Newsletter – October 9, 2026
This is a photo I forgot to share from our visit to New York City. I’m holding the program for Project: Library in front of the primary set piece for the musical. Taking such a picture before the performance is entirely acceptable when you share it on social media and help spread the word about the show.
Every small theatre needs any extra publicity they can get.
The show had a good run and now our daughter is busy creating self-tape auditions for other productions. (No one actually uses videotape these days, “self-tape” is just a leftover turn of phrase from an earlier era…like dialing a phone…or playing parlor games.)
Last week I wrote about an Agatha Christie mystery I was reading and, looking at this photo, I found myself playing detective to see what I could share with you from a director’s perspective. Here are four interesting details about what you’re seeing.
1. The bookshelves across the upstage wall have no back to them giving the books a supernatural glow from behind. Why is that? My daughter explained that the pit band and their conductor who are seated behind the set need to see important moments on stage for their music cues. And, to the left—hidden by my program—there’s a wide entrance that affords the conductor greater visibility of other places on stage.
2. The white dots you see on the floor are not lens reflections, those are painted on the floor and they’re called spike marks. They let actors and stagehands know exactly where to place a chair or table on stage. In technical rehearsals, the lights were focused on those areas to isolate an actor during certain scenes. Without the spike marks there’s a risk that the actor might be half in shadow.
That’s okay for the Phantom of the Opera, but not for most other characters.
3. To the right of the bookshelves you can barely see the door that matches the cover of the program. Look for the shiny reflection of the doorknob. And, yes, a mysterious backlit figure will stand in that doorway. Count on it!
4. Now take a look at the program where that backlit figure casts a shadow over the title of the musical. If you look very carefully, you’ll see it’s the shadow of a dragon. Why? Because the unreturned book that’s accumulated a million dollars in late fees is Rory the Dragon. That’s what sets off the whole plot! Our daughter got to be the puppeteer of that dragon in a dream sequence about halfway through the musical.
So here’s a fun game of parlor game to play with a friend. Swap photos and then share what you can figure out based on what you see. Follow that up by creating backstories for people and places in the photo. You don’t have to play this game in a parlor—I don’t think anyone has parlors anymore—just enjoy getting together and making stuff up.
TTFN
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Here’s another one of the captions I submitted to The New Yorker. Enjoy!
I blame it on the current administration: everyone’s losing their cool.
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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles
