On this last Friday before the Labor Day weekend, it seems fitting to take a moment to think back upon this summer at Redmoon. I embark upon this entry the way one might embark upon creating a Redmoon production postcard. The countdown:

Now this is no ordinary countdown, you know, one where numbers might make some sort of sense. A Redmoon countdown tells a complex story with few words. To create my countdown, I look around for examples. Let’s take, for instance, just a few I can see from my desk (we’ll play a little game of guess that show):

957 Test Tubes
2 Centrifuges
A Roomful of Good Intentions and
1 Colossal Mistake

12 Packing Crates
3 Fairy Princesses
An Innocent
4 Very Naughty Girls

7 Musical Numbers
5 Movie Stars
1 Chef with a Meat Cleaver
40,000 Truffles

51 Puppets
400 Lbs of Steel
1 Gramophone
2 Murders
(yeah, I know… this one’s a little old school)

Redmoon has gone international this summer; with artists from Australia crossing the world to work with us in Chicago, and with Redmoon’s Artistic Staff traveling to the Netherlands to work on the World Statues Festival.

While the theater was closed for its summer break, I took a little globe-trotting adventure of my own. Only hours after our June board meeting, I instructed my interns not to burn down the theater and I got on a plane to the Mediterranean. While there I exposed myself to incredible new art, took time to enjoy every street performance I could find, and threw myself into art in many languages I barely understood, a spectacle in and of itself. And as anyone who has traveled alone for any length of time knows, I had amazing period of reflection.

One of the most exciting things about traveling was all the new and interesting people I met along the way. I spent a great deal of time talking with total strangers about art, and politics… and about Redmoon. I enjoyed seeing people’s reactions while explaining the work we do here and at the end of the trip I was excited to return to this place and its amazing people. A countdown for Redmoon would look something like this:

973 Cups of Coffee
350+ Global Collaborating Artists
An Insane Amount of Puppets
1 Exciting Company

I’ve been back now for longer than I was away, and I find the summer slipping away like dust from the Boneyard Prayer set. But at the end of this particular summer, it seems, for me, this is the only fit way to sum it up:

4,126 Telephone Conversations
10 Interns
A Month Abroad
1 Crazy, Productive, Motivating Summer

Oh, and for those of you playing along at home, the shows were as follows:

Dr. Egg and the Man with No Ear (2008)
The Princess Club (2007)
The Golden Truffle (2006)
The Cabinet (2005)

-Beth