I am delighted to announce that our first performance of the full stage play Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok was an enormous success. Balticon was a fabulous host at every stage, from enthusiastic tech staff who were eager to help us develop exciting lighting effects, to enthusiastic friends new and old who helped with last-minute logistics, to the most enthusiastic audience we could have hoped for. We especially want to thank several SCA Viking costuming and wireweaving experts who were at the convention, and helped us solve several last-minute costuming issues. In the end, our historic costumes all came out delightfully, and we were able to display many signature elements of Viking clothing. A huge thank-you to everyone who helped make this possible!
Below: the moment of Baldur’s murder, with Baldur collapsing on the left, and Hod and Loki on the right, still posed to fire the arrow:
Lauren, Ada and Kara as Odin, Loki and Hella.
Our DVD film director Dave Kowarsky reports that the video came out extremely well, and he has high hopes for the DVD. We had four cameras going throughout the performance, to capture different angles, close-ups and distant shots, so over the next month he will work on cutting and splicing different shots to assemble the best possible video. At the end of June our composer, Ada Palmer, will get together with Dave at his editing studio in New York to help finalize the cut, and work on DVD extras.
Now we want to do it again!
With the first performance behind us, we’re eagerly investigating venues for a second performance. We have already received several invitations, but getting so many performers together requires a lot of planning, so we don’t yet know where we will be able to next perform Sundown.
We are also concentrating on recording, and have a rigorous recording schedule planned for the summer, so we expect to make great progress toward the CD.
We also have great Kickstarter news!
The Kickstarter funding campaign we launched two weeks ago has been a staggering success. We were staggered by the response, and met our $7,000 starting goal in only 48 hours!
We’re genuinely overwhelmed by the support we’ve received. This guarantees that we can produce the CD and DVD, but now we are working on stretch goals, to raise more so we can help finance further performances, DVD extras and professional digital mastering for our audio CDs. As of this morning we hit $11,000, which means composer Ada Palmer will write 24 pages of historical and mythological notes about the making of the play, to be printed in the libretto and shared in PDF with our backers, and Hugo- and Nebula- award-winning author Jo Walton has written two poems about Odin to share with readers and backers (read the first one here) and she has promised more as the campaign continues. We still have 16 days to go, and we hope pledges will continue to climb, since every dollar increases the chances that we can afford to perform the play again soon. We have exciting rewards planned if we hit $12,000 or more, including more poems by Jo, and more DVD extras, so for details please check the Kickstarter Updates, and please continue to share our Kickstarter link with friends and families – this Kickstarter is a great opportunity for us to reach new audiences, and share our music through pre-orders of the CD and digital downloads.
Once again, a huge thanks to all our supporters, at Balticon and around the world. Sundown has been a greater success than any of us could have imagined, and we could never have done it without your support. Thank you!
Alessandro, Alexa and Matt as our three narrators: Saemund, the Seeress and Snorri Sturlson
Ada Palmer and Lauren Schiller frequently perform together as the duo: “Sassafrass: Trickster & King.” We call it that because Odin and Loki are both tricksters, and both kings, in their way, so the double name invokes both characters.
