Creating the Romeo and Juliet Set

Not that I'm behind on progress pics or anything... but the Romeo and Juliet set has now been struck and I'm just now blogging the "Finished!" photos.  Sigh.  It's been busy here at Set Design Central.

What's been going on?

Well, reading new scripts - I and You to be produced at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth and The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas.  Starting to think through them and to sketch.  Building a white model for The Farnsworth Invention and presenting it to the Board of ICT for it's Main Stage production at the Irving Art Center.  Approved!  Now I need to start construction drawings.  Talking through lighting / possible-projection issues for WaterTower Theater's up-coming All My Sons - debating whether and what kind of model might help assess those.  (A SketchUp model may be coming.)  Projections will be part of Farnsworth too.  Need to start those construction drawings.  Oh!  And getting paid.  Always important.   And getting that pay to the bank and running model-material-gettin' errands... complicated by Dallas' current weird and icy weather.

(You Northerners shouldn't laugh too hard - remember, we don't have much in the way of salt trucks or plows in the usually-balmy South.)

Also starting the yearly struggle with Taxes.  Yeesh.

Busy.

But here are some R&J pics:

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo (and set) by Clare Floyd DeVries

Here you can see the full stage: Montague's tower on the left (SR), Capulet's tower on the right (SL).   Far left is the proscenium edge fountain, at center, an existing doorway dressed for the occasion plus a colonnade suggesting more town, gardens etc.

Following are (much better) pro photos by Chuck Marcelo (thank you!) showing how all this stage-set urbanism works as a background to the action.

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo by Chuck Marcelo

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo by Chuck Marcelo

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo by Chuck Marcelo

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo by Chuck Marcelo

Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet - photo by Chuck Marcelo

A really good show and a set I'm pretty happy with.  Thanks again to everyone who helped create it - and to Fun House for letting me play too.

There's one more blog post coming on this production - to show you shop in-process photos... as soon as the weather and my schedule allows me to go pick those up from the TD.  Meanwhile, here's a list of previous posts:

1)  "A Set Design from Scratch" - first post, with schematic design drawings and inspirational photo  HERE.
2)  The post that should have been first "First Steps" HERE with initial sketchbook doodles.
3) "R&J Construction Drawings" HERE, containing... guess!
4)  "A Valentine's Present" HERE, about finishing and opening.
5)  "Process Pics" HERE, with my photos from the theater.

R & J Construction Drawings

Bringing you up to date on Romeo and Juliet for Fun House Theatre and Film...

I finished the construction drawings Friday and hand-carried copies to the TD, the estimable Dave Tenney.  (That TD stands for the Technical Director, in this case, also the Carpenter.)

Before looking at these drawings, it's important to know that they were created for this particular very clever carpenter - with whom I've built many sets.  We know each other well: I know the level of quality I can expect and the kinds of information he needs or doesn't, while he knows my design quirks and preferences.  It's also important that this set is going to be built fast, on a modest budget, mostly from stock pieces and incorporating columns and arches left over from a previous set we did together.  (Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.)  If I were making construction drawings to bid out to many shops or for an unfamiliar carpenter, I'd detail and draw and note much more than I need to here.

(Thank goodness!)

The design is still substantially as it was in the schematic design drawings HERE, with minor changes suggested by the director.  The biggest of these was to shift the SL tower belonging to the Capulets downstage a few feet.

Romeo and Juliet for Fun House Theatre and Film, set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

You can see that moving the Capulet tower DS meant modifying the colonnade upstage of it a little.  As I thought through the drawings I modified many things in small ways, mostly to make them simpler to build or better suited to stock pieces.

Romeo and Juliet for Fun House Theatre and Film, set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

Above are the elevations for the SR tower where the Montagues live.  Because this tower needs to be color-cued blue to match the family's livery, I've designed it in materials (well, faux ones anyway!) that naturally tend toward cool grays... slate, granite... so this is a mostly "stone" tower.

