Reposting an article I wrote on Bard’s Birthday 2009 on SLSC Blog:

As announced, the Blackfriars Museum (a.k.a. the Blackfriars Theatre Museum) grand opens TODAY on the Bard’s Birthday 2009! The museum is a humble shack adjacent to the north end of the Blackfriars Theatre, as such it’s more of a mini-exhibit, but should give you a good overview of the historic elements behind the construction of the world’s only complete replica of Shakespeare’s indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars Theatre in Shakespeare, Second Life.

While creating this exhibit (the sketches are modified from Irwin Smith and the Public Domain; the text is mine), I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between a cathedral floorplan and that of a theatre, and so here’s my sort of “pet paradigm”:

The above, in context, is displayed on a wall in the Blackfriars Museum, unedited SL photos as shown below. (Clicking on the “Cathedral in a Theatre” panel inworld also gives you a free inworld info HUD so that you can take these three panels home–or anywhere on SL–with you!)

The Museum illuminates the historical basis for the construction of the Blackfriars Theatre, which was actually built within a building inside a lavishly *rich* Dominican Monastery (hence the name Black Friars — the Dominicans wore a black cloak over their habits). Conjectural diagrams of the monastery are shown, although only the building segment housing the Blackfriars is built (due to funding shortages — I can’t afford to buy another sim for my pet projects anymore but, if you’re crazy enough to fund a sim dedicated to a build of the *complete* Dominican priory that the Blackfriars Theatre was set in, give me a poke!). In addition to… yet more diagrams… the museum also shows a scaled-down version of the roof structure, explaining for its historical basis. Faux-original documents, such as Piers Plowman and diagrams/photos from archaeological digs are also displayed in context (emphasis on faux-original — admittedly, they’re made to look da-Vinci-Code-esque, i.e., Hollywood style imitations of ori doc’s).

For the detail-pious, just a note of excitement to look forward to in the next few months: The Blackfriars Theatre will have both rushes and candlelight installed for our summer staged reading series in preparation for our 2010 production of Henry VIII (and stage stools!). We’ll also make use of the rear-stage, and trap-doors as well even though it’s a staged reading series! Last year, we tried a costumed staged reading series, but this year, we’ll try a staged reading series with (perhaps?) some basic blocking. For sure, we will be going for an Tudor-accurate production of Henry VIII, when we start showing the full ensemble performances in 2010!

As future Challenge Productions, we also hope to try out a couple (at least?) of the many historic play manuscripts with explicit blocking for the Blackfriars!

But, for now, I bid thee check out the Blackfriars Museum! And, happy birthday Shakespeare!

I’ve been rather quiet on my blog lately, but very, very busy… (Then again, much of I do never makes it here.)

Last night, I finally forced myself to finish Inachi’s Nyotaimori I info website, which documents my nyotaimori performance art event and experiment last month.

Recently, I’ve put together a Portfolio website, which attempts to both introduce my complicated self along with some things I’ve done in the past two or three years in virtual worlds.

I’m currently trying to apply to my first grant as an independent artist. I’m musing on doing something with action painting, fractal analysis, bear-baiting, Shakespeare, and theatre in Second Life.

I’m also trying to finish a novella and get it sent off before the postmark expires… and getting back into director-mode for the upcoming open auditions and rehearsals I’d be holding.

This upcoming production of Twelfth Night will be totally erudite. I’m directing the entire thing. Hoo!!!

Naergilien Wunderlich has created a “One of a Kind” dress that is a meticulous Second Life reconstruction of Queen Elizabeth I’s Rainbow Portrait dress.

This dress can be obtained through a silent auction that ends at 4 PM SL Time on Winter Solstice December 21, 2008.

The bid is currently at L$10,600. IM and notecard Naergilien Wunderlich directly with your bid.

Proceeds benefit the SL Shakespeare Company in their SOS “Save Our Sims” Campaign.

Closeup Image:

Here are a few more shots (click for big pic):

Unedited “Direct-from-SL” shots of the two main ad photos above are here (click for big pic):

These photos are taken direct from SL with “Atmospheric Shaders” turned off in Edit > Preferences:

This dress is also available in “3d preview” at Wunderlich’s Garb Mainstore and at the Shakespeare Island sim. More details here on Wunderlich’s original post.

