February Rush

 Well THAT month rushed by!

Since the New Year, two shows (and a wicked lingering cough)...

Now on stage:  Pompeii!! at Kitchen Dog Theater in our new home!

For this clever and darkly funny musical - written by members of the Company - the set design is a blend of the original 2018 production by David Walsh and new bits by myself... like this crazy Wheel of Misfortune.

And Arsenic and Old Lace at Pocket Sandwich Theatre

Both good and funny shows!  (Pompeii!! ends Sunday).

Cheese Burger

Public Domain Image

Some recent advice I'm trying out: ask yourself in the morning what the best thing was about yesterday.

My yesterday was pretty good, so lots to choose from.  But my fav moment was probably when I was painting and aging planks for decks for the set of Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming Pompeii!! (opening Feb. 12th!) and I got to hand our TD a cheeseborough.  (In highly technical language, this thingie is a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector.)

I finally got an answer to a long-nagging question:

"Why are these called cheeseboroughs?" 

Apparently, the word "Cheeseborough" is, or was, often stamped right across the thingie.  And, as it was much easier to ask for it by that moniker than to ask for "a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector" that became its nickname.  But the nickname also has a nickname... to Americans "cheeseborough" easily morphs to "cheeseburger" then to "burger."

So in a theater you'll occasionally hear a lighting guy call out, "Hand me a burger!"

PS Ha! But why is it stamped "Cheeseborough" you ask?  Apparently that's the name of the area of England and the foundry that makes 'em.

Busy Fall Behind, Busy Winter and Spring Ahead

 It seems like I've had time for everything but blogging!

This Fall it was finally my chance to design The Phantom of the Opera.  A melodrama version for Pocket Sandwich Theatre.  Popcorn was thrown!

This was a chance to pull out a few foam carvings etc. made for earlier shows, like the grand Water God (8'-0" long) originally designed, years ago, for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare Dallas.  Here he's to be seen hiding in the lights... just as shy as the Phantom himself.

Designing and building the Phantom's organ was the most fun.  It was mostly of pool noodles for this full-foam show, but incorporated a real keyboard, and its frame was mostly parts of a vantage baby crib.  In this horror-drenched (ha!) tale, the most fearsome sight may have been the stagehands' rear view of this organ case, a 1950's Scary Bunny!

But the BIG deal this Fall was finishing a fantasy novel!

It's a long story...  A friend and I started collaborating on a short story... that got out of hand.  Huge fun!  More news on that story later, when it's closer to public release.  Suffice, for now, to say that writing, editing, revising, illustrating, and designing a cover for this epic took a whiiiile.

What else is Up-Coming?

Theatrically there are four shows: the triumphant opening of Kitchen Dog Theater's new home with the critically acclaimed and member-created show Pompeii!!  Then Arsenic and Old Lace and Home, I'm Honey at Pocket (plus Werewolf of London in the Fall) and then the third and last installment of Stage West's Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine.

NY Public Library Archives and My Stuff Too...

 And they have theatrical photography collections!

Go check this out!  

 https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/lane/acclaimed-theatrical-photographers

Age of Innocence NY Library Collection

It's been super busy this spring - and remains busy - but I'll just throw a few photos up here.

I and You by Echo Theatre:

Echo Theatre's production of I and You - 

set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

photo by Zack Huggins

Also at Echo Theatre and by the same playwright, Lauren Gunderson, Natural Shocks:

 

Natural Shocks by Echo Theatre -

set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

photo by Zack Huggins

And, most recently, The Last Truck Stop by Crystal Jackson at Kitchen Dog Theater:

Kitchen Dog Theater, The Last Truck Stop -

set design (and photo of unfinished set)

by Clare Floyd DeVries

Where Did the Spring Go?

Poof!

That's where my Spring went.  Apparently.  

