Month: September 2013

I like the bubbly Canvasback, too

Rick Wright offers some of his unconventional picks for this season’s art competition for the Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp.

This is not a decoy, not a duck, but the self-conscious simulacrum of a duck/decoy, and in its grotesque combination of the organic and the artificial, the living and the not, this figure brings together eloquently the concerns, shared and conflicting, of hunters and birders, reminding us all of where the duck stamp comes from and all the fine things it has led to over the years.

It might win, but it won’t. I predict that next year’s stamp will be pedestrian and placative, like all its predecessors. I’m still buying it, though.

Only the weapons are fake

Alexis Hauk profiles Robb Hunter, armorer and fight choreographer. Hunter worked on the epic fight in act 2 of Superior Donuts for Studio Theatre’s production.

Weapons alone don’t transform a decent fight scene into a meaningful one, though, and Hunter believes that each piece should say something about a character—or at least it should emerge from its environment. “I get a little sad when people are like, ‘We’re doing Macbeth. I need 12 swords and a few shields,” he says. “The audience doesn’t know what they’re missing—until you do it for them differently.”