Portrait of Jaston Williams at the State Theater on Congress Ave.

 One of the most interesting artists I've met in the last thirty years has got to be Jaston Williams. He's a writer, playwright and consummate actor. He's starred in so many productions, in Austin and on national stages, that I'd exceed my usual verbose writing limits just listing them. But the thing that makes him both hilarious and captivating is his ability to observe, distill and define the zany characters he finds all over Texas. And to display them with frightening authenticity. 

Since it looks like no one in the USA is going to be producing plays inside theaters for big audiences through at least 2021 he's experimenting with new, hybrid constructs of theater.

I was enlisted to help him with his current production. The project is structured like a cross between a live, one man play, a television show and a movie. The play is about the inhabitants of a small, west Texas town who have seen mysterious lights dancing on the horizon. There are only a handful of people who claim to have seen the lights while everyone else in the town, the people who haven't seen the lights, think those folks are crazy.

Jaston worked with Austin's best theatrical make-up person to create a dozen characters. He plays every single one. While doing a dozen characters in a traditional play, with very complex make-up and costuming, would be nearly impossible (time, time, time...) doing it as a movie is manageable. And better. 

Today he and his crew will be filming him live on the stage at the old State Theater here in Austin. He'll be the on camera narrator for the project. He'll do his one person script in front of a large green screen and during the post production editing process the images I made of him in his various characters will be unveiled in the background, on the green screen. Since we shot several hundred images in each character the editors and director will be able use multiple images of each character in what amounts almost to an animation. 

Once the project is finished the producers intend to work with live theaters around the country to provide them with the "play" as content. The theaters will be able to sell streaming access to their own audiences and they will split the proceeds with the production company and Jaston. This gives theaters in many markets something to offer audiences during the time when live productions aren't possible. They share in the profits and there are no costs to the theaters beyond the split of profits. It's a nice model. I hope it works. 

I've photographed Jaston in so many guises and characters over the years and I had no intention, really, of photographing him yesterday. But I do take a camera with me everywhere and when I went downtown to look at the preparations for today's multi-camera video shoot he answered the door and stepped, just by chance, into a nice looking pool of light. I shot off five or six frames and then we walked into the auditorium. 

The camera I had with me yesterday was a Panasonic GH5S with a Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4. I used it at f1.4. 

Interesting time for art in general. Tough times for theater in particular. 

in character from our shoot several weeks ago. On that shoot we photographed against a white background and dropped out the backgrounds in my post production, All were lit with LED lights and photographed using a Panasonic Lumix S1R at its highest resolution, in 14 bit raw. I used the spectacular Lumix 24-70mm f2.8 lens. The detail in the files is nothing short of amazing. Even at ISO 640.