Commentary &Theater 30 Jan 2006 07:24 am
Scumbling some more
Monday rambling:
Tom Sito‘s excellent blog at the G7 site is really wonderful. If you don’t visit it regularly, I suggest you take a look. It features good, entertaining, informative reading daily. Here is just one small posting from the last few days:
1959- Disney’s ” SLEEPING BEAUTY ” opened. Despite earning the fifth highest box office for that year it finished a million behind what it cost to make. The animation staff had swollen to its largest to finish the production. It’s disappointing box office soured Walt Disney on feature animation. Walking out of the premiere he went up to Milt Kahl and grumbled:” Well Milt, is THAT what I spent $4million for?!” After the film was finished the studio had a massive layoff, dropping from 551 to just 75. Artists employed since the Silly Symphonies found pink dismissal slips on their drawing tables when they came to work. One inker committed suicide. Staff level will not return to these same levels until 1990.
Tying this back to my overlong rant from yesterday: Last year, I’d seen a production Off-Broadway of Sleeping Beauty. 
It was by the Young Vic Theater Company out of England and was written and directed by Rufus Norris. The audience was mixed from a one year old to grandparents. As I sat, the audience was noisy – some particularly loud teenagers behind me. However, as soon as the show started, they were spellbound and silent. The one year old had to be held high through the entire production.
This was a reconstructed version of the tale. It felt both absolutely faithful and, at the same time, wholly revisionist. Actors, other than the leads, played multiple parts; all were delightful characters and completely original. The set was little more than a turntable with room for actors under the stage to stick their heads through that turntable. These heads played flowers and thorn bushes. There was a short, spiral staircase in the center of the turntable that was the castle.
The show was brilliant on a small budget completely pulled from imagination and daring. It inspired my animation for at least six months; even thinking of it again, now, gets me charged. You never know what you’ll find, but all forms of art can bring great influence to your work.
