Details

Part way through the rehearsal process for The Diary of Anne Frank the director made a comment that it'd be nice to add some set dressing of kitchen clutter - dishes, can goods, that sort of thing.  And it hit me that, of course, we couldn't just plunk down a couple cans of Campbell's Soup.  It would need to be WWII vintage Dutch cans of... what brand?  Knorr maybe?

Research is indicated!

Okay, okay, Italian Knorr, but the cutest picture so far...

Set Designer's Day - Reading Scripts

An important - Critical! - part of a set designer's work is Reading the Script.

It's the basis for the entire production.

At the moment I have several scripts for future shows backlogged on the corner of my board (The Official READ THIS! Pile).  Eventually I get to feeling guilty enough and do, in fact, read them.

A designer reads a text in a strange way.  I like to read the play the first time as if reading a novel just for fun: following the plot, enjoying the talk, feeling the mood.  The second reading is for practicalities: doors, windows, intently looking for requirements (and problems) I'll need to meet with my set on this particular stage.

Then I like to let it rest at the back of my mind for a while - percolating - until it's time to design.

On top of my READ THIS! pile (printed out specially for this weekend when I intend to READ THESE!) is Seven in One Blow, an English style panto for Circle Theatre and Christmas.  I'm a little late starting this.  Just under that is Anne Frank for WaterTower Theatre.

Two scripts a little different in... um, every possible way.

Serendipity

Dumb luck plays a big role in the design biz...

While traveling, I checked email a few times for distant crisis (one, resolved without me, phew!) and back-n-forthed with an artistic director about next season.  So there I happened to be, on my only free morning in Amsterdam, when I got an e-invitation to design Anne Frank's Diary.  What are the odds?

So I visited Anne Frank's hiding place.

Anne Frank (ware)House, Amsterdam, photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

The building was her father's business warehouse, two old Amsterdam canal houses set one behind the other.  Two upper floors and the attic of the rear building were hidden from view and therefor easy to forget - the entry to them was hidden behind a bookcase.  Eight people hid there from the Nazi roundup of Jews for about two years.  Until betrayed.

The site is now a historical museum - very well and sensitively done.

I love the Diary which Anne Frank wrote while in hiding but hadn't planned to visit her hiding place...  I didn't want to know too accurately what it was like or to... well... sniffle in public.  Going there as a designer, however, gave me a distance, a more analytical place to stand, which made it easier. The site is very moving.

It must have felt like living in a submarine, I think, with its tight, dark, airless quarters and its constant presence of too many other people.  Claustrophobic.

One unexpected realization, for me, is that while Anne's and the other many many deaths of the Holocaust remain a tragedy of unimaginable size - impossible to realize - by the time I exited the building, the publication of Anne Frank's diary feels like a small victory.  One Anne would appreciate.

This play feels daunting...  It needs to be done well.