Not a Review

Broadway Our Way opened last night.

Here's what I always check first on my own shows: the set looked good.  The carpenters did me proud, the design's size and layers etc. looked about as I'd hoped, and the director and producers used it beautifully, turning in a way that helped the action on stage and kept the look fresh.  The lighting designer made the set and stage look fantastic!  Colors, patterns, lovely dramatic looks.

The show itself got all polished since I last looked.  Very effective.  Some funny stuff .  Some wonderful voices!   There really is a depth of talent in DFW... and all of it seems to be on stage at the Kalita Humphreys.

This is Uptown Players' fund-raiser so, please, go see this very entertaining show and spend money!  (One of my fund-raising tickets is a chance at a tiara - cross your fingers for me.)

tiara on Queen Sofie of Greece courtesy of the Royal Forums

Less Serene Today

A bit more painting.  Basically, there's no end to doing the fiddly stuff on a set - eventually you just stop because the audience comes filing in...  Today there was company and chat (gossip? never!) and a more bustling feeling as Opening gets closer.  Broadway Our Way. Uptown Players.  Friday.  Be there.

But before putting on my I-live-under-a-bridge painting fashion wear, I wore my architect-uniform for a continuing ed. lunch seminar.  Exciting stuff.  Insulation.  Yep.  Not just any insulation either: polyisocyanurate.   (Good roast beef sandwich.)  The previous lunch seminar was on elevators and more exciting since elevator systems have changed since I used to read the textbook on the subject - years after school - on those nights when I had insomnia.

image courtesy of Clipart Graphics

The Zen of Painting

A good day yesterday.  Finish-painting my Broadway Our Way set, I had the Frank Lloyd Wright theater to myself.  Sure an air conditioning guy thumped in the basement and Uptown Players staff worked upstairs - now and then someone would wander through - but for hours, just me.  Empty theaters can feel creepy, but the Kalita Humphreys feels warm.  (Not in temperature, it's always freezing - what's the A/C guy doing?)  If this stage is haunted, it's by friendly ghosts.  Still, I ought to have felt lonely.  Just me.  No radio. Paint buckets.  Doing fiddly stuff with small brushes.  Instead it was...

Serene.

Serene doesn't happen much.  There's a rhythm to painting.  An absorption.  A relaxed concentration that leaves time for thought.   Another rare thing.

Tech Weekend and Scenic Painting

Things are getting busy, scenic-ly.

Yesterday I helped finish base painting on Broadway Our Way.  Theoretically set designers have a scenic artist to "finish" paint their sets (meaning the cool techniques, faux finishes, and/or fool-the-eye stuff) plus painters or carpenters to do the base painting before that.

In the real world of real theaters, base painting tends to be a carpenter job and scenic painting is done by - flip a coin - either a scenic painter or the designer, depending on what talent and money is available.  I paint my own sets about half the time and almost always paint something, if only some furniture.  Since Broadway is coming up on Tech and there's still raw wood, I pitched in...  which means my "real" painting hasn't happened yet.  I'm not too panicked though, as panels are finally going up on the framework and beads have been found, so the set may actually (touch wood) get finished before Thursday's first audience.  More painting today - Tech tomorrow.

Friday night Date Night?  A production meeting on Marvin's Room.  Sigh.

The Traveling Lady closes Sunday!  Catch it fast.

Set Design Day

The last few days have been full of hands-on set design stuff.

Wednesday I was at Broadway Our Way's theater, painting giant circles on a curved wall, using the old trick of chalk tied on a string taped to the wall: pivot that chalk and - voila! - perfect(ish) circle.  I pogo-ed up and down with the lift to reach the tops of the circles.  Painting them took time as did setting locations for hanging a few more cut-out versions, which meant sitting way back in the auditorium shouting, "Six inches toward centerstage!" to the poor guy then in the lift, as he tied knots.

Yesterday my Apprentice came over.  We looked over his latest project and upholstered a bench seat for Marvin's Room and traced out flamingos on bright pink felt.  (I love the weird jobs theater hands out.)  We also made an emergency bead-curtain-run.  After Broadway's TD searched much of town, the beads came from a funny Mom-n-Pop dollar store near me.  I had to take what they had in stock, rather than my first choice color, but we'll spray paint 'em, so that's okay.

flamingo image by Audubon, public domain I believe

Model Building

I'm at the very sticky-fingered stage of building a model for Broadway Our Way.  I turned in the construction drawings at last week's production meeting and construction has begun, but because it's mounted on a turntable and my Mondrian-ish design has levels and layers, it's a little hard to grasp from drawings alone.  So I'm model-building.

A teeny, teeny little 3D grid from slivers of cardboard.

Hence the sticky fingers.  It's starting to look interesting... so, naturally, I need to leave it part-built to drive to Fort Worth with fabric for Marvin's Room which is a'building at real life size.  Sigh.  Still I'll get a lunch in Fort Worth, always good.