Home

What you probably didn't know about the Great Chicago Fire

07.10.11

&Nbsp;are when I'm up in the catwalk. Hiding in the shady, dressed in all black, I drop "cinders" -- small red pieces of felt-- on the stage, cued by the concoct manager, Kathleen, on headset. I get a great point of view of the entire theater up there, so once I've grown all in of seeing the same scene performance after performance, I note a different one -- the audience's effect. The play is based on real people and events that occurred during Chicago's greatest cataclysm. Throughout previews and opening, there's been one character who is a utterly crowd favorite: James Hildreth (cop-out me, Alderman James Hildreth), played with relish by Cheryl Lynn Bruce.

Hildreth's alibi is compelling because he's a total badass. He single-handedly devised a activity to create a fire line to keep the flames from reaching and destroying the southern part of the see. It's a noble cause, to be sure, but it's the slaying that really astounds. Hildreth's plan: bungle up entire streets' worth of buildings to form the fire at its own game. The ashen rubble from the intentional explosions would expropriate the fire of fuel and stop it in its tracks without anything to burn. Basically his formula was to destroy the city before the fire could, no big deal. Let me point out that in 1871, the only fad available to blow stuff up with was gunpowder. This is part of why Hildreth's peculiar is so popular--it takes a certain description of person to run around with a hundred kegs of gunpowder when the sky is raining fire in every bearing. I wanted to see what the real Hildreth had to say about his experiences fighting The Excess Fire with, well, more fire. Thanks to director/playwright John Musial's comprehensive research (the script has four pages of Works Cited endnotes to look through), I knew I had to find the diocese's official Inquiry into the Cause of the Chicago Fire. Anyone can find the carbon of the Inquiry at the Chicago History Museum's Explore Center. On Wednesdays, it's open until 4:30pm, which is fortuitous because my call at the theater is at 5 o'clock.

Source: WBEZ (blog)

13 Killer Halloween Party Props Revealed

21.09.11

On October 1st, graveyards will pop-up on lawns and expertly carved pumpkins will pale up porches across America. Want to out-do the monsters down the eliminate this Halloween? Owner and lead propmaker BJ Winslow of Ritzy Cadaver has 13 ideas on how to kick your Halloween decor up a cleft with some killer Halloween props.

“Hollywood set decorators and propmasters recall how the right props create the right atmosphere for a film,” said Winslow. “When you smarten up for Halloween, think of your props as creating the spooky society that you want your guests to live in. The right Halloween props in the end make the atmosphere come alive.”

Year whole, Dapper Cadaver is one of Hollywood’s top sources for expiration-related and scientific props. Set decorators from hit TV shows like Exactly Blood and House shop for skeletons, majority parts and corpses. When the Halloween season hits, savvy Halloween reception planners and home haunters go to Dapper Dead body to buy and rent Hollywood-grade props.

Source: News Junky Journal