Fixin' Leaks and Leeks

A “Rock-A-Hula” sign, posted in the Royal Hawaiian Center in Waikiki, felt like a neon beckoning of a once-in-a-lifetime-I-don’t-even-know-what-to-say-moment—and an opportunity I had missed. Nate and I passed it up for many reasons, though the signage boasted of a luau, drumming, dancing, fire, and tributes to Elvis and Michael Jackson.

Unless you count the gyrations of amateur salsa night on the marina in a town that’s about twenty minutes away from where we live, I hadn’t seen live dancing in quite a while. Like, really good, live dancing. And we weren’t sure about Rock-A-Hula, but we decided we might go someday, but not the day we saw the advertisement, because we already reserved tickets to see Shen Yun a few months later.

There was no shortage of a flurry of pamphlets and brochures advertising Shen Yun, which reached our house on a regular basis, plus the television ads, plus the videos and digital advertising that would interrupt my online workflow.

So, we finally gave in. We went to see Shen Yun, and it was beautiful and inspiring, and colorful and everything I’d hoped it would be—and also the first night that a group of women next to us apparently left the house in a long, long time.

They were hilarious. It seemed they’d never seen a back-handspring before, so they shouted things like, “Insane! Wow!” and clapped every time there was a flip—and there were lots of flips. And their enthusiasm really made me pay even more attention to the entire spectacle than I would have normally, so I think we were seated next to the best audience in the whole house, which was fun.

But here comes the trouble in writing about this performance from a DIY perspective. There is no way I can re-create it. I’m not going to take acrobatics tumbling classes. I will rip more than my pants.

But here’s what I can do: If I go to enough live performances, I can arrange the playbills and programs artfully into collages and whatnot. I saw a few examples online—mostly pamphlets dangling from clotheslines and draped across doorways and such. But here’s the problem with that setup. Sometimes, I swear something is burning, so I take off running through the house to investigate/flee. If there were clotheslines of theater programs in the way, they’d either just be fodder for the imaginary fire—or they’d strangle me.

Still, I wanted to do something artful, so I created a collage with the theater program I had. The collage consists of three pictures from the program, which I loaded into a PowerPoint presentation. From there, I created a slide and hit “design.” The design function allowed me to pick a color palette and automated design—then snap a picture with my iPhone from the screen.

Here it is!

I have no idea what program cover will be next, but I’m secretly hoping it’s one of these from “The 25 Worst Broadway Musicals of the Millennium.” The Dance of the Vampires looks particularly fangtastic. Count me in!

Your Turn: Do you keep the program covers/playbills from performances? What do you do with them?