Siege - Day 14 (Another Monday)

Watching my new office mate leaping into Monday morning at (shudder) normal business hours reminds me of just how different theater schedules are.  Here are a few rules of thumb:


1)  Never call any theater person except a carpenter before noon.

Now, designers and tech folks generally get up and start work way earlier, but never assume that a director is ready to answer your questions before then.  On the other hand, it is not impossible that a director might call you - or have the stage manager text you anyway - after, say, 10:00 at night.  Or send a long, complex email at midnight.  Because they just finished rehearsal and their wide-awake brain is seething with ideas and questions for you.

2)  Know that you will work some evenings.

That's just when theater happens.  And even though the carpenters and painters tend to work daylight hours (when the stage isn't, you know, cluttered with actors), still there will be rehearsals you, as designer, must attend.  Certainly midnight emails you must attend to.

This can get a little sleep-deprivy when, as for an outdoor production, you must consult with carpenters in the cool of the morning, but also watch the rehearsal after dark (so lighting designers can work!) and take notes at the following production meeting.  Back home by 1:00 a.m. gets tiring!

In addition to the skew of your work hours to fit the hours of carpenters and actors, remember that many designers (maybe you too) have day jobs and just aren't able to do theater except during chinks in normal business hours.  (So if you nap to make up for the weird hours of that outdoor production, know that your nap will be interrupted at noon.)

3)  And weekends.

Set Load-In or Strike and certainly Tech all require so much time and so many different people that they must usually be scheduled on weekends.  Expect that.

4)  You're never truly off-duty.

If there's a problem, there's a call. (Or more likely a text.)  You will hear about it immediately and be expected to think on your feet in that awkward moment too.  Knowing that you could be interrupted can make it awkward to do other things... something to keep in mind as your show enters into its most fraught stages, heading toward Opening...

To non-theater people (especially morning people!) our weird hours and conditions of employment may seem horrible.  

But, eavesdropping on my work mate's Monday morning three-conference-calls-before-10:00am life...  Gee, I'm glad I don't have to think quite so hard, quite so early!

Siege - Days 12 & 13

Taxes are done and sent!  Woohoo!  Turns out that my little Off-Broadway adventure was a money loser, when I fully counted hotel stays and eating and Lyft rides and so on.  But I'd do it again for the sheer thrill... and the small loss helped some on the taxes... if you can afford that kind of help.

Yesterday was our big grocery shopping day - picking up necessities and a few treats from Jimmy's Italian Grocery, Central Market, and the liquor store.  All went well.  There's now metered entry to Central Market ( a great, up-scale grocery for those who don't know) and red tape on the floor at both grocery stores to keep customers back a bit from the counters and staff.  Many people wore latex gloves and there were some face masks and one girl in almost complete zombie-apocalypse-chic: black hood-up hoodie - drawstrings tight - face mask, gloves... everything but the machete'.

Speaking of jungles... the tomatoes are visibly growing!

Jack and the Tomato Stalk!

Siege - Days 10 & 11

Losing track of time already...

Right now my drafting board is piled high with backup material for doing taxes - but I wish it looked like this:

What I need is a show to design!

This is an old photo taken during the design and model making for Kitchen Dog's A Wolf at the Door.  Below are a few construction photos:

The photo just above is from early in the build of the "rocky" landscape... involving A LOT of chicken wire and then more-or-less fabric mache'.  For the landscape of the more recent Alabaster, the main criteria - according the the Kitchen Dogs building it - was that there be NO chicken wire!  Hence the weathered plank retaining wall of the goat hill.  Ha!

While we're talking landscape... I'll add in a sampling of other "environmental" sets.

I think the first secret to good "natural" landscapes is to avoid any straight edges and tablecloth-slopes that reveal its carpentry bones.  Chicken wire or carved foam or any other method of creating softly broken and rounded edges are key.

The second secret is to observe nature and then do the best job you can to mimic the growth of plants, to randomize the placement of rocks (which should look half buried), and to include weeds, dead leaves, and all the little accidents of weathering or moss or litter that add reality.

