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Category Archives: NYC
Making Christmas
Bolshevik Bouquet
We reached out to Daniel, but he was headed to the NYC polls. I shouldn’t say how he voted, but maybe you could guess. We finally connected. It had been a while since we last spoke with Britt and Dan. Their big news is that they leave next week for England. They said London but are planning on doing much more than just the city. They are going with Britt’s sister, Clorinda, who is a bit of an anglophile and travels to England every year. Each traveler got to pick a site to visit. Britt picked the White Cliffs of Dover. Clorinda picked a new show that will display the gowns of Marie Antonette. Dan picked Nottingham, not for Robinhood, but for Games Workshop and Warhammer World. Pictured below is Britt’s Halloween costume for this year that Dan handmade for her.
Masquerade
This violin is the focus for the second of five automatons that Dan made earlier this year for a show in NYC. The first, a pair of opera gloved hands clapping was previously featured here. The gloves were my mom’s. As always when posting about Dan’s work I must be somewhat circumspect, but this week with the opening of the immersive theater show Masquerade the “gloves” have mostly come off. Masquerade is a version of Phantom of the Opera. Reviews have been positive. Playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber approved this production and even came to see a performance. Dan finished and delivered his five pieces before coming to the cabin, but while vacationing in Michigan all of the wheels came off sort-of-speak. Dan was able to put all to right upon his return to NYC. Anyway, he got paid and might also get comped tickets to see the show. This show has a dress code. He might have to rent a tux.
This is not Dan’s first foray into immersive theater. Last year, he worked for almost a year on another show called Life and Trust. We visited him in NYC near the end of his employment there. Emursive, the production company. had previously produced the highly successful Sleep No More and when we visited Dan, I got us all tickets for that show, but arriving at the theater that night we were shutout. Sleep No More closed quickly afterwards. As it turns out Emursive owed their landlord $4.5M in back rent. This may also have something to do with the quick demise of Life and Trust, which closed after only a brief run. Its reviews were positive too. I am reminded of The Producers, a show about theater flimflam artists. Anyway, Dan got paid and he also got comped tickets.
Props for Dan
Dan has repurposed a pair of formal ladies’ gloves that were once my mothers. They have been incorporated into an automaton that he created for an upcoming show. It shows a woman applauding. It is just one of a series of these unique automatons that he made. Other creations in this suite include a disembodied playing violin and a horse’s head. He likes the work. He is very good at it and other people seem to like it too. He has just finished this job and now has two more job offers. One of these jobs calls for building devices that are computer controlled, and he plans on using a Raspberry Pi for that. I assume that the noise of the mechanism will be drowned out by the music from the show, but I hope that the metronome will still be heard. He has been making these copper filament creations since art school. I find it interesting after all of these years of working in movies and TV, he finally seems to have found some traction with live theater. Lookout Broadway, because here he comes!
Trust Fund Baby
Anne says that I am not a trust fund baby, but rather a trust fund septuagenarian and I thought that I was her baby. I am actually a successor trustee, which makes me a sort of hand me down. Still, there is gold to be mined in that. I need a break though. This blog needs a break. How about a political rant. What is Trump up to these days? I hope that he is not off misbehaving again.
Dan, our family’s successor torchbearer for Democratic liberalism continues to burn brightly in NYC, lighting the way for others to follow. Especially this week, with the nomination of Zohran Mamdani for mayor. His neighborhood in Queens went +69% for him. So, it was with some dismay that I read that New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D) has called on Mr. Mamdani to denounce the globalization of the Intifada. I know that he is Muslim, and he might have said something in the past that triggered her comment but can’t we all just get along?
The photos are from the Brooklyn Museum, which we visited earlier this year with Dan. A much nicer institution than I had expected. Maybe not as good as the Met, but not for lack of trying. It had many interesting juxtapositions of different styles of art among its displays.