I do know I've been pretty busy.  I've been meeting monthly with my set design students at Stage West (earlier post on our design charrette  HERE).  They give their end-of-program design presentations this Sunday!  Three very motivated and hard-working college students... with schedule's even more crazy than mine.

I've also been designing several shows.  First - and still running - the cartoon-hero comedy Captain Phantasm versus the Nefarious Doctor Noir at Pocket Sandwich Theatre.  Lots of fun and flying popcorn!

Here is its basic set - an all-purpose vintage urban setting with an overlook of the city's dam and its nefariously threatened water supply!  The next sketches show the Scientist's Lab and the Villain's Lair AKA the Pink Pussycat Club.  (The pussycat sign lights up and blinks.)

But wait!  - another show opens tonight!  Echo Theatre's production of Lauren Gunderson's  Natural Shocks.  

This one-woman play is set in the character's basement and its sketches I made at the speed of the tornado she's hiding from...

I kind of like the immediacy of these sketches:

Echo Theatre production of Natural Shocks - sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

The scheduling is interesting for this - first this play and then their next,  I and You, also by Gunderson, follow each other with only a week between them.  So parts of the set are shared, basically the upstage wall with its door.  (I'll explain that set in another blog post.)  

So tonight Echo's first show opens and tomorrow their second one gets into gear to replace it in a week.  Yikes.

Also shifting into gear is the play The Last Truck Stop by Crystal Jackson at Kitchen Dog Theater, opening June 8th.

So busy.  And staying busy through June at least. 

Okay, Okay, Okay

 Sorry... it's been a crazy Spring.  But the big message here (the reason I'm finally posting) is:

Go See The Shows!

I have two shows onstage at this moment:  Into the Breeches! at Stage West in Fort Worth and Hi5 at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas.  If you're within driving range of either or both, they're worth seeing.  

Into the Breeches! is a charming play about a play.  Set in 1942, a theatrical group decides to go ahead and stage Shakespeare's "Henry" plays, even though the men are all off to WWII.  Very funny.

Hi5 is a collection of brand new short plays: wild, weird, moving, funny, thought-provoking.

More posts soon, now that I've cleared my board of three plays and a fun mentoring gig.

Kitchen Dog Fund Raiser Auction

 Celebrate Kitchen Dog Theater's 30th Anniversary (30 = Pearls) - the grittiest theater in Dallas!

Join the auction HERE or donate if you wish!

Possibly the Most Covid Day Yet, But in a Good Way

 One day last week I started the day with a wild party!

In Minecraft (so a virtual party), but a party!  We wore party hats, had a bounce house, party favors (rainbow color changing sheep), cake!  Well, we couldn't actually eat the cake (because virtual) but we fed the cake to virtual pandas who could virtually eat the virtual cake.  Other refreshments.  We inaugerated the Palace Ballroom with a dance party!  Real music from virtual jukeboxes and real dancing by virtual parrots!  Minecraft avatars can only sorta bob up and down, but we'll call it "dancing."  And we built a piano... all the stuff you do at parties!  

It was surprisingly fun.

And then I put on my mask and left to get my second shot of the miraculous vaccine.

What could be more happy-pandemic than that?

Switching topics slightly: here's the last of those Minecraft avatar portraits, this time for my guy.

I like the way Bart here is completely unaware that if he succeeds in maiming this kraken-squid that he's going to shipwreck and die...  Also, as a fellow player pointed out, Minecraft squids are non-aggressive creatures in the first place.

This portrait series has been huge fun to do!

The world I'm working in, Illias, started as a pandemic project.  It certainly became an important project for me during thiese last months.  Sanity saving probably.

If you're curious, HERE is a link to Astrophagy's You Tube videos.  And a little taster vid, "Running the Canals of Illias":

In... I almost typed "the real world", but this was, in fact, virtual too, kinda, Kitchen Dog Theater recently produced an online video play Last Ship to Proxima Centari.  (I should have promoted this here earlier - but never mind, check them out to see up-coming theater!)  I wasn't involved with this one, but I enjoyed it and thought it worked pretty well in the online format.  So theater IS continuing in some fashion.  

