To be written up and built on PB:
The Cabaret. Dark, decadent, melodramatic, tragic, sexy. Crumbling walls, lurid greasepaint, fierce and sexy performances, torrid backstage dramas. It's every tragic European cabaret from stage, screen and literature.
...but, uh, transfigured to make it science fictiony, of course. --Amanita
- *grin*
- But don't worry about making it look futuristic or high-tech, needless to say. "Magical realist" is more important IMHO -- I can't imagine the Cabaret working under the same neon retro-futuristic glitziness the DScream had, and you certainly aren't obliged to make it fit to those standards. Personally, I'd concentrate on making an even more lurid, exaggerated, dreamlike version of its source material -- sprawling corridors behind the stage area, inexplicable memorial plaques, poltergeists, hints of a sinister mathematic order or chaos underlying the shape of the auditorium, bizarre bits of clunky 1930's mechanical tech (maybe some pneumatic tubes)... Not that I'd mind if you threw in a few riffs from the cabaret's own New Wave descendents, Liquid Sky and Clockwork Orange and such... -- OR
- Hee! Yeah, the bit about making it "science fictiony" I nabbed from Peggy (in regard to the [hound dog with antenna] in that bus doodle a couple weeks back).
- It'll definitely be weird tech, not high-tech. --A
I figure it's in Down or Downbottom; Strange would be a little too unsavory. Perhaps it's from another era? (The gaslit theatre from The Difference Engine with its steam-computer graphic display?)
- What about Top? Perhaps a little cliched for an artistic venue. Bottom might work, too, for someplace with an air of the tawdry; there's absolutely nothing about Bottom that should exclude artful smut. The fact you described it with the word "melodramatic" inclines me towards Bottom too: what's Bottom about, if not the (ahem) spontaneous eruption of emotion? -- OR
- I could see it going in two directions - the sexy/tragic/arty or the just plain nasty. Either way, I think the place is alive in a lot of ways.
- Choked with mold, a little askew, half-sunken in a lake. Always on the brink of collapsing, shored up by little skitterling servitorlings you only really catch out of the corner of your eye. Hmmm, maybe that's more of a feel for a Strange venue than a Down; Down is rust, Strange is mold.
- No wonder Twin's a little drawn to Strange. Strange is about mold and wet and gothic, just like (her) player's hometown!
- -Twin
- [IC]Bah, literalists. You'd think mold 'ad just been invented.[/IC] Seriously, a tiny quibble, but I encourage people to refrain from 1-to-1 "noun belongs in Warp" associations. I like the skittery things considerably, and I like the moldy overgrowth, but certainly both things could exist in any Warp (well, except maybe Up :) ). It'd just be a matter of the purpose, intent, and role. -- OR
- Ooo. I should combine that with the exterior I thought up for a Strangebuilding but never got around to fleshing out. Underwater, with something of the feel of a public aquarium, only abandoned and overrun with something nastier. And those aren't tanks, those are windows looking out. The people inside are the ones in the tank... --A
- I like it, especially the idea of the whole place being submerged. An odd environment like that could really highlight the feverish diversity of PBX characters, since there'd probably be as many methods for surviving underwater as there are visitors. The Mess needs more environments that aren't simple "ground below, air above, walk on a flat plane" anyhow. -- OR
- Gotta build that bit of ocean, too, come to think of it. --A
- And I guess it makes sense that I've built so much in Top - I had a pretty pastoral, rural upbringing with parents who believed it was more worthwhile to have a garden or a field of wildflowers for a backyard than a lawn. And even though I now live in a city with a reputation for being Upwarpian, it's the little bits of so-called decay there that make it come alive for me (hence, I suppose, my Down buildings). --A
- Following that logic, given where I come from Puzzlebox should be a giant strip mall. :D (But it holds out COMPLETELY in XOR's case. Ask him about the Place du Portage in Quebec sometime.) -- OR
- Putting it in Strange limits the customers somewhat, some people are scared to go there. But that may just be ICly, and then again, this isn't entirely live, is it? Plus there's other venues to go for as well, for anyone too worried. Not to mention backups.
- Sweet, someone else has read the Difference Engine. I really don't remember much of it now, it's been a while.
- There was a brief period where we were going to make familiarity with Bruce Sterling a requirement for entrance. :) Seriously, his work's been absolutely instrumental from the very start -- Bruce Sterling was the topic of my very first conversation with XOR, the day we met on Tapestries. <3 -- OR
- This whole concert has the feeling of a darker Cirque Du Soliel.
- --Coalesce
- Oh, the Cirque's definitely an influence on this whole thing, along with some elements of Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave. And there's more than a little of Moulin Rouge! in the tawdry, overripe decadence of the Cabaret.
- Somehow, that overripeness makes me think the Cabaret wants to be part Strange... Hmm. Maybe it's the Strangebuilding. -- A
- Edit: Nah. I think this calls for two venues - the Cabaret, and the Strangewarp horrorshow which I'll give the provisional ex recto name of Teatr Subantegk. --A