For Ironbound at Kitchen Dog Theater success depended on recreating the genuine scruffy kicked-up gravel and dirt and weedy neglect of a bus stop:

For Enchanted April at WaterTower Theater, it was a matter of aging the architecture and then getting the wisteria and roses to twine naturally:

Sadly, in Spitfire Grill (it and all following shows were at WaterTower Theater) there is some definite "table-clothing"... but, being a more stylized show, the unashamed fakery, the blatant erosion cloth, and the real leaves managed to suggest Wisconsin woods anyway:

For The Sugarbean Sisters we needed jungley swamp.  Giant reeds were mugged from a neglected property and supplemented with every church-social-hall-potted-fake-palm we could borrow:

Versus a tidier and more countryfied front yard for The Traveling Lady.  (Just out of sight, I planted dozens of naturalized silk daffodils.)  Notice how the nature gets more stylized as it goes upstage?  Those trees are just painted cut outs.  Frankly, they looked terrible until I placed a bird house on a pole right in front of them... turning the silhouettes into background.  (The human eye and brain are weird.):

Here, for All My Sons, the sky gets stylized.  But the lawn is as real as we could make it.  (Okay... it got realer just after this photo was shot.  Photographers always arrive a day too soon.):

For Native Gardens we used real gravel and live plants.  (Though the argued over flowers had to become silk - because live ones died on us!)

Last example - Humble Boy, where the carpenter's really excellent stonework and the little level changes sold the whole illusion.   That and those little errant spots of grass between the stones.  (Copied from my sister's dollhouse.  Really.  Little teeny tiny fuzz between the flagstones.)

All photos courtesy of their respective theaters... except the bad ones, which are mine.

Siege - Day #9

The weather remains radiantly wonderful!

Making the tales of illness from New York City feel absolutely impossible.

I'm still doing taxes and today was going through expenses from my adventure last spring of designing an Off-Broadway show.  New Jersey, where our AirBnB was located, was beautiful and spring-like there then... and I bet it's full of blooming forsythia and spring bulbs there now too.  Death and taxes, sure, but death and daffodils just don't make emotional sense together.

Public domain images mashed together

Siege - Day #8

Working from home seems pretty great today!

It's the first warm, sunny day of spring.  The windows are open and there's a lovely breeze wiffling by as I sit here and, through the window, I can see budding branches move with the same breeze.  Gorgeous.  Even my new tomatoes are reaching up toward the sun...

I've spent most of the day finishing up the "gathering" phase of doing my business taxes: totaling receipts, figuring out my studio's share of utilities, and adding up mileage etc.  Tedious work, but necessary if I want to save some of my extremely-hard-earned-cash from Uncle Sam.

public domain image found HERE

Siege - Day #7

On the theater front:  I've suggested to some friends that we should come up with some theater-by-proxy project - I'm not sure what, but maybe puppets (with sets and props of course!) we could film?  Something that will let us play together at a distance.  We'll see if we come up with a good idea.

On the work from home front: the whole household is now - finally! - working from home.  Part of today was spent getting an extra desktop organized.  As a set designer it was my duty to point out that the Hickory Dickery Dock Clock kid's mural (left over from nursery days) might not be the best background for his Zoom meetings with clients.  (Ha!)

Still plugging away at taxes.  I've now got all the business receipts sorted and entered into The Book.  

The tomato plants look good so far.  Like us, here at home...

Siege - Day #6

This is very strange...

For days - longer - I've been impatient that Texas authorities didn't seem to understand the seriousness of the coronavirus situation.  I've been, mostly, staying home myself and reading too much about Italy and to me the danger was clear:  Dallas County has 2.7 million people and, because of Texas' policies, 10% of those people have no health insurance. 

Potential disaster.

We got a heads up that the governor of Texas had a 3:00 public announcement... fifteen minutes late... and I really suspect that in those fifteen minutes businesses talked him into stepping back from the shelter-in-place order he had prepared.

So Dallas County ordered shelter-in-place instead.

And now that I got what I am convinced we need... I feel oddly shaken.  This is going to be bad.  So bad.

Good thing I planted tomatoes this morning.

public domain image

Well, those luscious tomatoes above are what I'm aiming for.  This is what I've got so far...

Siege - Day #5

Saturday.

With the other half of the household home from work, we tackled a few outdoor chores: cleaning out gutters, cutting the emerging bamboo sprouts (rain = bamboo), and pulling up this year's enormous crop of sticker-burr vines.  They're everywhere!

A trip to the grocery was, well, trippy.  

