Friday, October 9, 2015

Deep Breath

Phew!

I've been heads-down working for the last few weeks.  But, tonight, Uptown Player's production of Harbor opens!  With what I think is a good set, a Greek Revival house restored by an architect in Sag Harbor.

The play itself you ask?

Really good - with a fantastic cast.  Both entertaining and touching.  (Go see it!)

This was my second show to work with set dresser and interior designer Kevin Brown - who acquired furniture, art, and set dressing and painted and...  Worked really hard!  But we in theater take that for granted, just as we assume carpenters, painters, and designers (and actors, directors and many more) will all slog away faithfully to get the work finished in time for the audience.   It's hard work.

But that's unremarkable.  What I do want to remark on is the clever way he used pasted-up photos  to explain furniture choices to the director and producers:

Image by Kevin Brown - copyrighted


This composite of images over a photo of the as yet unpainted set was created using, I believe, Powerpoint, but could be done in Photoshop or even with scissors and tape.  What a great way to explain things!  It was part of a neat package that laid out various choices for furniture, lighting, and art.

As often happens, the final choices of furniture include some stuff from stock, some borrowed from several sources, and some bought from less expensive stores like IKEA and Walmart.  The art is all on loan (and aren't we being careful with it!).

Meanwhile,  construction on Other Desert Cities at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth is almost complete, with painting proceeding, but furniture and carpet gathering has hit a snag.  The budget is forcing some changes, but mostly the handy-dandy warehouse and in-house storage are not producing the furniture we want....

Budgets!  Availability!!  The Dreaded Sofa!!!!  Argh.

At the very least there will need to be a LOT of reupholstering before any of this furniture goes on stage.  But we're still looking...

And there have been meetings.  Many, many meetings.