provided by the Bank of Albuquerque.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs with supplemental funding by the New Mexico CARES Act and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

FROM PAGE TO STAGE LOOKS AT THE CREATIVE FORCES INVOLVED WITH BRINGING TO LIFE THE SANTA FE OPERA'S WORLD PREMIERE OF THE LORD OF CRIES.

IN THIS EPISODE, THE ASTOUNDING LEAD VOCALISTS, COUNTERTENOR ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO AS DIONYSUS AND SOPRANO SUSANNA PHILLIPS AS LUCY HARKER, SHARE HOW THEY BRING THEIR ROLES TO THE STAGE.

"SCENIC SOLUTIONS" CREATE SET DESIGNS THAT REACH AUDIENCES ACROSS THE GLOBE.

A REFUGEE, SYRIAN PAINTER AHMAD DAROUICH ACHIEVES HIS "BIG DREAM" IN THE UNITED STATES.

INVENTING FUTURISTIC WEARABLE ART, BRIAN "TWO HORNS" IS INSPIRED BY THE WORLD OF SCIENCE FICTION.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

BRINGING CHARACTERS TO LIFE.

>> Anthony Roth Costanzo: Okay.

>> Susanna Phillips: Okay!

>> Anthony: All right!

>> Susana: Let's do this.

I'm excited guys.

>> Anthony: Me too!

Hi.

I'm here.

>> Susana: Let's make some magic.

>> Anthony: Dionysus is fearsome.

He's righteous and vulnerable.

>> Susana: Lucy's character does the right thing.

>> Susana: She has a real character arc.

You follow her journey.

She does start off in a slightly tender, meeker, more, not subdued, but more kind of, put together, tied up, kind of person and then she begins to unravel, and in doing so, finds this inner fire, this inner passion, that is sometimes unruly, and sometimes hard to control, but is so real, and passionate, and she has to come to grips with that.

She has to grapple with that and what that means.

>> Anthony: You know, when you're right about something, and you know you're right about it, and you tell everyone and they don't listen to you and no one listens to you and then you wind up being right about it?

That's sort of what this character is feeling at all times and he knows what he wants but, and he knows how the world should be but the one thing he doesn't know is the love that he wants, the connection.

His only way to get that is through these terrible acts and so in that sense he's very complex and I think the counter-tenor voice is a really interesting choice to represent his other worldliness his godliness because what we hear come out of my body doesn't match what we see and those, you know, notions of identity are really inherent in the voice type I have as well as in this character.

>> Susana: Singing emotion, I think, is really hard, I think, singing intention is much easier when you put yourself in the character's shoes and you just go there.

If you try and say, I'm going to sing this phrase in an angry way that doesn't really work for me.

I think a lot of times, it's putting your yourself in these shoes and saying, this has happened to you, now express it in your voice.

That to me, is how the emotion becomes authentic and real.

>> Anthony: Contemporary classical music has all different kinds of sonic worlds.

>>Anthony: And in John's pieces, there are times when you're singing a note that is in the orchestra, and there are times when you're singing a note that feels like it is from a different universe.

And so to learn that, to get that into your body, it's a different kind of practice, you know, it's almost like, I have to teach myself different scales, different pitches and hear them in my head over the orchestra or the piano.

>> Anthony: It's kind of like an Olympic athlete.

We train and we train and we train and then we hope in the moment that we can execute it with the same precision.

>> Susan: Music is impactful, in a way, because you are communicating with someone on a level beyond words >> Anthony: My parents are both psychologists so, I grew up thinking about emotion a lot, and I feel like that is at the base of the meaning of life >> Susan: You sound amazing!

>> Anthony: No, you sound so great!

>> Susan: Goodness.

>> Anthony: Opera gives us a way to have that, kind of, sustained emotion but with a lens of beauty that really makes it palatable in a different way and so I think opera hints at some of the most meaningful things about life.

CREATING A TRAVELING SET.