I did take part in their most recent Craft  episode, to talk about the development and design of the then new play End Times.  Two more episodes coming! May 20th and June 17th.  I really enjoyed being part of the conversation between the playwright, the director, and the designers.  The old video clips of me were strange to watch though: I don't think I said anything particularly dumb, but I did look younger and My Studio Was So Clean!  It was uncanny!

It made me feel homesick for theater.  

But theater is coming back.  And meanwhile there's a Minecraft city to build!

Tchotskies

 A few actor colleagues talking over old shows online remembered the set  I designed for I'll Pray For You So Hard which was a densely lived in NYC kitchen.  

Its admirable carpenter (and ditto actor) Drew Wall posted this continuity photo for when the set had to relocate.

I'll Pray For You So Hard by Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Drew Wall

(This difficult relocation was due to Fire Marshall issues.  Dallas stages were getting raided round about then for permitting issues.  This was just after the city-wide raids for fire exit issues at art galleries and months after the exceeding-occupancy raids on party rental spaces that left weeping 15 year old girls watching their quinceaneras kicked out...  I'm all for fire safety!  But there was something going on just then politically I suspect.)

Back to the tchotskies...

The official term is "set dressing" and, for certain shows, it can be the heart of the design.  For this show it was all about convincing the audience that this space was real, real lived-in, and deteriorating under the pressure... pretty much a metaphor for the whole father-daughter relationship onstage.

(This deterioration thankfully allowed me to disguise the corner of the set where I botched the wallpaper as wrinkled due to a "water leak," which ruse I amplified by dripping dirty paint water and, if I remember right, some cold Starbucks that was just sitting around.)

Other sets, other sorts of set dressing - whether bare, or just ordinary, or hoarder-level, as in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, for which I special ordered Tatos potato crisps... just to scatter the empty packages around.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Kitchen Dog Theater 

In case you're wondering, I can do sparely dressed too...

Radiant Vermin, also at Kitchen Dog Theater

Siege - Days... oh heck... a lot... 52, 53, and 54?

Time passes...

The exciting news here is mainly that I'm making good progress on the Case Study chapter of my set design book - the second (and expanded) edition of Alice Through the Proscenium: more scenic set design (to be all formal).  Anyway.  Real progress on the hard, new writing part.  Smaller triumph, the front door is now blue!  

But the big excitement is that all the fantastic folk art from my last Kitchen Dog Theater show, Alabaster, is getting auctioned off starting tonight!  Our big fund-raiser for the year, so bid big!

Here's the link to ebay:  https://www.ebay.com/usr/kitchendogtheater

Did Someone Mention Life/Work Balance?

Ha!

As if.

It's been a crazy,  crazy few months.  Five months.

Several shows, several holidays, and one family health crisis later (pro tip: don't let 89-year-olds fall over, just don't.) I'm finally able to dump some pictures here!  (I'll try to talk more about each next time, when I have more time.)

Harvey at WaterTower Theater:

Harvey, WaterTower Theater - photos by Jason Anderson

Alabaster at Kitchen Dog Theater:    On stage through March 8th!

Alabaster at Kitchen Dog Theater.  The house's bedroom with all our "folk art"

Close-up of art...

An in-progress photo of "weeding" the goat hill side of the set. 

This show is kinda a big deal - this year's Hot Play and our entry into its rolling world premier.  A Theater Jones review is HERE , a Column review HERE, and really nice article in the Dallas News with good pictures HERE.  I really enjoyed being part of this effort, working with this talented team,  and getting to meet the playwright!

The Royal Dilemma by Think India and Mainstage Irving-Los Colinas:  I'm attaching a blurry picture of the cave scene from The Royal Dilemma from last fall (the blurry may hide the not-quiiiiite-done aspects.  This was an insanely ambitious show and a ton of fun!  I never got good pictures.)

