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2026 April 30

Acting update: April 2026

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I’ve not blogged recently, so I’ll try to bring people up to date on what I’ve done since my last posts in January 2026.

  • I did the 6 performances for The Best of the Rest, Fri,Sat,Sun  27 Feb–8 Mar 2026. The plays went well and I got to do full clown makeup (our “staged reading” was really a script-in-hand production, with people mostly not looking at the scripts). I had to remove the makeup and costume for the role in the other play, but I had plenty of time to do that—the slowest part was washing all the Mehron temporary white hair color out of my beard (the other role needed a dark beard).

    I did a fair amount of 3D printing for the clown costume: the big buttons in PLA; the eyebrows, smile, and tear in TPU; and a holster for chattering teeth in PETG (hidden in the patch pockets that I added to the Amazon stock clown outfit).  TPU facial prostheses are much quicker (and neater) for me than drawing with makeup.

    My costume and makeup as Tricks the Clown. I 3D-printed the eyebrows, smile, and tear, as well as the buttons.

  • Earlier this week I finished the season for Readers’ Theater with NextStage Productions.  I had got 3 roles—one of them reprising Rollo in Emotional Baggage that I played in 2023. I did that one 3 times, the man in Hi Tech 3 times, the artist Peter Carsten in Blue Sky with Approaching Storm 5 times, and the husband Larry Franz in the same play once (the actor usually playing Larry was in hospital on the day of the performance—he was ok again for the next performance).
  • Although I auditioned the Cabrillo College spring plays, a collection of short works written by Cabrillo students, I had to turn down my callback when I realized that one of the matinee performance conflicted with one of the two public performances for NextStage.
  • I’ve been taking Theater Arts 14 (Script Analysis) with Andrea Hart at Cabrillo, and one of the assignments was to do a critique or parody of something we disliked (being sure to call out the specific things we disliked).  I ended up making a video doing voiceover for a number of ads. The instructor liked the video, and it was more fun than writing an essay.
  • In the past week, I’ve had 3 auditions: for Romeo and Juliet with Milo Rep (a new group that I believe consists mainly of students who recently graduate from high school), for Neil Simon’s farce Rumors with Mountain Community Theater, and for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead being directed by Simon Hayward.  So far, I’ve done callbacks for Milo Rep (which I had to do by video, because I had conflicts for the in-person audition and callback times), no callbacks for Rumors (they had about 4 times as many actors auditioning as there were roles, and I was a little low energy on audition night, so didn’t capture the spirit of the farce as well as others did), and I don’t know yet for R&G are Dead—there are still more auditions to be heard on Sunday (the callbacks for Rumors were at the same time as the first evening of auditions for R&G are Dead).
  • For the auditions, I learned two new monologues which I uploaded to YouTube: a serious Shakespeare one and a modern comedic one.
  • I’ve been taking Welding 150 (Arc Welding) at Cabrillo, which  I thought may let me help with some heavier-duty set construction in future. It turns out I’m a terrible welder, with unsteady hands and difficulty seeing where I’m putting the bead.  I need much more practice than most in the class, but we are limited to welding only during class time. I should have withdrawn before the deadline last week, so that I could take the class again, but it is too late now.
  • I’ve been continuing to be a reader on WeAudition.com, when I’ve had spare time—I’m almost up to the next threshold on the number of  reviews that gets reported to potential clients (234, with a threshold at 250). I read for free, but a lot of people give me small tips, so I’ve been doing better than breaking even on the WeAudition subscription fees. If anyone needs a discount code or coupon for WeAudition, the code KEVINKARPLUS25 will get you a 25% discount on subscription.  (Disclaimer: WeAudition gives me $10 any time a new subscriber signs up with that code.)
  • Last week and this week I had to do some major repairs to my bike.  The middle chainring (42T) wore out after about 26 years of being my most-used ring, and the chain was slipping every time I put much force on the pedals,  forcing me to use my smallest chainring (28T)—so I needed to replace the chainring.  But I’ve been feeling for the past year that I really wanted lower gears as I’ve gotten older and slower uphill.  My crankset had 28T-42T-52T, and I almost never used the 52T ring, so I wanted 24T-34T-44T  or 22T-32T-42T. I could not get below 38T for the middle ring (because of the bolt circle diameter), so I decided to get a new crankset.  Unfortunately, the old crankset was a Shimano Octalink V1, which has not been made for about 25 years and is essentially unobtainable—certainly not with the size chainrings I wanted. So I got a new crankset (22T-32T-42T) with a standard square taper and a new bottom bracket. The first bottom bracket I bought had too long a spindle length (the students working in the bike shop were not sure how the length of the Octolink V1 spindle should be converted to a square spindle, and we guessed wrong), but I had to ride with it for a week until I could get a new bottom bracket with the right length.  I just put in the right-length bottom bracket today and adjusted the front derailleur to get all the gears.  I’ve not tried riding with it yet—but I’ve got a 16-mile round-trip ride tomorrow with some steep climbs for the NextStage cast party, so I should be able to test it then.

