Happy New Year!

Another year has come and gone and I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect on the past year.

It’s been a year of learning, (which I hope I can always say). There have been some exciting projects that I have been involved with that led to some interesting research. Also, it has been very interesting to branch into film / tv and museum work. It’s interesting both in the similarities, some subtle (and not so subtle) differences, and some different materials. Working to get some of our automation control system UL/ETL listed has also been quite the experience.

USITT in Houston was great, and I have been working on USITT related projects for the upcoming conference in Cincinnati – and I hope to see you there!

In my kick of investigating the ways toys can be used as valuable learning opportunities, I have moved into solar panels. While not really practical for theatre, we have been doing a number of green exhibits, as well as a science museum exhibit about sunlight. I was surprised by the low cost of solar panels these days – and who knows – I could easily see solar power being used (at least in part) in remote out door performance spaces.

As far as seeing shows, being in Chicago has opened up the opportunity to see lots of fabulous performances, in a variety of genres. On the Broadway series, Avenue Q was as much fun as I expected. Dirty Dancing was novel in projections and lighting – it was very cinema like – much more so than I ever imagined possible. Elsewhere, Contraption from the Neo-Futurist was a lot of fun. Columbinus from the Raven Theatre was a great piece of theatre, as was, though for very different reasons, Million Dollar Quartet.

Looking forward to the upcoming year I hope to continue to come here and share my thoughts with you, to learn more and to share that as well, and to see more great Chicago theatre.