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Last Sun­day night was a bit of an adven­ture. Not the sky-diving, or scuba div­ing style of adven­ture, but the out­door amphithe­atre gala award show type of adventure.

Yes, I don’t like out­door the­atre, and yet, I agreed to light an out­door show. Last night was the 10th anniver­sary of CPSOA (Cre­ative Planet School of the Arts) Gala and Awards. I think that’s what it was called, I’m not really sure. Some­times I just show up and light things. Is that strange? Maybe so…

Any­way… one of the big rea­sons why I agreed to design the show, besides the fact that I’m a big softie, and can’t say no to sweet peo­ple who ask for help – plus lit­tle kids danc­ing onstage (how awe­some is that, really? And specif­i­cally, that lit­tle 6 year old kid danc­ing to Michael Jack­son? He just makes my heart melt) is that the show was per­form­ing at the John Anson Ford Amphithe­atre, in Hollywood.

You might not know the place. Espe­cially if you are not liv­ing in Los Ange­les. If you don’t – you might have heard of the the­atre ACROSS the street, the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The Ford is like the inti­mate lit­tle brother to the Hol­ly­wood bowl, with a more casual home-y vibe that con­trasts to the Bowl’s deco clean lines and multi-thousand seats.

I can’t clearly explain why I dis­like out­door the­atre so much, but maybe it’s that feel­ing at 1am dur­ing focus or cue­ing when I feel like I’m com­ing down with the cold that will even­tu­ally kill me, or the marine layer that set­tles in and causes a dull haze over the stage that screws up all of the light­ing fix­ture inten­si­ties, or the humid night air that curls my script pages. Maybe one of those rea­sons. It couldn’t be the wildlife (rats) or the fly­ing insects (dive­bomb­ing june bugs) – I wouldn’t be so petty to not like those.

I put all that aside, and decided that I could make it through the night, since all evi­dence from the rest of my life has taught me that I can sur­vive most any day, and that I can sur­vive most any the­atri­cal experience.

For the most part, the show looked super pretty. There were some foibles here and there, and well, it went on so very long, but all in all, it was a great night. The kids brought out their trade­mark “Fierce­ness” and Fluffy (the staff Mas­ter Elec­tri­cian) and I in the booth worked as much magic as we could to match the onstage efforts. By 11:50pm, I was safely in my car with the heater blast­ing away and dri­ving home.

Con­grats to CPSOA, and a lit­tle self con­grat­u­la­tions for work­ing out­side, at night, in the cold.