Life and Risk

It's not like I haven't wanted to write lately, on the contrary, I've been wanting to. It's just that my mind has been on the move so much in the past week, I haven't had the mental capacity to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it were.) But now things have calmed slightly (ever so slightly) and as a result I am more than comfortable to spend this Friday night relaxing at home with a good movie (Muppet Treasure Island, I said I'm an adult, I never said I was all the time.)

A good place to begin would be last Saturday, after waking up early to make sure I made it to the audition in Shadyside, I headed out for the day. After a decent audition (I didn't get cast, by the way, but I honestly wasn't expecting it) I realized it was a beautiful day, and wandered down to Oakland. Following a quick stop at an antique book store (books being right alongside food and women among my weaknesses), I went to a delicious lunch. The review of the restaurant will be posted later. After lunch, I then headed to Schenley Plaza, and after a quick nap on the green, fell into a combination philosophical debate/ musical jam session with a group from Ohio State. A beautiful day always brings out the adventurous side in people. In the late afternoon, a brief but thoroughly enjoyable rehearsal was then followed by an absolutely delightful cast gathering. For a cast of 6 (7 with the director), 6 bottles of wine and a bottle of whiskey led to a really fun, yet sociable night overall.

The next day being Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, I was really excited to participate. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. For those of you who don't know what happens at Holi, among the music and dancing, there is much throwing of colored powder and spraying of colored water. It's simple, joyous fun. After being completely covered in dye by the end of the day, and eating my fill of delicious Indian food, I ended up finishing the day by hanging out with my friends from Slackline Pittsburgh, and Food Not Bombs.

It was fortunate that the weekend was so great, as this week was full of important decisions that needed to be made, both personal and profession. (Invariably, it always seem as if the two are intertwined.) I hate to be extremely vague, but in this case I need to be until I can see where things start to land.

Until next time,

Andrew

The Pittsburgh Underground presents Tech Week Blues

As I write this, we just finished up day three of tech week on the latest show I'm working on. Fr those of you who aren't in the theatre industry, please allow me to explain. Tech week is the week before a play or musical opens, when all of the technical elements (set, costumes, sound, props, lights, etc.) are all supposed to come together to create a whole show. The operative word in that previous sentence is "supposed." Many theatre professionals also refer to this time period as "Hell Week," and with good reason. During this time, you can virtually be assured that whatever can go wrong, will.

As a result, much of my adventuring has been curtailed temporarily. So naturally, I've turned to find the underside of Pittsburgh, the underground, as it were. I ended up finding much more of the underground than I expected, on two different ends of the spectrum.

The first mini-adventure turned out to be a perfect example of seeing something unexpected. If you travel through the break room of a well known sandwich chain, you can find a staircase going down. This is intriguing, as the restaurant is on the ground floor. Four friends and I decided to investigate what was there. After going down the staircase, we found ourselves in an interesting maze of passages. Here are some of the interesting sights. Total exploration time: 2.5 Hours.

There were several blackboards throughout the building, and most of them had the phrase "Ouroboros Choked" on them.

A wall of what we think was a recording studio.

An abandoned escalator

An absolutely gorgeous vintage radio.

A few days later, I found myself underground in quite a different manner. One of the benefits, at least for me, of working with museums is that I have access to some absolutely fascinating things that very rarely ever see the light of day. In this case, I had a chance to check out this document:

That is a hundred year old hand written document of personal sketches from the American Civil War. In it, the soldiers wrote of their experiences during the War. I had a few hours to investigate this first-hand. A resource like this is literally one of a kind.

As it is now a little after 2 A.M., and I have work tomorrow, I do believe I will get some sleep. Good night all.