2026 January 8

Acting update: January 2026

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I’ve not blogged about my acting lately, so I’ll try to bring people up to date on what I’ve done since my last posts in March and May 2025)

For actual theater, I’ve been involved in several projects:

  • I did the 9 performances of Fortinbras as Claudius. I thought that the production was a very successful one, and I’m pleased to have been included.
  • I did the staged readings with NextStage Productions that I mentioned in the March post.
  • I did not one, but two long-form improv shows with Good Enough! (Both shows just in the living room of their condo, so invite-only for the audience.)
  • I auditioned for the San Francisco sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster, but I did not get called back. The group had a rough year, temporarily suspending operations, then doing fundraising and are now restarting in a new space. Maybe some day I’ll audition for them again (though getting up to SF by public transit is a challenge.)
  • I auditioned for a new play, Katherina of Strassberg, and got one of the lead roles (Mattis Zell, Katherina’s husband). The logistics of production were a little messed up—we had the first rehearsal for which the whole cast was present just a day before opening—but the play itself went off ok, even if the playwright and director had to step in for two minor roles that they had not been able to find actors for.  I did a fair amount of dramaturgy work for the play, including cleaning up the rather poorly done Google translation of parts of Mattis Zell’s sermon. The result is not really very close to Zell’s sermon, but it is closer than it started with. Our first performance was in the Episcopalian church downtown, and the rector took on one of the minor roles.  I ended up donating the prayer bench that I made for Fortinbras to the church—the rector seemed genuinely glad to get it.
  • I auditioned for a part in a staged reading of a new short play at Mountain Community Theater and got one—though a different part than I had expected. While I was at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the director called me very apologetically and said that the playwright had objected to the casting (the part was for a kid in his 20s), so I did not end up performing in it.
  • I auditioned for a part in Misery at Actors’ Theatre, but I did not really expect to get anything—there were actors auditioning who were much better suited to the parts. Sure enough, I didn’t get a part.
  • I auditioned for a part in Mountain Community Theater’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and was offered the tiny role of Egeus. I dithered about it for a day, because it is a lot of trouble to get up to Ben Lomond by public transit, especially for such a small role. I was also considering auditioning for Cabrillo’s Fall play (Metamorphoses), but the auditions and callbacks would have conflicted with my family’s tickets to Santa Cruz Shakespeare, so I decided not to audition for Metamorphoses, and just accept the offer of Egeus. As it turned out, I was asked to also understudy Robin Starveling (Moonshine), with a guarantee of 3 performances, because the actor playing Starveling was the understudy for Bottom, and the actor playing Bottom would be out of town for Thanksgiving weekend. I ended up going to a lot of the rehearsals for the mechanicals, because the actor playing Starveling was also one of the leads in Misery and had conflicting rehearsals. I actually ended up playing Starveling in addition to Egeus in 5 of the 12 performances—the three that were promised me and two others when the actor playing Starveling was ill.
  • I auditioned for 8 tens @8, but did not get cast in anything.  I was told that I was being considered for the Best of the Rest staged readings, though.
  • I completed Theater Arts 33 (Makeup and Masks) with Skip Epperson at Cabrillo. My final project was a 3D-printed mask that I designed in Blender and OpenSCAD. I covered it with latex+toilet-paper skin and painted it with acrylics.

