Gone so Long - General Overview/Update - Details to Come Soon!

[Jessica Rajko]

Hi Everyone,

I am sorry I have not posted for so long. Winter break at Arizona State University happened, during which I took a brief hiatus from Leonard (the wearer was out of town) - once we got back, we were slammed just to get done for the show - blah, blah, blah, I'm sorry. Leonard has been on the fast track to success. Here are some pictures of him:

Leonard and Diane

Leonard and Diane waltzing

The original wearer of Leonard landed a new job, which was really great for him and his career BUT inhibited him from being able to play Leonard for the show. A wonderful woman by the name of Randi Frost agreed to play Leonard. Randi is a dancer, which I think really made Leonard come alive. Shawn is wonderful - don't get me wrong - but he can't break it down the same way Randi can.

Here's a picture of Randi in the suit:

That's Randi standing behind one of the dancers in Case Study, Tara Wrobel.

We performed Case Study last week with great success (video to be up in the near future). While Leoanard was a GREAT hit in the context of the show, we ran into some problems due to lack of time, so we were not able to use the Miditron Wireless in the show. Leonard works with the Miditron, he makes sound and is very charming; however, because the sounds he made in the context of the show were part of a dialogue, we were not able to modify the sensitivity of the sensors in time to make the conversation seamless enough for performance. Because of this issue, Leonard's sounds were manually triggered by Christopher for the performance. I will go into more detail in future blogs about the issues that we came across.

We have a new project nicely titled Monsters that Stjepan, Christopher, Meredith, and I are starting to workshop.

From Left to Right: Meredith Martinez, Jessica Mumford, Christopher Martinez

Just in case you haven't seen him or forgot - here's Stjepan.

Leonard will be tweaked and premiered in this project with the interactive sound. Along with getting the sounds to work, we are also planning to add wireless speakers to the costume so that all sounds he makes actually come from the costume itself. I will keep posting as we move to this portion of the project.

I have more project specific blogs that I will be posting soon so that you all know exactly what we have been up to and what problems we ran into.