Queen Elizabeth I will be making an appearance as Gloriana Sixpence in the SL Shakespeare Company’s Shakespeare on Ice to premiere on December 21, 2008.

The SL Shakespeare Company Returns to Shakespeare with Twelfth Night:
In Their Usual Trademarked Extravagance…

Shakespeare, Second Life: The SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC) will perform a full ensemble performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Act 1 in a special short-run advance miniseason as part of their Fall Season 2008 repertoire. Opening on SLSC Thursday, November 13th (following a “sneak peek” on November 12th), the full-length Act 1 is the first part of the culmination of a summer’s worth of rehearsal-performances in SLSC’s tag-team staged reading series of Twelfth Night.

Maintaining their tradition of visual and theatrical extravagance, the miniproduction also introduces the usage of multiple rotating sets, incognito animation preloading, global lighting and weather control to SLSC stagecraft technologies. Live dynamic camera control by a director finetunes the performance with a cinematic appeal, while international subtitles, the SLSC’s “Pay as you Will” philosophy, and the play’s location in the confluence of four island simulators of the SL Globe Theatre make the performance accessible to as many as possible.

Directed by Ina Centaur and Voice Directed by Enniv Zarf, the production stars MadameThespian Underhill, Joff Fassnacht, Prospero Frobozz, Ludo Merit, Maedin Tureaud, and Lorne Harlequin, and also a motley cast of “silent actors” who create a different variation of a background crowd each time.

Miniseason schedule (All times SLT or GMT-8):
Wednesday, Nov 12 - 11 am “sneak peek”
Thursday, Nov 13 - high noon
Friday, Nov 14 - 1 PM
Saturday, Nov 15 - 2 pm - (ticketed)*
Sunday - no show
Monday, Nov 17 - high noon

*Most of our shows at the SL Globe Theatre are free, but VIP/ticketed shows charge a nominal admissions fee of L$500. The smaller audience may entice.

ABOUT The Company: <<<
The SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC) is a resident-funded and resident- supported professional theatre company that embraces the best of what Second Life (SL) has to offer. Since 2007, we have been making history by providing extravagant and unforgettable theatrical performances on Second Life. With each show, we continue to shape the field by developing and releasing a new technology for virtual theatre on Second Life. Our vision is to make live Shakespearean theatre available to anyone anywhere with a computer to create new possibilities in entertainment, culture, and commerce for residents of a diverse, unbounded geosphere. Those are the side effects of our mission: to make Shakespeare cool again! Latest News: http://blog.SLshakespeare.com

ABOUT The SL Globe Theatre <<<
SL Globe Theatre, sLiterary is a virtual reconstruction of the Original Globe Theatre that historians conjecture stood in Shakespeare’s days. It is meticulously adapted as a functioning theatre in the massively multiuser virtual world of Second Life. The SL Globe Theatre is the most historically accurate rendition of the Globe Theatre on the Internet. Its SL rendition is set in the confluence of 4 island simulators - thus allowing for the maximal number of local audience members. Web preview: http://visit.SLshakespeare.com

Drop by a free show (or a VIP-ticketed one), take photos, post to the group, and win! Drop by the SL Globe Theatre anytime before the show for a sneak peek of the sets.

SL Globe Theatre Pit entrance: http://SLurl.com/secondlife/Shakespeare/255/255/25
SL Globe Theatre Main entrance: http://SLurl.com/secondlife/sLiterary/23/13/23

The NEH recently switched from the icky PureView form (which actually requires a Windows 98 machine to use!) to Acrobat form packages. It’s interesting the pdf is made to emulate the old PureView form interface. After about half a dozen submissions errors (Error: Intake servlet is unable to save the data. Error message:: Broken pipe), I finally get a grantor-received email, so I guess I’m FINALLY done. Yippee!

