Dismantling a Universe

We broke down our set yesterday. The Flaming Eyeball is history. It was kind of sad, but at the same time kind of liberating to take the set apart, stack the walls in storage, make way for the next show. We worked together with our good friends from Elefant Foot theater. I brought pliers and screwdrivers and had the task of dismantling a universe. Our set had kind of an outer space motif.

A long afternoon of manual labor. Not too hard. I brought a stack of cds and we listened to music: Sigur Ros, Morphine, Ronnie Laine. We left a nice little black box theater space, waiting to be filled by the next renter.

Afterwards all of us went to Julius Menil, a cozy, Austrian restaurant on Southport in Chicago. They serve an amazing array of sandwiches, soups and desserts - I had a the vegetable focaccia and a chocolate buttercake. Highly recommended.

We had one of those great, rare dinners, a long and rambling, funny and free-ranging conversation about art, life and what's it all about anyway? What is good? Why do we do what we do? What are we trying to say? Does the universe care? What's really going on? Can we ever figure any of it out?

It was a great way to put our little artistic adventure to bed. It was all laughter and smiles even as we talked about the most important things.