does whatever a spider can

name: Spider
job: video intern and production assistant
height: 5'2"
computer: i-mac
What makes you a Builder?: "Avanti last year in South Bend, Indiana."
favorite thing about the Builders: "People are nice."
snack food of choice: potato chips

This is Spider. Spider is her stage name. Or camera name, I should say. She lives in Flushing. We meet Spider last year at Notre Dame University, where she worked with us on Avanti and when she got the call to come to New York and work on Super Vision, she packed her bags and here she is. Spider is good people, as we used to say in DC.

It is now about ten days since rehearsals have finished. We did two showings of the piece for invited friends, sort of dress rehearsals with audiences and I think they went really really well. The weather was atrocious the first night, Thursday the 22nd. The humidity reached Katrina-like proportions and inside the theatre, it was predictably swampy. The second night was better, as the damp sort of dissipated.

I must make a correction to this blog. All apologies to the little Chihuahua and I hope she will not be too mad at me for this but I have spelled her name wrong! It is Poireau, not Poirrot. She is a little leek, not a fictional inspector. Sorry little doggy. We love you still.

After the showings came the monumental task of taking everything apart and putting it in the road boxes that were built by Neal and Joe and Jamie and the rest of the crew. This took a lot of work and a long time and it was a Herculean effort to get it all ready for the arrival of the truck to carry it all away. There were several all-night experiences I believe and as far as I know, they did not involve fun drugs beyond what the Red Bull section in the local deli case had to offer. Hats off to the brave heroes of the strike and thanks for all your hard superhuman work.

It's all in the truck now and it is somewhere between NYC and our first gig. The world premiere at the William and Nadine McGuire Theater at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN. We are all looking forward to letting the great big world see our work and seeing how this inquisitive exploration into the datasphere impacts real spectators.

I was thrilled to learn that Minneapolis does have a women's roller derby team and I was crushed to find out that they will be in town and doing there thing the same night we are, meaning I cannot go. And I have missed the state fair by weeks. I'm sure there will be other ways to entertain myself (in all my copious spare time) and I will endeavor to log on and report the findings of all adventures taken by our band of avant-gardistes. If anyone out there has good suggestions on what to do when in the Twin Cities, please feel free to comment. But do me a favor and don't post comments that act like they are saying something personal but just turn out to be advertising. Spare us all.

I did not take the bridge either to or from work those last two days. Rain threatened and then I was way uptown in Manhattan and did not have the travel time to get to Brooklyn on my own power. But I did ride my cycle home on the Saturday after the showings, after going to fetch it where I'd left it at the theatre and helped a wee bit with an exciting upholstery project that Stewart and Marianne had taken on. The bridge was full of happy cyclists, not the usual hard boiled commuter weekday crowd. And a gaggle of tourists blocking up the pathway, as tourists the world over do. They seemed to be enjoying themselves up there on that beautiful day. We all did.

See you in Minneapolis,
moe.