Last week I had the good fortune to serve as technical director/production manager for the first-ever TEDxMileHigh. We wanted a simple stage set that was quintessentially Denver. Something that said cow-town meets city-of-the-world. Science and art. Nature and innovation. Purple mountains majesty and...something. Now, how to accomplish that in the scenic design?
One day I was walking down the 16th Street Mall pondering that very question. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this, which I've walked by hundreds of times during the last five years:
I had no idea how much the heifer weighed. I had no idea how to transport it four and a half blocks to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. But I knew who to ask.
Any of my advance Padawans will tell you that one of my top rules of advance--and of life--is:
You never know unless you ask.
I've done crazy things in my advance career to get a good photo. Flown flags from rooftops no one wanted to climb. Had street lights removed from highways. Jacked up a 30,000-lb. electric truck four feet above the ground. You never know unless you ask.
And you have to know who to ask.
Since I'd worked for Mayor Hickenlooper's communications office when Cow Parade came to Denver in 2006 and when the sculptures were auctioned off, I knew that the Downtown Denver Partnership owned this particular specimen. And I knew people at the Downtown Denver Partnership. I called up my friend Sarah Neumann and left a rambling voice mail that opened with, 'Hi Sarah, it's Sarah, I have a crazy idea I want to run by you...'
She connected me with her colleague Don Pesek, who agreed to loan us the cow for the very reasonable sum of free. He asked only that we pay for the transportation and that we construct a new base and brackets on stage to stabilize the cow because its current concrete base wasn't going anywhere.
The beautiful blue bovine arrived at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on load-in/build day. A carpenter attached it to a new plywood base, painted black to blend in with the stage. But the brackets securing the hooves to the base were not black and would stick out like a sore thumb once under the very bright stage lights. This wouldn't do.
Gaff tape, in its natural habitat of the theater, to the rescue!
Full stage set:
One day I was walking down the 16th Street Mall pondering that very question. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this, which I've walked by hundreds of times during the last five years:
I had no idea how much the heifer weighed. I had no idea how to transport it four and a half blocks to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. But I knew who to ask.Any of my advance Padawans will tell you that one of my top rules of advance--and of life--is:
You never know unless you ask.
I've done crazy things in my advance career to get a good photo. Flown flags from rooftops no one wanted to climb. Had street lights removed from highways. Jacked up a 30,000-lb. electric truck four feet above the ground. You never know unless you ask.
And you have to know who to ask.
Since I'd worked for Mayor Hickenlooper's communications office when Cow Parade came to Denver in 2006 and when the sculptures were auctioned off, I knew that the Downtown Denver Partnership owned this particular specimen. And I knew people at the Downtown Denver Partnership. I called up my friend Sarah Neumann and left a rambling voice mail that opened with, 'Hi Sarah, it's Sarah, I have a crazy idea I want to run by you...'
She connected me with her colleague Don Pesek, who agreed to loan us the cow for the very reasonable sum of free. He asked only that we pay for the transportation and that we construct a new base and brackets on stage to stabilize the cow because its current concrete base wasn't going anywhere.
The beautiful blue bovine arrived at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on load-in/build day. A carpenter attached it to a new plywood base, painted black to blend in with the stage. But the brackets securing the hooves to the base were not black and would stick out like a sore thumb once under the very bright stage lights. This wouldn't do.
Gaff tape, in its natural habitat of the theater, to the rescue!
Full stage set: |
| Photo by Chris Anthony |
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