Think India Foundation's The Royal Dilemma

I will attempt to be more regular in my posts from here on out.

If no one else breaks an arm...?

Catch Up Photos

Soooo that "I'm going to Blog!" resolution went about well as expected.  It's been very busy this spring is all I can say - six shows in the last six months, one of them Off-Broadway - so there's that.

Here are a few catch-up photos at least:

The Ballad of Little Joe at WaterTower Theater - 

set design Clare Floyd DeVries, photo by Jason Anderson 

A super dramatic look at the climax of The Ballad of Little Jo  at WaterTower Theater in Addison.  Here's another view, showing the "geological" levels: 

The Ballad of Little Joe at WaterTower Theater - 

set design Clare Floyd DeVries, photo by Jason Anderson 

Speaking of geology... try cramming the Grand Canyon into a basement space!  I found a good photo of my Men on Boats at Circle Theater:

Men on Boats at Circle Theater, set design Clare Floyd DeVries, photo Chris Herrero

And here's a random memory, the first good photo I've found of the top-of-show setting for Blasted at Undermain Theatre:

Blasted at Undermain Theatre - set design Clare Floyd DeVries,

 if you know the photographer I'd love to credit them properly

Scenically this show was a clever trick... because in a couple minutes this nice hotel room becomes a bombed-out hellscape.  (The secret is that wainscot and fiber "wallpaper" above, which disguises a collapsing wall.  Shutters of the "bomb damage" swing in to change everything - very very fast!)

I'll toss in a few sketches for three shows at Kitchen Dog Theater this spring from which I don't yet have good photos:

You Got Older, Kitchen Dog Theater - set design Clare Floyd DeVries

Wolf at the Door, Kitchen Dog Theater - set design Clare Floyd DeVries 

Reykjavik, Kitchen Dog Theater - set design Clare Floyd DeVries

Reykjavik and The Ballad of Little Jo are still running!  So go by tickets if you can.

As soon as I have both the time and the energy I'll tell you about my adventure in NYC, which was exhausting and pretty cool...

The Blogging Habit - a Huuuuge Catch-Up Post

"Where have you been?" my faithful readers (all both of them) might ask.

Sorry, it's been a wild few months and I haven't posted a thing.  First there were a bunch of shows and family health issues and holidays, then family weddings and more shows, and now home repair and yet more shows...  Blogging - like exercising - turns out to be hard to do regularly, but much much harder to do if you get out of the habit!

I'm trying to regain the blogging habit.

So, what did I miss blogging about?

RECENT SHOWS:

The shows at the end of last year included Once, my first show ever at Theatre Three.  I never got to see the final show.  We had tickets and friends lined up to see Opening, but spent the evening at the hospital instead (all's well now, so no worries); rehearsals however were wonderful!  Here's a sketch, inspired by Dublin's architecture and street art scene.

Once at Theatre Three - sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

Almost simultaneous was Men on Boats at Circle Theatre (my last there as Resident Set Designer - they're getting rid of residents, new management, new philosophy).  Suggesting the Grand Canyon on Circle's low-ceilinged stage was a bit of a trick!  Here's the model... which was finished and painted in a hospital room.  (A great conversation starter with nurses.)

Men on Boats at Circle Theatre - model and design by Clare Floyd DeVries

The actual set was built from ordinary flats and platforms with an added layer of carved foam and then paint.  Big thanks to the great carpenters and painters who pulled this off with while I was preoccupied with other things.  Thank you.

At Kitchen Dog Theater, Radiant Vermin was a completely different kind of design - a minimalist sort of Monopoly house all-white stage with spiffy model house footlights.

Radiant Vermin at Kitchen Dog Theater - sorry, I don't know who the photographer is (tell me and I'll eagerly credit them).  

The floor and wall - to ensure perfect, seamless whiteness - were built very smooth and flat, then covered with stretched muslin painted, and frequently re-painted, white, white, white.