    Front view of the mask. Note that the tiny eyeholes are well below the level of the 3D-printed eyeballs. The chain is the same as the one I wore as Egeus, but with a different pendant.

    3/4 profile showing the crepe hair on the back and a better view of the eyestalk and eyeball.

  • I got an invitation to audition for a short film in San Francisco, and I filled out the Google Form for it, but something got screwed up and they never got my submission. This happened over the holidays, and I had been reluctant to bug the about not hearing anything from them—when I finally contacted them to ask in the new year, they had already cast someone else.
  • I’m still reading plays on Discord—both with Shakespeare Online Repertory Theatre and with Bard’s Inn. SORT has been not very active lately, but BI has been pretty active—I read one play with SORT and 18 with BI since March.  I also made a connection with another active who was not into the group reads, but was looking for someone to read with one-on-one. I’ve read a couple dozen plays with him on Google Meet.
  • I also read Richard II  and Midsummer NIght’s Dream on Zoom with the Saturday Shakespeare group that meets in the Aptos Library. We’re starting Henry IV, Part 1 this Saturday (Jan 10).
  • I still spend a lot of time logged into weaudition.com, where I act as a reader for people doing self-tapes or just wanting a scene partner to run lines with. I read for free (but accept tips), as do about 10% of the readers on the site. I get enough in tips to more than pay for the modest monthly cost of WeAudition, but I mainly do it for the practice (if others want to join, they can use my referral code KEVINKARPLUS25 to get a 25% discount on their subscription—those discounts seem to be permanent, as I’m still paying what I did when I started with someone else’s discount code, even though it has been over a year and the regular rate has gone up). I’m up to 197 reviews so far, which means a little over 200 sessions (a few actors rudely forget to leave a review).
  • I have recorded a few new monologues (including one for Egeus from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)— they can be found as a YouTube playlist at https://tinyurl.com/Karplus-monologues.
  • I did get callbacks for The Best of the Rest, and ended up with 2 parts in the 8 plays—not the parts I wanted, but not bad roles.  We just had the table read for the whole show tonight, and we’ll start rehearsals in a couple of weeks. The performance dates are Fri,Sat,Sun  27 Feb–8 Mar 2026 (so just 6 shows).
  • I also auditioned this week for this year’s Readers’ Theater with NextStage Productions and got 3 roles—one of them reprising Rollo in Emotional Baggage that I played in 2023. There will be a public performance or two at Midcounty Senior Center around the end of May, in addition to the usual performances in retirement facilities.
  • I will be auditioning for the Cabrillo College spring play(s)—they are doing a collection of short works written by Cabrillo students. The auditions are open to anyone in the community, and will be on Tuesday and Wednesday 27 & 28 January 2026 (the first week of Cabrillo classes).
  • I’ll be taking Theater Arts 14 (Script Analysis) with Andrea Hart at Cabrillo in Spring semester—also Welding 150 (Arc Welding), which may let me help with some heavier-duty set construction in future.

2025 December 31

More pots from Fall 2024

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I’m still catching up on my posts about my pottery.  Here are more pots that were made and glazed in Fall 2024. All of them were made with Bravo Buff clay, as I did not use any other clay until the Fall 2025 class.

There were 4 pots glazed on 30 Oct 2024, two of which (the small pitcher and the striped bowl) was posted about last time. Here are the other two:

A pitcher

This pitcher weighs 318.65g and is ~98 mm wide and 65.5 mm tall.

The inside and rim dip were shiny milky white, and the outside was dipped in noxema blue.

