John Holdun

Booking a Venue

I mailed the deposit today, so I guess it’s official: Graveyard Swing comes to life at The Secret Theatre in Long Island City from October 27th to October 31st! This is the place I’ve been talking about all this time; it was my first choice and everything has been so smooth so far. Tickets will go on sale in September, and I’ll have more about the venue as it develops. This is a huge step!

Another huge step: I’m about halfway through the construction of one full-size figure. The various body parts of the saxophone ghost have about three layers of papier-mâché on them, each; one or two more and I’ll feel comfortable plastering this all and adding some pivot points. Here’s a photo of the figure laid out on the ground, without its saxophone (I wanted to build these parts first, to get the scale right):

The saxophone ghost, in progress, laid out on the floor beside a yardstick, measuring four to five feet tall

Finally, I ordered David Younger’s Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment a few weeks ago and it arrived last week. It’s enormous, a legitimate textbook that’s almost 500 pages long:

David Younger’s Theme Park Design, held in my hand. It’s huge.

I have barely put this thing down since it landed at my door and I’m about 3/4 of the way through the parts that are relevant to me currently. It’s already inspired a lot of new ideas and reminded me of things I can’t afford to forget. I’ll write a more elaborate review later; for now, I highly recommend it if you care about this topic. I’m sure I’ll refer back to it for years to come, and I’m sure later editions will include my work!

I also bought a pinspot this week (a spotlight with a very narrow beam, commonly used for disco balls) to experiment with focusable lights. I also bought two big magnifying glasses to experiment with building focusable lights. Nothing else to report here yet but I’m having fun.

This week I’ll get the sax ghost to the point where it can be primed and painted and if that goes well, I’ll make some measurable progress on the rest of the ghosts in scene 3. The skeletons come after that, and I need to finalize the backdrop concepts so I can hand off that task very soon.

I’ll leave with you with this: how do you feel about Graveyard Swing as a title? It started as a working title, but working titles tend to stick. I would love something more evocative, even if it’s less descriptive. That said, I want the title to do most of the work of describing the idea to unfamiliar visitors: this is a glimpse at a cemetery that filled up a hundred years ago—so long ago that no one really visits anymore. Over many generations, the city surrounding the cemetery has boxed it in, leaving it on the edge of obscurity, and now the interred feel comfortable partying whenever they like. What do you call that?