got to help with part of it and discovered first hand that it is hard work.  The set is being divided into two side by side apartments.  She wants to simulate a wood floor in one of the apartments. The color of the floor that was left over from the last play (on the left in the picture) is a brick red.  So first, half the stage floor was painted brown.  After it dried overnight, we mixed three lighter colors (yellow, light green and blue-grey).  I walked in front of her, splattering paint drops on the floor while she used a broom sweeping side to side to spread the colors out.  After this layer dries, she will be on her hands and knees with a magic marker making the lines to simulate the wood planks.
  I didn't have my camera so had to use my cell phone to snap a pix of the stage.
Work in progress  (whole floor used to be red). Imagine lines drawn in to resemble wood grain.

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