A black-and-white bowl

This bowl weighs 467.86 g and is ~107mm in diameter and ~59mm tall.

The bowl was filled and rim-dipped in shiny milky white and the outside dipped in black beauty (with finger marks painted over with black beauty). The overlap of the black and white comes out blue.

 

Another ¾ side view of the black bowl.

There were two pots glazed on 20 Nov 2024:

A green tea cup

This may be my favorite of that semester, though I’m not usually fond of green glazes.

This green bowl weights 448.05 g and is ~85 mm in diameter and ~69mm high.

The bottom was painted with copper carbonate. The inside and rim dip were shiny milky white and the bottom was dipped twice in Santa Cruz matte green, with some painted touch up of the shiny milky white.

The teacup looks good, but is surprisingly heavy—almost a pound for a tea cup! It is about 2.6 times the weight of a commercial Japanese teacup (172g) of about the same size.

The touchup seems to have worked, as the inside is looks smooth and uniform.

A blue-and-white bowl

This blue-and-white bowl weighs 368.03g and is ~93mm diameter and ~61mm high.

The glaze is one of my most common choices: shiny milky white inside and on rim, then ½ side dip in shiny milky white and other ½ dipped in noxema blue.

The bottom has a thin sharp foot—really too thin for such a heavy bowl.

I do like the way that the blue and white go together—there is a reason this is my default glazing style when I can’t think what else to do.

It will probably be a while before I catch up to my current pots, as my camera failed and I don’t like it well enough to get it repaired—I’ll have to make up my mind about what new camera to get before I can finish photographing the 2025 pots. I do have a few more photos I can still blog about from the first half of the Fall 2025 semester—I’ll try to get to those soon.

2025 November 5

Jack Frost makeup

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My Halloween costume for 2025 was as Jack Frost.  I had originally bought the costume (suit, tie, and socks) for a role as Jack Frost in Electra, Daughter of Claus, a play written and planned for the 2024 Christmas season by the Cabrillo Performing Arts Collective, but that show was cancelled, because the organizers did not understand all the limitations on Cabrillo clubs and the show could not be scheduled at a time when the club could legally do it.

Because I had the costume, I decided to design makeup for it for the “fantasy” makeup assignment in the Makeup and Masks class that I’m taking at Cabrillo this Fall.  I ended up doing the makeup three times: once for the class, once for a party with former colleagues of my wife, and once for giving out candy on Halloween.

The in-class assignment used clown white, Ben Nye MagiCake Aqua Paints, and Ben Nye ivory hair color:

The colors in this version of Jack Frost were a bit muddy, because of the need to powder the clown white and because of my unsteady hand at drawing.

For my second attempt (for the party), I used my QIDI Plus 4 3D-printer to make half icicles for my forehead out of transparent TPU, used mehron white hair color, and some water-based cream makeup from Amazon.  I also used blue and silver acrylic paint to decorate an old pair of shoes (to which I added shiny silver laces):

My wife drew the stars and the eyebrows—she has a much steadier hand than me.


The icicles, stuck on with spirit gum, worked well, though they were a little too stiff and so did not conform to the curvature of my skull—particularly the larger, thicker center one.


The mehron white hair color made my brown beard and hair grey, but not really white.


Here you can see the full effect of the suit


The shoes came out appropriately glittery.

 

For the third attempt, I printed very thin 6-pointed stars out of TPU (0.2mm at the edges, thickening to 1mm in the center), rather than using a paper pattern and painting with makeup as I and my wife had done for the first two iterations. I used the same hair color and makeup as for the second iteration, but added Mofajang white hair wax to the beard to make it whiter and to shape it into a pointy beard.

I used four of the narrow icicles, not the fatter one. The 3D-printed stars made the cheek makeup much easier.


The overall effect was pretty good, but I’d really like to find a way to do a whiter temporary hair color—I don’t seem to be able to get better than a pale grey.