A strangely enthusiastic worker wiped down the handle of my grocery cart for me, presenting it with a flourish.  Shelves were patchy - some just as full as ever, some empty with a sign limiting quantities per purchaser limply fluttering.  

And these purchasers were of two kinds: either nervous looking buyers wearing masks or, like me, who were maskless but tried to maintain the required six feet of distance from other people... or the totally oblivious people who, having run out of peanut butter in the hermit cave without news that they inhabit, wandered around the store with their kids and aisle-blocking carts and seemed to deliberately breath in the nervous buyers' directions.

I used to kinda enjoy grocery store trips.

No theater related work today, but on the reading front, I found that an old - like from the '40s writer I like is now easy to find and cheap in ebook form.  D.E. Stevenson wrote very gentle, very English vaguely romantic novels full of well observed characters.  Almost nothing happens.  Except teatime.  I think this particular novel is up to its fourth tea party so far...  Very soothing indeed.  I'm reading a novel of hers that's new to me, Spring Magic (drippy title I know, bear with me).  A pleasant respite.  Maybe I'll go on a P. G. Wodehouse binge after this?

Public domain image

After thought: that comment about tea time reminds me of one of my all time favorite titles, by Douglas Adams:  The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.  Isn't that great?

Siege - Day #4

I'm having some amazing phone conversations.

Texts and emails are great, but I'm rediscovering how nice it is to talk to someone at a distance.  Just had a long chat with another set designer friend... for almost the first time with no "show" stories.  (Well, a little showbiz, we are theater designers!)

Meanwhile, here at home, the taxes are progressing slowly as is the laundry.  It's too cool and wet to do garden chores, but maybe this weekend.  I'm thinking seriously about tomato plants now that I'll be here to water them properly.

I'm doing some thinking about the writing I have planned...

Playing a little Minecraft in the evenings:

A Minecraft scene: a wheat field in my farm district being crop-dusted by helicopter.

In the distance you can just make out the carroty buildings of the carrot farm with its wind-powered mill 

for making carrot juice.  I can be silly.

Minecraft in Creative Mode is, I think, the perfect designer addiction... endless possibilities and no gravity to worry about!

A while back I discovered You Tube Minecraft videos.  My favorites are Grian for building ideas and general silliness, Mumbo Jumbo for amazing redstone contraptions (a walking village!) as well as silliness (see them both on Hermitcraft) and fWhip for lovely terraforming and building.

One of the things I find interesting both in video and in Reddit's Minecraft building discussions is watching civilians (i.e. non-architects) discovering for themselves the elements of architectural design.  It's fascinating to me to see the general impression of "modern" architecture and the overall fondness for more or less medieval styles and, separately, for symmetry. The ambition is sometimes amazing!

Siege - Day #3

Well, yesterday was weird.  

I had a doctor's appointment.  Traffic was strangely light for a Wednesday afternoon.  All the parking lots I passed - retail or business office - were almost empty.  It was like an early Sunday morning.  At the medical office building, which is next door to a hospital, the parking lot was pretty full but (are you sitting down?) there were empty spaces near the door.  No valet parkers standing near their podium - because they were sitting inside, wearing protective gear and masks, next to the biggest bottle of sanitizer gel ever.  No one waiting for an elevator, but another bottle of sanitized hung by the buttons.  (I took the hint.)  No one in the upper lobby.  Only two patients in the waiting room.  (We gave each other 12 feet of separation.)  All the office staff was discussing was the virus.  

Then a perfectly normal doctor consultation.  (Knee problems I thought were due to theater wear n' tear up and down ladders etc. but turns out to be arthritis, yea!)  Much washing and decontaminating once I got home.

Tell you what...  I won't be moseying near medical places voluntarily again anytime soon.

Today is, so far, more washing and decontaminating, doing normal laundry plus clearing off much-used surfaces so they can be scrubbed more easily, more frequently.  And I'm trying to create a sort of Virus Mitigation Chamber in the front hall - just to keep all the cooties in one place.  A place to store things like briefcases and outdoor shoes and jackets and to wash down and power up phones and such.  (I haven't quite gotten to the wipe-down-all-groceries stage of paranoia but I'm sure I'll get there.)

Hark! The dryer is singing its chirpy little clothes-all-dry! tune...

