a) sitting at the office from 9 to 5  is still the most ineffective way of working

b) I am very bad at tolerating careless management.

The results:

BAD: I quit my job three weeks ago

GOOD: I will start assisting an art project in a prestigeous sculpture studio, I will set up lights for a dance festival next week and soon have a gig with the New York University in Prague for the light design of their yearly play.

VERY GOOD: I have a good script and a good team to start on an excellent theatre project. I might eventually score my MA degree with this.

Life is great.

Meanwhile, I became a working person and signed a contract with an architectural office called Lumidée. I am now officially a junior designer and am supposed to specialize specifically in the products of an Italian company called Viabizzuno. Co-operation in a czech-speaking environment  (where nobody really speaks English) with the Italians sounds like a lot of fun and

This has made my life quite complicated as waking up early each morning is not something I am used to do, and blogging is sometimes too big of an effort to manage.  During my lunch breaks and evening chillout surfing sessions I am able to be active in the shortest online communication format of tweets, updating my ideas at http://twitter.com/johannamai, you are welcome to follow me there.

Anyway, Erasmus is supposed to be about bounding and making new friends, so the french girls thought that I would bring something from the outside to their friendly little idea of doing King Ubu from the perspective of food. Food meaning power – when you eat, you are happy, the one that feeds you, has power over you.

We flipped it to the modern utopia of a restaurant, where the customer imagines himself to be the one in power. And so it all started. Ubu is a puppet, the stomach of the actor playing restaurant customer. All the characters he sweeps off his way, are made of food. Because of his hunger, Ubu destroys the delicious King Wenceslas and unexpectedly becomes King, continuing to gobble up the people and the nobility of his new kingdom. On the other side, the waitress has Ma Ubu on her stomach, encouraging Ubu to eat more and more, advancing through the evil plots of ruling the world. In the end, the revengeous prince Bougrelas got Ubu drunk of the Armagnac and made him leave without paying the bill. Merdre!

I really have to say I enjoyed the little group of ours. I think Ingrid and Julie are awfully smart people and they can do miracles on stage. It was an honor to see them work and react to every comment I made. Because of the lack of interest the acting tutor showed towards our project, I had the opportunity to really get into the creation process and direct a bit. A lot. Oh well, who am I kidding. It was a full-time group project with them on stage and me in the audience. And I liked every second of it.

They want to continue playing Merdre! in Bordeaux. I am a bit worried about the foam puppets that really have to be washed after every single performance (but the contrast between the clean, draped restaurant atmosphere and the whipped cream and carrot sauce flying around everywhere is such a wonderful part of it). All the food is real (red wine, cucumber jelly, chicken and carrots, tartailettes and coffee), also the dishes are first class Tesco quality. It’s a mess to prepare and dangerous to play (they broke three dishes during rehearsals), but plastic glasses just wouldn’t work that well.

An important thing I learned from this process, is that in stage design, most important is the industrial design part. Things might look nice, but if they don’t work or even bother, it is just awful. We made a lot of changes to the puppets during rehearsals to make them work and function more comfortably and tried several plates and dishes before ending up with the best ones.

Previously, I have often had a feeling of not being welcome at a rehearsal or that my tiny pleas of having a technical rehearsal somehow bothers people. With this small group we had lots and lots of tech rehearsals and fixed the sound and light cues perfectly. We even had some really elaborate choreography scenes set to difficult and punctual off-beat (or maybe something like 7/8 beat or who knows) music clips and the girls perfected them to excellence.

I am amazed of our synergy and now look at the theatre world in much more blue eyes than before – it is not all that bad and not everyone always hates you. I think I’ve also grown up a lot. I’m not evil to other people anymore either. It’s an excellent feeling, you know :)

Dramatic black and white pictures from the premiere by Vojta Taraba, colours from the dress rehearsal the day before by Sébastian Viales.

This is where I started from. It’s a scribble with with the wrong end of the brush because I felt I couldn’t use the right one anymore. I was thinking this was a disaster until I discussed my work with the teacher at the exam. From my semester’s paintings, this is the only one that has any expression, individual approach or interpretation in it. Later, I have been drifting towards the photo realism that I really hate, trying to be a good student and put down the anatomy, shadows and highlights as they are. Ugh.

She turned out a little blue, but otherwise I like it. My first try to approach the use of colours in a sensible way, thinking first and then getting the brush. The classmates said, that there is a certain Scandinavian style or touch in the colouring. Haha.

A drawing, for a change. Nothing special.

And the same lady nude from the next week. Shiny orange!

I know what you are all thinking. Yes, I also think he had a hangover. Really. But it was fun to paint, with the red nose and all. They took this for the semester exhibition.

This guy is actually a third year student, I think. The first-graders somehow pissed off the old lady that was supposed to model and then the teacher made him sit there for 1,5 hours. A short time, hence just the portrait. And he DOES look like an axe murderer in real life, too. No artistic exaggeration. I’m quite proud of myself, having achieved the actual likeness, the distinctive angle of eyes and all.

There’s two that are so bad I don’t post them. I’m not a natural born painter and sometimes don’t have the patience. Oh the patience…

“MERDRE” is a puppet/object piece based on Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. It is performed in French, but can also be understood by audiences of other languages. I have contributed with the set design, lights and some primitive sound cues. As we didn’t get much support from the school (it is fair to say our tutor was quite inapt), there is a lot of me in the directing also (which I find to be a great experience). Despite all problems the rehearsals are going great and we make a great team of three with Ingrid and Julie.  Performance photos coming up next week!

If anyone else is around, you may call me, there’s a contact number on my website. I’m staying until Saturday.

It is odd how a person changes. Half a year ago when I last updated my documents, I was perfectly happy with (maybe even a bit proud of) my CV. And now that six months have gone by, I found it really unacceptable.

Making it properly takes time for a designer. You should be creative, but not too artistic (in case it will be unreadable); you should be serious, but not boring. Taking time to achieve all this might be worth it (I hope it will be for me). Reading examples online is rewarding, some companies have really good tips for CVs and cover letters.

Here is my latest creation.

To blur (or focus?) my studies even more, I’ve started taking courses from the department of architecture in the Prague Technical University (čvut). The 3D features of AutoCAD are easy, but thank the G-man for giving me weird ideas to start studying basic 3d studio MAX tutorials over the winter break. I am taking an advanced course in MAX modeling and I wouldn’t have a chance without the previous self-aid from vtc.com

In addition to that, I’m enjoying some hardcore-intensive-schedule photography sessions and a graphics class in addition to my basic scenography studies.

If you ever decide to go on a student exchange, I recommend you take a full year. The first semester is just being lost in translation, information, transport and other survival problems. I feel that this semester will bring a lot of good and is a great preparation for my upcoming years in Prague.