Old Fashioned Drops

 A friend of mine, Joseph Cummings, recently designed Into the Breeches! for Mainstage Irving / Las Colinas.  

He used several beautiful, old-fashioned painted drops created by Dallas's former Wolf Studio.  This was an important theatrical design and scene shop - founded by Peter Wolf - that once created all the scenery for Dallas Summer Musicals (now Broadway Dallas).  Many local designers and painters worked there, including the noted designer Bob Lavallee and the late Wade Giampa.  (Who was an enormous help to me as I was finding my feet as a theater designer.  So kind and so much missed...)

THIS is the kind of thing that studio routinely produced!

 

Drops by Wolf Studio, reused for Into the Breeches! Mainstage Irving/Las Colinas, designer Joseph Cummings

Joseph has started researching the history of Wolf Studio - as I hear more about it I'll pass on more pictures.  UPDATE:  Read Joseph's blog HERE for a history of Peter Wolf's studio and these particular drops.

That downstage teaser, the swoopy proscenium design, was created in the 1970s for a touring regional / Broadway production of Sound of Music.

Addendum:  When I designed Into the Breeches! a few years earlier at Stage West, I too felt the need for painted drops... so their shop's talented scenic painter painted a few small "banners" AKA "legs":

Minimalism

Sometimes the best set is the least.  The simplest.

Simple perfection.

That's all.

A friend of mine recently designed Hamlet for an incredibly successful children's production.  Both the budget and space were modest and fine materials and carpentry skills limited.  Generally, if a designer is going to pull off a minimalist style then what IS on stage has to be exquisite.  Perfect.  But here (as often is the case) perfection was kinda hard to come by.  Still, theater has its tricks:  smooth out lumpy carpentry by stretching fabric over it.  If you still can't get a perfectly smooth wall? then texture/spatter the surface so you can't tell it's not perfect.  Fool the eye.

Whatever the clunky reality of the build, what the audience saw was clean, simple, geometry.

Hamlet at Funhouse Theatre and Film, set design by Joseph Cummings - copyrighted

I love the bold simplicity of this world.

The other remarkable thing about this photo is the use of projections - integral to this production.  Here the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's Father is enriched by this classic illustration.  (Sorry I don't know the artist's name.)  It was this image, in fact, that was the inspiration for the whole set design.

Below, you see a similar use of Millet's iconic Ophelia to illustrate her off-stage fate.

Hamlet at Funhouse Theatre and Film, set design by Joseph Cummings - copyrighted

Hamlet at Funhouse Theatre and Film, set model by Joseph Cummings - copyrighted

The model gives a better idea of the design: sliding panels plus two rolling raked platforms.  Clever.  Simple.

You can see more of Joseph's work HERE.

I love this vintage illustration of a decorator at work... 

and it gives me an excuse to plug the blog of my buddy Joseph at StageDesignByJoseph.com  A bit like my blog, it's the on-going experiences of a theater set designer - currently "decorating" a production of Pillowtalk.

From Model to Full Sized Set

Here are a couple photos for the set of The Mikado at Garland Civic Theatre, designed by my apprentice? protege'?  mentoree?  Joseph Cummings.

Interesting to see the leap in scale from model to full-sized set and how well the design makes that leap.

The handsome photos are by  www.marcelomedia.com 

Here's That Sketch

The one inspired by Edward Gorey that I mentioned in my last post - on the Stage Design by Joseph blog.