CHICKEN IN DA 'HOUSE

Because I was starting to get a little fidgety around the office (there's only so many surveys one can tabulate in a day), my co-workers let me take a little field trip. Yesterday, I returned to my birthplace: the Opera Cleveland Warehouse.




At the warehouse, we store all the sets the company has built, in addition to props and costumes. Sets we build (or adapt) are created here. It's like a little city of two-by-fours, fake chandeliers, pulleys, and paper mache trees. A chicken could get into a lot of trouble there.


Right now, our warehouse peeps (the incomparable Kish, her summer apprentice Jessie, painter Megan, and carpenter Jamie) are building our Hansel and Gretel set. Here it is! The role of Gretel will be played by a cockroach and Hansel by a Junebug. (Along with striving to keep production costs down, we are so innovative.)

Oh, but I jest. This is a scale model of the Act I house in our production. We're lucky to have Erhard Rom as our set designer; he is phe-frickin'-nomenal.

Cage o' Candy. (For all of your peppermint twisted fantasies.)

Hanging out in the unfinished Act I house.

I hung out for a while with Jessie as she worked on the door for the Act I house, until she got too much sawdust in my feathers. (I've gotten too used to posh office life, where the only dangers range from eye strain to carpal tunnel. But these are scourges enough, I tell you!)