Romeo and Juliet for Fun House Theatre and Film, set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

The Capulet's tower needs to tint towards red so it's built of faux (red) brick and redwood colored shingles and rusty metals.

Notice that certain things like the plaques over the doors are called out as "by designer."  That means that I'll show up with them under my arm, ready to attach.  Sometimes that means you're going shopping or borrowing from another theater, sometimes emptying your garage.  This time I'm loaning a couple terracotta medallions I bought, long ago, from a thrift store for another show (Enchanted April at WaterTower Theater) that have been decorating my kitchen ever since.

Notice that the footprints for both towers are TINY.  That's because the theater space isn't very tall - only about 12 feet, and that's up into the ceiling joists.  So to make these sets look taller in proportion I had to make them look narrower.  Luckily these are all kid actors so they're pretty skinny.

Romeo and Juliet for Fun House Theatre and Film, set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

A section through the Capulet's tower shows how the balcony is supported.

Actually, that's gonna change.

The carpenter thinks he can make the cantilever sturdy enough even for a good-sized climbing Romeo without needing to overlap two platforms as I show them.  (Counter-weight, I was thinking.)  He's simply going to brace the heck out of everything, which will simplify things.  Again, with a different carpenter, I'd redraw the detail, but in this circumstance there's no need.  

BTW carpenters commonly construct sets in other ways than you, the designer, expect - and That's OK.  They're the experts on construction.  They often create shop drawings from your design drawings in order to figure out exact  panel layouts and structure.  Study these - you'll learn a lot.

Also on that sheet are drawings for the fountain and the rolling bed/tomb platform.  

So...

A pretty modest set of drawings compared to what a bid-set would require, but everything (I hope) a good carpenter needs to get this thing built!

Spoiler! Construction Drawings

A helpful stage manager was able to scan my construction drawings for a show called Or... so I'm taking this rare chance to show you what the full Builder's Drawings for a small, simple set look like, even though these particular drawings are a bit unusual.

The set - well, setS - consist of two locations: a jail cell circa 1670 or so and the main room of writer Aphra Behn's (rather nice) apartment.

The jail will be represented just by the writer's table and chair plus one side of a tiny wagon with a jail door.  The apartment will get two whole walls, the jail wagon spun round to reveal a fancy wardrobe, and rather more furniture.  Construction will be pretty simple: standard 4' x 8' wall flats - some with doors.  Even the little 4' x 4' wagon will be built using standard flats.  So the trickiest part of the build will be neatly adding trim and some fabric wall covering.

As for the drawings...  I like to draw at a small format - 11" x 17" - because I can easily photocopy that size.  Even when I can't find 11" x 17" paper, I can copy half a sheet at a time onto standard 8 1/2" x 11" paper.

So, here's what simple build drawings for a simple theater set look like, at least as I approach it:

This is drawing sheet #1 - the plan.  There's no dimensioning on this (unheard of!) because in this theater the existing columns will tell us exactly where the walls have to go.  Besides, I'll be there on Load-In day to point and wave my arms.  Because this set is built using only standard flat sizes, I just noted which size (4') at each panel.  Normally there'd be bunches o' numbers to define what goes where.

And this is sheet #2 - small scale wall elevations and then large scale details of the little jail/wardrobe wagon.  A big hairy note describes the types of trim I want to use...  

Because we'll be using existing (scrounged) trim, I didn't pick exact model numbers from a catalogue, but instead gave guidelines for selecting from stock.  I'm sure there'll be some horse-trading along the lines of: "We have 24' of this kind of molding, but only 10' or this other, so let's use this here and that..."

And sheet #3 - shows a large scale elevation (vertical view) of the folding screen and my first design sketch of the full set, which includes the screen and wardrobe in place.  

(This is a color sketch actually, but I have to leave some surprise for Opening, don't I?  Come see the show!  Or, by Echo Theatre at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas.)

Small as these drawings are and fast (if I say it myself) as I am as a draftsman, these construction drawings took a surprisingly long time to draw... mainly 'cause ya design as ya draw.  

Thinking.  So sloooow.