Pillar #1: Ransom for the SL Shakespeare Company & SL Globe Theatre

Shakespeare, Second Life: The SL Shakespeare Company last month announced its Fourteen Pillars Fundraising Campaign, whose goal is to fill up all fourteen pillars to raise L$14 million, L$1 million per pillar. On Friday, July 18, to kick start the closing weekend of its month-long Twelfth Night staged reading series, the troupe plans to hold a “Twelfth Night MegaFundundraiser” in attempt to fill up the first pillar.

At 1 pm on Friday the 18^th, seven actors will be jailed for their acting crimes by “an evil director,” likely Enniv Zarf, producer and director of the Twelfth Night staged reading series. Each actor’s bail will be set to L$100,000. Their goal is to woo the audience with only improv acting and their wits. Enniv Zarf explains, “The practical point is to get all of them out by 7 PM so that we can give the encore performance at our previously scheduled time.”

For the remaining L$300,000, the Company also plans to turn the SL Globe Theatre into a true black box theatre—“black, black, and nothing else”—in the historic first ransom of a virtual building.

Ina Centaur, artistic director and executive producer, comments, “We are truly what we say we are—a group of thespians and other professionals dedicated to our craft, bound together by Shakespeare, and way-too-excited to wait for outside funding before beginning something truly spectacular within the virtual world of Second Life. Furthermore, beyond the fact that we are trying to be Shakespeare’s analogue in live virtual theatre (the man was the foundation of modern theatre; we aim to establish the foundation of virtual theatre), we are also trying to create good within and for the audience of a virtual world that has more often been associated with the bad. In turn, though the money would be raised to create the good within, we believe this good will flow out of Second Life through the positive impact of the experience we create.”

Centaur has also been involved with numerous fundraisers based in Second Life, most notably her recent notable contributions in the Second Life Relay for Life campaigns. Despite her success she holds uncertainty in this upcoming fundraiser, “While my RFL teams together have raised over L$3 million through passive efforts and huge bursts through short-term events, we had the relatively easy job of campaigning for an existing and well-established charity for a direct health-related cause. Albeit The SL Shakespeare Company is known to be a source of good in Second Life, the concept of campaigning for major funding for a good within Second Life may be too revolutionary for others to get. We’ve got some tough mileage ahead, both with the technology and production mechanics, and also with convincing people of our ideas… We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Shakespeare, Second Life: In June 2008, the SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC) announced the “Fourteen Pillars Fundraising Campaign” to help raise capital for its highly anticipated full-length full-ensemble production of Hamlet and other Shakespearean works. The goal is to raise L$14 million to fill up all 14 currently-empty pillars of the Campaign.

In a backstage private presentation given to VIP and members of the 1300+ member SL Shakespeare Company group on Second Life, executive producer and artistic director Ina Centaur gave a brief recounting of the various Globe Theatres she had built on Second Life and other virtual realities, and also the Second Life land problems the Company had to face, which ultimately forced her to invest in purchasing four island simulators for the Theatre. She then explained the Company’s goals and revealed its financial status, “We’re not funded by any external agency other than our own passion for the endeavor—and that’s really also internal… And it is so rare to see that in a humanities project, but we have it! We’ve already done what other projects with hundreds of thousands of real US dollars could not do. But, to maintain it for any longer, we will need your help…”

The problem arose in April from the Company’s all-too-sensational, but all-too-sudden miniproduction of Hamlet: The Mousetrap, which featured a cast of a baker’s dozen live actors and introduced the faces of the play’s main characters, including Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius, Polonius and Gertrude. Centaur explained the miniproduction’s major problem, “We tried our best to work the schedule based on the actor’s availabilities; but having Second Life as a second or third or fourth or lower priority simply won’t do for a full-ensemble full-length production.” Managing director Sabina Stenvaag stated, “Scheduling was chaos, and we’ve even had to deal with some last minute re-casting before a show opened.” Co-executive producer and director Enniv Zarf agreed that, “The only way a full-length full-everything production would work is if we had everyone taking Second Life seriously, take their roles as a full time first life job for a month.”

“We’re going to continue no matter what. We hadn’t planned to ‘demote’ our productions to staged readings, but we had to do so due to funding and because we wanted to be able to continue to perform,” said Enniv Zarf.

