John Holdun

One Week

We are one week from load-in. That’s…so spooky. How are we doing? Well, here’s a photo of my apartment this morning:

Lots of pieces of the various props from the show, strewn about my apartment on a dropcloth

Every ghost part is primed and ready for paint. Thanks so much to Joe and Kaleigh for coming over this week and helping get those pieces done! I’ll start painting tonight; I estimate that painting the whole quartet is 4-6 hours of work. I also want to sculpt some facial features for the ghosts, which is a two-hour project, in total, at most.

The scene 2 skeletons are still missing some feet and necks, but they’re otherwise totally built and ready to stand up. They just need another coat of mud and some primer. (I probably won’t even paint them; white primer looks properly bony). Four hours, tops.

The scene 1 skeletons, which are just skulls peeking out from behind tombstones, have about two hours of construction left, and then mud and primer—another hour.

Zander has blown through the backdrops the last couple days and they look amazing; two of three are now done and he’s painting the third as I type this. Here’s a peek at one of them:

A large painted canvas pinned flat on the ground in a large backyard, as seen from the second floor

There are a number of miscellaneous props left: tombstones, chunks of brick wall, a park bench, the entrance to the mausoleum. These pieces are architectural and mostly rectangular; I’m thinking six hours, start to finish, for everything. There’s supposed to be a human reading a newspaper in scene 1, who is mostly obscured by a newspaper, no problem.

I ordered 100 brass skeleton keys for some audience participation, and I’ll be picking up a rubber stamp in the next couple days to make tags for the keys. One hour of mindless repetition while watching a scary movie.

I have to finalize the copy for the program and get that printed. Two hours while watching another scary movie.

The animations are, and have been, my lowest priority, just because they’re the biggest unknown. I should be able to rig something up, but that’s still up in the air. It’ll be a surprise for us all.

Okay! Next week’s update will either be a day early or a couple days late—I expect to be crunching all next week, and the earliest I’ll be able to catch my breath is after locking up on opening night. I hope to have some good news for you all!

Also, let me remind you that tickets are on sale now and I would love to see you. Claim your key!

Also, if you’re coming, or if you can’t come but you want to support the project, or if you hate the project but think I’m nice, will you share it? You can invite people to the Facebook event or retweet this tweet of mine or just tell your friends! Thanks a bunch!