Radiant Vermin at Kitchen Dog Theater - sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

And, lastly, Kiss Me Kate at MainStage Irving Las Colinas.

Kiss Me Kate at MainStage Irving Las Colinas - a construction drawings, just for variety

It was a little hectic just last Fall!  

Since then You Got Older at Kitchen Dog has opened and closed...  

I don't have any good images for that one yet, but I'll add them asap.  Basically, it was one of those scripts with many varied settings that are difficult to do on a small stage - reality, fantasy, garden (with growing/dying bean plants), bedroom, kitchen, dive-bar, hospital room, woods during a violent snow storm, imaginary cabin snowed-in during that blizzard...  

Our solution was to build a seemingly simple wall of "weathered" wood slats that opened up or pulled out and thus transformed to suggest the different locations.  I compared it to a Swiss watch... but maybe more a Swiss cuckoo clock?

You Got Older at Kitchen Dog Theater - sketch plan by Clare Floyd DeVries

UP-COMING SHOWS:

Several exciting things are coming up, including Office Hour at Circle Theatre (my first as a visiting designer), Wolf at the Door at Kitchen Dog, and - the BIG excitement! - my first Off-Broadway show, an Equity Showcase of Self-Injurious Behavior at Urban Stages in NYC.  Can't show sketches of this yet - the director needs to see them first - but I thought I'd blog the whole process here as it goes along.  

So, new section...

Self-Injurious Behavior - the Off-Broadway Adventure:

To date, this show - written by Dallas actress/playwright Jessica Cavanagh -  has had a first, very successful, run at Theatre Three's downstairs space Theatre Too.

This run was so successful that it was decided to pick the whole thing up and move it to New York: props, costumes, director, whole company, and designers...  except for the original set designer - who had conflicts - and the original set - which wouldn't fit this completely different stage.

Hence me!  A lucky fluke... which is often how Big Breaks work I notice.

More on this show as it develops...

Ironbound

Last weekend, last chances to see Ironbound at Kitchen Dog Theater!

Two Things...

Two completely unrelated things:

First:

Whenever you're shopping on Amazon, please consider using the Amazon Smile page HERE where you can select Kitchen Dog Theater as recipient of free money! (Amazon donates 0.5% of qualified purchases.)  

Please and Thank You!  We're saving to fix up our future Dog House so we appreciate every penny.

Second:

A lovely and timely quote from Henry David Thoreau...

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion...

till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place which we can call reality and say, 

"This is and no mistake."

Isn't that a wonderful image?  

Courtesy of PublicDomainPicture.net

Anyone who's ever sat on a riverbank wriggling their toes in the green-y mud down to the cool, water-smoothed limestone below, you know how reassuring that solid, non-slip footing is.

Today - when life and especially politics! - seem especially slimy with opinion and lies... well, a fact that's an actual FACT is a comfort.  I believe strongly that at this moment it is our civic duty to wriggle down through the muck to find truth.  

Then to act on that.

The surface under our feet is shifting at this moment - rules for healthcare, the environment, the internet, education, immigration, trade, foreign wars and relations - all  changing.  We need to let our legislators know what we need and want RIGHT NOW.  

We each need to figure out what truth we stand on.

(Thanks to Chris Tucker's review of the new Thoreau biography for reminding me of this Walden quote.  Time to reread that book... and to look for that new bio: Thoreau: a Life by Laura Dassow Walls.)

Dogged

You have to have dogged determination to run a small theater company.

Read a good article about my company, Kitchen Dog Theater, and our struggles with venues, fund raising, and homelessness HERE.

Photo by Clare DeVries

As you read the Dallas Morning News article, please keep in mind that BOTH shows described as interrupted by the Fire Marshall were ones I designed!  

Basic problem?  We need much money to finish out our new space!  So we can move into it!

Believed Public Domain image

I have to say though that this new show, Trevor, is worth all the hassle - a really good script.  Good production.  Come see it!