Ina Centaur explained, “Outside institutes and funding agencies do not seem to understand what we’re doing, and that perhaps explains for their reluctance in funding. We’re new and we’ve got a sprakling new idea. For the past eleven months, I have been spending a huge chunk of my time in both finding and fostering the SLSC. The theatre prides itself in its professional productions and large-scale venue—but those come at a cost. Practically everything I have done on Second Life is in attempt to break even and make the theatre self-sufficient within Second Life.”

The Campaign’s characteristic donation kiosk is a self-updating posterboard, which visually represents the fourteen empty pillars as printed woodcuts on aged parchment. As the funds accumulate, the pillars will appear “filled.” Currently, two kiosks are placed in the SL Globe Theatre. They will soon be dispersed on the walls of upcoming builds in the Shakespeare island simulator as “Elizabethan graffiti”.

I get so much done when SL is offline.

Finished makeup editions for Kassia and Dria, and also finally pdf2tga’ed the SL Shakespeare Company programme!

And now for more SQL fun @ SQLzoo…

Two Table Join

1b. Show the who and the color of the medal for the medal winners from ‘Sweden’

SELECT who,color FROM ttms JOIN country ON (ttms.country=country.id) WHERE country.name=’Sweden’

1c. Show the years in which ‘China’ won a ‘gold’ medal.

SELECT games FROM ttms x JOIN country y ON (x.country=y.id) WHERE y.name=’China’ AND x.color=’gold’

2b. Show which city ‘Jing Chen’ won medals. Show the city and the medal color

SELECT city, color FROM games JOIN ttws ON (ttws.games=games.yr) WHERE who=’Jing Chen’

2c. Show who won the gold medal and the city.

SELECT who, city FROM games x JOIN ttws y ON (x.yr=y.games) WHERE color=’gold’

3a. Show the games and color of the medal won by the team that includes ‘Yan Sen’.

SELECT games,color FROM ttmd JOIN team on (ttmd.team=team.id) WHERE team.name=’Yan Sen’

3b. Show the ‘gold’ medal winners in 2004.

SELECT name from team JOIN ttmd ON (ttmd.team=team.id) WHERE ttmd.games=2004 AND ttmd.color=’gold’

3c. Show the name of each medal winner country ‘FRA’.

SELECT name FROM team JOIN ttmd on (ttmd.team=team.id) WHERE ttmd.country=’FRA’

 If Michelangeo painted the Sistine Chapels anywhere but in that one well-funded church endeavor, it would be akin to a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.

I think I have discovered that it’s not the beauty or merit of a piece that gets it the support it needs, but the level of publicity it attains. Having to both self-publicize, direct, and produce a piece makes it triply difficult – and funding as well is enervating. It takes precious life from art — and I do mean that both ways. After giving out a funding spiel describing SLSC initiatives, all I want to do is log out and poof — literally. And having to self-publicize just means I can spend that much less time on the actual art itself. Which defies the purpose of working on my own project…

If Michelangeo painted the Sistine Chapels in the streets of Sicily, people would walk all over it, and its colors and vibrancy would be stolen on the soles of countless travellers.  

In school, I used to think that missing an earned point there and here due to random grading errors didn’t matter. That was also what the prof’s said. But, the truth is that a few points missed here and there add up. It’s like in an old friend’s reminisces of AP Spanish, where extra credit was granted “randomly” to students who shout out “pointa, pointa!” for answering random hodge-podge. And in the end, it was this one extra credit point she missed that made the difference between an A and a B. For her, it meant losing out on being valedictorian. Microecon is life, really. A dollar saved here and there every day multiplied by 356 days becomes a size-able fortune. Similarly, being unlucky enough to receive grades on the borderline for dozens of courses, and not having the heart to fight for the next…

And then there are stories that you’d think were published on The Onion, rather than CNN, that, although AP-style, is just so full of… story. Take this one, for example, where a judge is accused of falling asleep during a trial, requiring treatment like a queen, among other things… and the fact that she can still stand all that personal invective-type drama against her really does illustrate an extremely strong character. 

It really is all about the guts and bull to fight, to get the word out.