DEUS EX MACHINA

Anyone who has ever tried to produce a theatre event has probably experienced the modern version of the deus ex machina phenomenon. Up until opening night everything that can go wrong seemingly does go wrong, and it looks as if the show will never come together. Everyone is grumpy and starting to scream at each other, on the verge of calling it all off. Then, magically, on opening night everything works - the actors remember their entrances and exits, their lines and their blocking, the music and lights come on and go off when they should, the audience laughs at the right times for the right reasons, and everyone breathes a huge sigh of relief. By some miracle it all worked. The deus came down in the machina and made it all right. That’s probably how the Greek dramatists got the idea because in theatre the unbelievable really does happen behind the scenes.

Tech people are the bane of my life as a producer. It’s easy to find actors, because they all love their time on stage. Being on stage is its own reward. Playing a role well is like being skillful at a sport that requires a lot of concentration and coordination, all the while being cheered on by a crowd. Designing and running sound and lights is an invisible, thankless job that everyone takes for granted. The lights and sound appear to come from nowhere, seamlessly integrated with the events on stage.

Every time our little playwrights’ group puts on a show, the question arises of who will run tech.  All too often the people who say they want to do tech are completely unreliable and after their initial one or two contacts we never hear from them again. Then somehow, magically, a person drops from the sky offering to run tech and all is well. It happened again with the show that opens this Friday. We theoretically had a tech director, but I hadn’t heard from him in weeks and was waking up at night in a panic, wondering if he’d bailed. Day before yesterday I finally got hold of him, and our lighting setup and sound testing yesterday was the smoothest we’ve ever had. Deus ex machina saved the day again.

Of course, for this blog I had to think how to relate the topic to perfume, but it’s really pretty easy. I’m sure we’ve all been dismayed to put on a perfume that smelled awful, but after some time did an about-face and ended up smelling wonderful. Which perfume(s) have you experienced that were saved in the end by an olfactory deus ex machina? Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing for a set of interesting fragrant samples, to be searched out from my infinite store. The drawing will be on Monday, October 27.

[Images from Literature Wiki and a site called TVTropes that Google coughed up.] 

THE BLIZZARD, FLEURS DE GLACE, AND THOUGHTS ON WRITING ABOUT PERFUME

It appears that as we in the Northwest enjoy our usual interminable stretch of cool, damp weather, the rest of the US is being frozen solid and buried under a massive blanket of snow. In a serendipitously timely post, John Reasinger of Cafleurebon just wrote a review of Fleurs de Glace, a perfume that I was in the process of discontinuing.  His description of it is so eloquent and evocative that it makes me have second thoughts about pulling it from my line!

It also made me think about the symbiotic relationship between perfumers and reviewers. It’s fascinating to see how a talented writer can make us see our creations in a new light, and perfume reviewers are especially adept at doing that. Perfume is like poetry. Everyone gets something a little different from it, and every interpretation is right. A good reviewer shows the perfumer aspects of their creation that they had not thought of and translates the perfumer’s intangible work into tangible words for the public to enjoy.

This may sound strange, but it reminds me of what happens in the relationship between a playwright and a director. Having been on both sides of the process and caught in the middle as an actor, I’ve always marveled at the transformations that invariably occur depending on the interpretation of the director and cast. Even though the words written in the script don’t change, their intent and message inexorably evolves on its own unique trajectory as rehearsals progress. Each production is a completely different entity that picks up on different aspects of what the writer intentionally or unintentionally put in the script. Sometimes the writer is surprised to find that what they thought was a fluffy comedy actually makes some profound statements, or what they thought was a serious philosophical and conceptual piece actually comes across as uproariously funny.

I hadn’t thought of this before, but perfume reviewers really do interpret the perfumer’s “script” for an audience, with many audience members doubling as actors, extending the interpretation with their informal reviews and comments. No one should ever underestimate the importance of perfume writers at every level in making our creations come to life. There can never be too many writers because each brings something unique to the process of understanding a perfume.

Writing this makes me realize how thankful I am to everyone who writes about perfume, whether they are professional journalists and bloggers or consumers who post informal reviews and comments. I learn something from each one of you, and that is the more valuable than I can express.

I’d like to end this by pointing out that there’s a drawing on Cafleurebon for a full-sized bottle of the reader’s choice of Olympic Amber or Fleurs de Glace for readers in the US. 

[All photos are mine. Snow and ice photos are from the last time we had a significant snowfall in Seattle. I don't remember what year it was.]