>> Scott: Anybody can build scenery and it's the details that really make it a show and help create this whole environment, as opposed to just scenery on a stage.

We kind of build an atmosphere and an environment into everything we do.

>> Joel: We are a small company but we produce big, big things.

We just got done with a national tour of Blue Man Group which will be all over the country, and the amount of scenery that we churned out for that show was just That's what blows my mind the most, is that we're able to produce such large productions with such a small group of >> Chadwick: We serve a multitude of industries.

We work anywhere from high school theatre level to first-run Broadway tours.

We also build entertainment for the cruise line industry.

We make the magic happen, mostly backstage, behind the scenes.

Because we are a custom shop, not a single job is the same, not a single client needs the same thing, not a single material we use is the same.

There are days when there is no one in the shop, and there are days when there's 40 people in the shop.

There are days when I have six crews all over the world.

At any given point in time we might have 8 to 20 projects in different stages within the company.

We have a lot of good people working here.

>> Mary Beth: Scenic Solutions has been in business for 24 years.

We started with the sewing room in the basement of our old Dan was working for the Dayton Ballet as a lighting designer, and I was freelancing as a costume designer and seamstress.

And pretty soon Scenic Solutions became our life.

Dan is my business partner.

He's president of Scenic Solutions.

He is my husband.

It's a very busy place.

I sometimes say it is so chaotic that you can't keep up.

There's never two days that are the same.

>> Lexa: The clients come up with the creative designs.

And then myself and the other production managers and drafters take all of their ideas and turn them into something we can actually build, and create all of the drawings that we give to the carpenters.

>> Joel: I take drawings from designers and draftsmen and engineers and communicate them to the guys working under me and we turn it into reality.

I feel like the welding department is the backbone of most of the things that are built here.

We always start with a structure.

It's just the nature of scenery that you have to start with a structure and then you make it look like something entirely different.

The way scenery is today, most of it has to be portable, be lightweight, durable, and that's what the metal structure gives you.

With touring shows, it has to last for a year if not more.

As far as a cruise ship show goes, we do have weight constraints when it comes to cruise ships, so you've gotta keep things light.

>> Chadwick: The cruise line industry definitely presents unique challenges.

Typically, when you go to a Broadway show, the theatre does not move.

On a cruise line, the theatre moves.

That bases a lot of our decision making on how to build stuff.

The other unique challenge of a cruise line is getting your scenery, lighting props into the theatre.

They never design big enough doors to get the items into the cruise ship.

Typically, the crew will have to carry the scenery through the cruise ship in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep up the stairwells, into the theatre, and that is a unique situation >> Lexa: I recently went to Italy for a single day to do a site survey on a cruise ship that we're working on there.

"This is the room everything will load into, through that door."

I also took all of the measurements of the doorways and the hallways and our path from getting everything from the loading dock, through the ship, and into the theatre.

And made sure that everything broke down into a small enough piece to fit through that path.

>> Scott: It's definitely worth the cost because we know that things are gonna fit, as opposed to sending a piece of scenery or an entire show to the other side of the world, and then it not being able to fit through the door to get it onto the ship.

That would be a big expense.

One thing that would blow their minds.

I would say probably that they've seen a lot of our work and they just haven't realized it.

We've got a lot of stuff all over the Dayton area but unless you worked there, you'd never know that we actually did it.

We kind of sneak in, sneak out, so we're not, you know, real visible out to the general public.

>> Chadwick: We helped Kettering Fairmont school district consult and install rigging, lighting, and the orchestra shell for their new theatre.

We work for the Schuster Center downtown Dayton, Victoria Arts Association.

>> Mary Beth: It's really hard to think of what the coolest thing that came through Scenic Solutions is.

Blue Man Group's pretty cool, but getting to do the Rike's boxes.

Starting in the 1940's, Rike's Department Store did a display every year at Christmas.

People that have lived here or grew up here, if you say something about the Rike's elves, they talk about how they used to go see them when they were kids.

