Alternate Versions

Looking through the stats for this blog, I've discovered that a good few visitors find their way here by Googling TM "Boeing Boeing set design."

I've designed two versions of the show - for Circle and WaterTower theaters - and although those two shows had the same text, same director, and most of the same cast, the two very different venues demanded different sets...

Boeing, Boeing at Circle Theare, Fort Worth, Texas

Photo courtesy of Circle Theatre

My first version of Boeing, Boeing... on a small thrust stage about 25' wide by 16' deep (in front of the proscenium), by 9' high.  My idea here was that this was a penthouse/rooftop apartment with views of Paris, renovated by the architect-character .

Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theater, Addison, Texas

Photo courtesy of WaterTower Theater

This time the performance space was 38' wide, by 25' deep, by almost 30' high.  (Almost 2 1/2 times the size.)  Consequently, the architect's digs suddenly became a seriously grand Paris apartment.

But how many other ways can there be to design what's basically a box set living room with 6-7 doors?

So I thought I'd Google it myself.

Immediately, I found a fun video for a production of the show at Phoenix Theatre HERE.  (Since these videos and photos are all copyrighted, I daren't display them: please click on the links.  Though this ought to be "fair use" as criticism: compare and contrast, kiddies!)

Where my design impulse was to emphasize the '60s Parisian and architectural nature of this architect-character's apartment, the designer of the Phoenix Theatre's version, Richard Farlow, emphasizes the airplane motif and adds colored lighting and a piece of switcheroo-set-dressing-comedy to "decorate" his set for each stewardess.  Clever!

Many other designers used a variation on French paneled walls, with the Hartford Stage's version by David M. Barber perhaps the most handsome example.  French and - to a much lesser extent - 1960s seem to be the leading motifs.  I'm surprised so few of these designs attempt any views of Paris; though, on my own sets, only selected seats saw any view since this is, basically, The Lotso Doors Taking Up All The Wall Play.

The Papermill Playhouse production - designed by Ray Klausen -  besides many doors, had a neat silhouette of Paris above the apartment and nice moldings (though I kinda hate the typical-theater-railings).

A production in Melbourne used an elegantly curved-wall set, again all doors, no views.

I'm also a little surprised that no designer went nuts with the '60s.  I had touches - the art, a few details and colors - but no one seems to have carried the period style much further.  Possibly this is because of the price of large pieces of '60s decor?



Earlier posts on Boeing, Boeing: Rethinking a Design, Further Adventures of a Plan, Nice News, Pictures in the Paper, Art as Set Dressing, Critics 

Spring Sunshine

Makes it much easier to draft.

Well, no, but it makes it more fun to look out the window as I draft.

The Whipping Man opens Saturday at Circle Theatre.  Get your tickets now!  Should be a good show.  And there are several good museum shows in Fort Worth at the same time - make a day of it.  The Kimbell Art Museum has "The Age of Impressionism," which will be very popular, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art has one of early Sargeant paintings that I really want to see.

Meanwhile I'm drafting on Boeing, Boeing for WaterTower Theatre, reading Mistakes Were Made for Circle's next show (which needs a speedy design), and just received a new version of Ruth to read for Kitchen Dog Theater (ditto).

Public domain image

Nice News

I just found out that my set design for Boeing, Boeing at Circle Theatre won a Column Award!  Pretty cool.

Boeing, Boeing at Circle Theatre, set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

(Click on the pic to see it better.)  It's always very heartening to learn that people like your work.  

This show was a bit tricky to design, mainly because Circle's stage is quite small and the script called for seven (7) doors - the design challenge was to make it NOT look like a wall of doors!  And then to make it look French and '60s. The time period mainly through the Pop Art and details, French through architectural detail and views o' Paris.

Earlier posts on Boeing, Boeing: Shopping, Approaching Opening, Incomparable Theater, and Critics.

Critics

This blog will not talk too much about critics, but I was amused to see that one who wrote a good review for Boeing Boeing liked my custom-built sofa because it was suggestive (in every sense)  of a particular masculine body part...

This illustrates where art critics both can come in handy and be misleading: because that idea never occurred to me.  (That I hadn't thought of it and the critic did says lots about both of us, I suspect.)  Once it's pointed out I can sorta see it.  Given the play, it's wonderfully appropriate.  Being alerted to this fact - if it is one - might add to understanding and enjoying the play - which is part of a critic's job.  So...

A.  Is this critic just reading into this work aspects of that critic's worldview?
B.  Is the critic seeing something my unconscious mind put there?  Consciously, I just remember calculating that a sofa was needed there of about that size and shape, sketching variations, making a requested change, then feeling that the final shape was "right."
C.  Don't over-think this!
 Or
D.  All of the above.