The water-based cream makeup does not need setting powder, but it does crack after a few hours.  If I do the Jack Frost makeup again, I’ll probably 3D print the eyebrows out of TPU (thin, like the stars).  I might also try painting the TPU with acrylic (rather than using makeup to color them).

I’ll probably make some TPU prosthetics for my final project for the Makeup and Masks class, but I’m not sure what—the assignment is to build a “monster” character that includes almost all the techniques from the course, including a latex mask built on a clay sculpture added to our plaster life mask.

2025 October 20

3D-printed Corinthian capitals

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For the Cabrillo College Fall play (Metamorphoses) I was asked to 3D-print the Corinthian capitals for the tops of two columns on the set.  The capitals needed to be fairly large (sitting on top of a 9.5″ diameter column), and even my new QIDI Plus-4 printer is not big enough to print them in one piece.  I was given a scanned model of the desired capital, but I had to do a fair amount of work to make it printable.  First, I had to clean up the model with Formware’s free online STL-repair tool.

I planned to print the capital upside down, so that it got narrower rather than wider on the later layers, but the ring at the base of capital would have needed a lot of support, so I modeled a new ring with a sloping, rather than horizontal surface, and superimposed the ring using OpenSCAD. This eliminated the need for almost all the support.

I scaled the X and Y dimensions to make the capital have the desired size for the connection to the column, but I scaled the Z dimension separately to make it fit in the printer.  The printer ads claim it has 280mm available in the Z direction, though QIDI Studio insists that it be strictly less than 280mm. The slicer accepted 279.9mm, but the top couple of layers had the nozzle dragging on the print—I think my printer only goes up to about 279mm, so I rescaled the second capital I printed to 278mm to be safe. This meant that the two sets of pieces were not interchangeable, but the pieces for the first capital all had a marred top surface from the nozzle dragging, so it was easy to tell them apart.  The marring did not matter as it was at too small a scale to be visible to the audience, and would either be covered by paint or not visible from the house.

Because the model was too big for the printer bed, I had to cut it in quarters. I was worried that the original scanned model was not exactly the same on all 4 sides, so slicing it would have required keeping track of which piece went where. As I was not going to be assembling the pieces, I thought that this would be rather risky, so I symmetrized the model by superimposing 4 copies rotated 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° about the Z-axis.  Because the original model was not exactly centered,I had to tweak the center axis a little bit before doing the superposition.  To make the tweaking easier, I colored each of the copies differently in OpenSCAD, so I could see where one stood out more than others, and either tilted or translated the original model to compensate. I also trimmed a tiny amount off the top and bottom, so that those faces were level .

Once I had the model as perfectly centered as I could get it, cutting it down to just one quadrant was trivial in OpenSCAD. I hollowed out a cylinder almost the full length of the capital, to reduce the amount of filament needed. I also hollowed out a triangular cross-section ring from the most solid part of the model, so that there would be some solid walls, rather than just loose infill in the interior. Because of the amount of filament and the time it would take, I reduced the gyroid infill from my usual default of 15% down to 8%, and I wanted a little extra stiffness in the vertical direction (probably unneeded, but it was fun to add the extra feature).

Here is a rendition of the STL for the quarter capital, showing a little of the hollowing out. You can also see the smooth ring at the top of the picture where the shape was modified to avoid needing supports.

Here are the capitals after they have been glued together and painted. I believe that the rings next to them are the simpler column bases, which seem to have been carved out of foam (the more familiar approach for the scene shop).

Here are the two capitals next to a tackle box (my cosmetics kit for the Makeup and Masks class) for scale.

The quarter-capitals took almost 10 hours each to print and used 450g of PLA, so the pair of them took 80 hours to print (well a little more, because of time needed to change spools or clear filament tangles) and used 3.6kg of filament. Surprisingly, there were only 2 or 3 tangles in the entire print run—the filament had been properly wound, even though I was buying the cheapest high-speed PLA I could find (iSANMATE from Amazon at about $12/kg including tax and shipping)

I’m pleased with the way they came out, and I think that the set designer is pleased also.

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