Back from Cone-y Eye-land!

CONES at Goddard College
Photo by Brenda Bowyer

After a one-year break from this blog about vision, I think I'm back. Why the pause? Not because I had nothing to write about—rather, there several vision-related instances that occur around me every day.

I started this blog as dramaturgy for my solo show, CONES, about losing my vision to cone-rod dystrophy. In the past year the show was a keynote performance at both Cabrini University and Episcopal Academy, just outside of Philadelphia, and we brought up to Vermont for audiences at Camp Common Ground and Goddard College. I did a lengthy interview about the show on WGDR (below), and held a matinee for employees and clients of the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Next up: Temple University's Institute on Dis/abilities hosts CONES for a Monday morning event on April 24th. If you are in Philly and free, please come! Till then, read this blog—I've got lots to say every day.

Not Quite Face-Blind, Not Quite Blind

Last night we opened CONES to a big and friendly crowd. I can't really see anyone during the show (and if you've seen CONES or kept up with this blog, then you know why), so I invited everyone to come say hi afterward. Even when people I know come up to me one by one, it can take me a moment to figure out who folks are, especially people I don't see often. The irony is that I've written this blog and made this show about being in between sighted and blind, and immediately afterward everyone gets to test it out—each of them once, me over and over again.

A few months back I wrote about prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, a neurological condition that I do not have. Here's another podcast about face blindness from the excellent Aussie/Kiwi programme Paper Radio. In this one a guy name John shares firsthand accounts of the split between intelligence and emotion that comes with face-blindness. Again, even though our conditions differ, I relate strongly to John's experiences, especially in his having an undiagnosed condition and then discovering what it is, and also about the process of passing and having a coming-out ceremony.

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CONES runs for two more nights in Philly. Details here.

Unproofread = Unprofessional?

I've started sending things I write to proofreaders. This cone dystrophy of mine is a recipe for tons of typos. But I may need proofreading for more than just the things I write.

A snippet of CONES premiered at FringeArts' last night alongside other works in progress. They'd sent me this tech schedule:

 ...which was a little small, so I enlarged it on my screen:

I noted "3:30" on my calendar and asked my ride to come at rehearsal at 2:00. She watched a run and at 2:30 we packed up to hit the road before 3:00, but with bad traffic we loaded in at 3:35. The tech folks asked for my lighting and sound cues, and then told me that my tech time had been from 3:00 to 3:30.

How did I mess this up? I'd registered what I'd seen in the email and confirmed the time with collaborators. I felt unprofessional and undependable, but I swear I'd read 3:30. So I re-examined the original email and scanned around a little more to discover this:

Zooming in earlier, I'd only seen the end time for my tech slot and thought it was the start time.

Stuff like this always happens and I often feel like a goat at a banquet. Do I need a secretary to handle all my scheduling and other affairs? Or do I need to tell everyone, "Hey, I can't see so well. If I screw up, it might be due to that, not me just being a flake."

Last night's saving grace was that the power went out and the whole show happened with the audience shining 100 flashlights onto the stage. Everything looked great and the piece about vampires and vision loss especially benefitted from the circumstances.

One Month Away

CONES: a solo show about vampires, vision loss, and ice cream (and the impetus for this blog) opens one month from today. Here's a peek at the front of the show flyer:

And the back:

You can join the event on Facebook here, see it on the Rotunda's website here, and on the Mediums' website here.

Hope to see you there!

Fonts for Flyers

What font comes to mind when making a show about eyes? Snellen, of course. Everyone will recognize the "E":

But this particular Snellen font is a bit off. The "E" is right, as are the "C" and the "O", but Snellen eye charts only use certain letters, so that really pathetic "N" is just Snellen's "Z" turned on its side. And the "S" they borrowed from a sans serif eye chart font called Sloan:

Better, but neither the Sloan font nor the title really says "this is a show about vision loss". I could hand-draw the missing Snellen letters, but unless I'm laying things out like an eye chart, it's not worth it.

I also came a across a font called "Colorblind". True to its name, it has no color:

But if I add color to it, it recalls Dr. Ishihara's well-known colorblindness test and then the name makes more sense. Here it is with our image:

Posters and postcards coming soon...

Showing Cones

The past two weeks have been filled with rehearsals and performances for the piece that this blog is building toward.

I showed a 10-minute bit of CONES (or something related to it) as part of an event curated by Almanac at Mascher Space two weeks ago. Tonight and tomorrow I perform something completely different. If you're in Philly, come see it, April 6+7 at the Rotunda, opening for a devised theatre group from New Zealand. Here's the info on the Medium Theatre Company website, and here's where you can RSVP via Facebook.

More showings of CONES  are in the works for May and June, before our run at the SoLow Festival. Till then, there's plenty of material on this blog for you to interact with. Enjoy it!

Cones Cones Cones

First snippet of CONES debuts in Philadelphia April 6+7 as an opener to the group Binge Culture from New Zealand. Here is the event listing on the Medium Theatre's website, and here's where you can RSVP.

And now a question about this photo:

What do you see when you look at it? Which of the three images looks like the "real" one?

I myself really only see differences in the background tiles. The foregrounds look more or less the same to me. Leave a comment below and tell me what you see.