I gotta go with D.

Incomparable Theater

Creditors:  I was lucky enough to see Broken Gear Project Theater's production of this August Strindberg play.  Easy to see what a delicate mechanism the play is... how quickly this love/hate triangle could slip into ranting or fossilize into one of those over-corseted classics where the back row audience snoozes.  Not here.  I never use the word "perfect" (it sounds so unlikely to be true), but I honestly can't think of a thing that could be improved.  Direction, sets, costumes, the sum of the parts including, most importantly, the wonderful performances... were just... right.

I admired the set and costumes.  The set was just a couple little bookend walls added to the jogs and corners of the existing space in what feels like an old garage.  There is a painted-over window and a cracked concrete floor.  All of this is simply painted over again in subtle shades of gray to suggest vertical boards that blur into a sea view - mostly a dark horizon line, pale water, lowering clouds, with the feeling of a Japanese ink brush painting.  Furniture is beautiful Victorian stuff, which either looks white-washed (and white upholstered) or gleams a little redly, like the actress's auburn hair.  Costumes take this delicate color game even farther, with gray, subtle shades of cream, palest green, hints of auburn, and in the gown, another green and a pale slate-y blue.  All nuance.

The play itself - which I'd never seen performed -  was a fascinating three-way duel of jealousy and mental-power games as written by a sort of evil Henry James (a contemporary).  All the characters were in their own ways, monsters.  This is going to sound fanciful, but it made me think of a delicate glass goblet, the kind made in Murano for Medicis and Borgias, filled with a white wine like crisp apples, all floral bouquet... and poisoned.

image borrowed from Rossana & Rossana 

Boeing Boeing:  A rollicking farce, set in the 1960s Paris about a man with three fiances, each one an air hostess - he just has to keep their schedules straight.  Could there be a greater contrast to Strindberg?  Mental whiplash!  Yet, you know, both plays are about men and women and love triangles/ rectangles/ pentangles (pentagons?).  I can't pretend to review Boeing, as I designed it, but I will say that directing and acting a farce are - in a utterly different way - just as difficult as in the most serious drama.  This farce is, I think, successfully accomplished and very funny.  As for the tech parts: the stewardess' uniforms are period correct in zippy colors and the set... well, when I read on page 2, "exit door # 7" I smacked my forehead.  Hard.  But amongst all those doors I did manage to sneak in a few playful views of Paris and some bright, '60s art.

Apples versus oranges?  At least those are both fruit - these two plays are poisoned apples versus orange shag carpeting.  Impossible to compare.  Except... maybe... both productions are souffles.

image borrowed from flikr

Show Opens!

Boeing Boeing opens Saturday night at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth!

Approaching Opening

Some (okay, most) shows seem to enter some Twilight Zone time loop as Opening gets closer: you keep painting, dressing, even building, yet the set never seems to get closer to finished.  This is an illusion, but a common and painful one.  The first audience is Thursday - today is Tuesday.

The Boeing Boeing set is finally, finally about finished building and painting.  Mind you, a week of Snowpocalypse didn't speed things any, but the end is, I think, now approaching.  Tomorrow needs to be Set Dressing Day.  (Whether walls are dry or not.)

As an experienced designer, you find yourself getting more stream-lined and efficient as the deadline nears so that, for instance, painting a tabletop as faux travertine (that streaky bacon-fat looking beige marble), which a few years ago would have taken me half a day of worry and work, took exactly the 20 minutes I had left for it.  Redesign the bench (again) ten minutes.  By Thursday morning I could probably knit an entirely new set in three.

Recently found an old British World War II slogan that ought to be a theater motto:

image borrowed from ribbonandrope blog

Shopping

One of the guilty pleasures of the set designer/set dresser job is that you get to go shopping (with other people's money!) for stuff to go on your set.

Yesterday was a big shopping day.  I hit at least, um, eight stores plus the printing place.  It would have been more, but my favorite antique place was locked up with a note on the gate... while through the chain-link I could see - but not touch - exactly the right table base.  Tempted to climb the fence.  Hey, I'd have left a note!

On the Boeing Boeing set there's a bench that's become the main thing the audience stares at -  it needs to be cool.  It also needs to be sturdy since this is a farce.  Finding this bench is proving tough.  The best choice available may be a concrete bench... which has a good "look" but is a bit more expensive than I'd like (the thrill of spending other folk's money is dissipated when you realize you ought not to squander it, sigh), and is a LOT heavier than I want to tote.  So, more research today.