On the theater business front the only action is on Facebook 'cause everything is canceled.  

Except taxes.  And distractions from taxes...

I work using the messy-desk/more ideas system.

General feeling on FB is that there might be the possibility of shows in September - maybe.  I have Young Frankenstein to read for then so - who knows? - maybe it'll still happen.

Siege - Day #2

The coronavirus is the big thing - the papers (both actual paper paper and e-) are full of it.

The Dallas County emergency order is in today's paper and there's something truly frightening to see in smudgy black and white where - in too much haste to retype the order? - the forbidding of gatherings of "500 persons or more" has been crossed out and amended to read "fifty."  Then the entire paragraph explaining that this does not apply to, for instance, office buildings has also been XXXed out.  (Which makes a certain architectural office I know that's refusing to let its employees work remote all the more maddening.  It's unsafe.)

So here I am, typing, self-isolating like a good girl.  

Yesterday  I did briefly shop for food - and toilet paper, ha! - and model building supplies.  Today I'll drop a couple pay checks at the bank only because I'm out for a doctor's appointment that, more and more, seems like a bad idea.  But theater can be pretty hard on knees.  In my case it's due to standing on ladders and stepping up and down and up and down onto stages raised juuuust a little too high for my short legs - some tendons or ligaments or something have stretched painfully once too often.  For a few years it's been an occasional problem, now it's sore almost daily.  Last week talking to a doctor about it seemed sensible... but today?

I also started the taxes, beginning with the tangle of my professional receipts.  Always depressing.  (Both the taxes and the tangle.)  

On the brighter side, I'm rereading Ben Aaronovitch's new Rivers of London novel, False Value.  It just came out last month after a long wait and it's good... maybe a bit dry though, sort of abstract, compared to others in the series, I think that's because he's setting up the next Big Bad for upcoming books and readers just can't have as much emotion invested yet as had accumulated in the earlier part of the series.  Also, the world of computing is just not as visceral as the first, shocking encounters with magic and Punch or the Faceless Man.  I still highly recommend his work, just be sure to start with Rivers of London.

I'm thinking of next rereading the new Stephen King, The Institute.  (I race through books the first time and enjoy catching more nuance on a second read).  But I'm looking around for a new novel - new to me anyway - preferably a series.  Have you noticed the usefulness of a really gripping, page-turning, long series when times are difficult?  I still have fondness for the Hunger Games books, simply because they engrossed me when I really needed distraction from a family health scare.  There's a line in another Stephen King book (Misery) that describes a writer "typing until he made a hole in the page he could fall into."  Well, a reader can certainly find the same escape hatch through the page, into the right book.  

(That quote is paraphrased probably.)

I've done another pretty sketch for The Silver Chain:

Castle Wyvern view - copyright retained by Clare Floyd DeVries and J. Trask 

I'm still looking at this one... it may get revised.  Perhaps it's a bit too cheerful and sunlit?  Then again, that's all the more contrast for the later, darker adventures.

At home we marked the first day of coronavirus seclusion (well, my first day because certain stupid offices are still open, endangering others) by  a tastey long-prep-and-cooking dinner and drinking wee little Coronitas.

When stocking up include beer.

Siege of Dallas - Day #1

Well, if you've heard me sometimes complain about being too busy and not home enough... the pandemic has fixed that!  Dallas County has closed all bars and restaurants (except for take out) and, naturally, all large gatherings... which means theaters are shut.

Very tough.

So here I am with an empty drawing board.

Sorta.

Besides doing taxes and all the many, many chores that I have been putting off forever, and really getting into the major rewrite and expansion of my set design book Alice Through the Proscenium (there will be Case Studies, very cool!) I've been doing a bit of stocking-up-the-pantry shopping, and a few sketches for a friend's D&D campaign: The Silver Chain.  

See the pretty map of the castle?

D&D Castle Wyvern - copyright reserved to the artist and Dungeon Master.

I wish I had wise words to share about the crazy, scary state of the world right now.  But all I have is a determination to stay as calm and as usefully busy as possible, to get in touch with friends and family, to enjoy things - spring! imaginary maps! books! jokes with loved ones!   Anyway.  And to help where I can, though I am in lock-down, even if it's only with bad jokes or maps or donations to food banks.

And to wash my hands.

A lot.