It's a very big part of Dayton's Christmas holiday.

We originally built the boxes that the Rike's elves were in about 15 years ago, and then last year they approached us and asked for new boxes with new scenes inside.

It feels amazing to give this gift to Dayton.

We've been part of the Dayton community for a long time but to get the chance to give such a big project back to the community feels great.

REALIZING A DREAM.

[gunfire] [Murmur of conversation] FUTURISTIC DESIGN.

>> My name is Brian "TwoHorns", and I'm from Tampa, Florida.

I design and create original sci-fi characters, costumes, and props.

Well, I started with cardboard when I was 15, I just was tired of Halloween costumes, they were just garbage, the kind you'd buy at stores, or just they were cheap and poorly made mass produced stuff.

And I was like, "I can do better than this."

So I started with cardboard, and worked my way up to better I only did it once a year at first, until about 2012 when I started doing it like full time, and like, I started making like four or five suits a year.

I started with respirators, I started selling custom respirators, and there were just little sci-fi designs and stuff.

And I started posting them on the internet, I would take my own photography and stuff like that.

And people were like, "How can I buy this, where do you get ?"

So I opened the Etsy shop.

It also helps I take good photography.

So images are a huge important, like the quality of images are important to, you know, how it reaches, because everyone wants to see high quality images of things when they're scrolling through Instagram or whatever, so you have to keep up with image quality for sure.

My pieces have been used in a lot of indie films, some commercials, and most recently an earth game music My whole ethos is to pay homage to the God of practical effects, which is all things practical effects in movies and TV shows and everything like that.

Everything CGI and I want to bring more practical effects to this universe.

I wanna bring more realistic robot costumes, and, you know, things that you can do with CGI, but are much more satisfying to watch, 'cause you can definitely tell, you can always tell, practical effects will always have a place.

Yeah, it's a little bit visionary, it's like there's a multitude of landscapes and surreal concepts going on through my head, and I'm dragging this ethereal concept into reality, a lot of times I've got these designs floating around in my head and half the time they're not even on paper, I just kind of drag them down and start making them.

I guess, my own unique style, I wouldn't say like, I'm better or more special than anyone else, you know, everyone when they hone their own specific, I guess, creative energy, like you see so many different styles of art, like, you just gotta follow your own kind of passion.

I guess what makes me different from other artists is that I'm doing a lot of futuristic cyberpunk designs that are not really in tune with like the utilitarian vibe that you see in a lot of movies, that's really wild and feathers and LEDs everywhere, and like just lots of energetic elements that I'm not really sure where it's going, but it looks cool, so.

So first I'll start with the face, usually I'll start with the face.

I get a mannequin head which is appropriately sized, and I'll just build off that.

And yeah, I mean, like I have mannequins for the rest of the armor, so.

Well, I mean, I do everything from just cutting, shaping, heat forming, I use superglue, Barge contact cement, all sorts of other thermal plastics.

There's so much that goes into it, lots of just, you know, gluing and cutting essentially, it's all freehanded.

I use the laser cutter for precision, small little detail parts that I can't do by hand.

And I'll go over and design those in a digital format, and just batch cut them usually for small parts and little tiny details.

I use vinyl foam, Cut-Tex, PETG, all the kinds of thermoplastics, metal tubing, leathers, polypro webbing, among just a list of other things.

It's just anything I can warp and create to my own whim.

I just want to be happy and sustainable like I've been doing now, but I wanna be able to delegate more work to other people and work on larger scale projects, like art installations.

And one of my main goals is to bring the part of my world that I have in my head into experiences for people.

So when they walk up to it, there's like performers and big towers and things like that, like that can give just a vibe of a different world.

TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and Local Productions.

Also, LOOK FOR US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.

"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for "From Page to Stage: The Lord of Cries" series provided by the Bank of Albuquerque.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs with supplemental funding by the New Mexico CARES Act and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)