Dallas Critics' Forum Awards

Ta-Da!

Great news!  The play Ruth by Vicki Caroline Cheatwood at Kitchen Dog Theater was chosen as one of the best new plays in the DFW Metroplex for 2012.

I really liked this play.  Very gratifying to see it recognized.  Way to go Vicki!

Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Matt Mrozek

HERE's an earlier post on Ruth with a few more pictures.

Ruth Photo

I just saw this (rather gorgeous) photo of Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater, taken by Matt Mrozek.

From a set designer's point of view, a good photographer who actually shoots sets along with actors is a rare jewel.  Many thanks.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

I loved this show!  A great script with a powerful idea (Vicki Cheatwood); ideal cast and director (Tim Johnson); really in-sync design team...  And, as you can guess from this photo, I especially loved the lighting by Aaron Johansen.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

One side note on that lighting:

See the coolo lighted slots between the wood strips of the wall behind the guitarist?  At the same time Ruth was on-stage, the Dallas Theater Center's set for its Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat had a similar detail.  (Scenery designed by the amazing Bob Lavalee.)  The DTC accomplished their effect by many man-hours of cutting strips of Plexiglass TM to fit between their slats.

We did the exact same thing in half an hour using $1 worth of masking tape.

Funny.

Just goes to show that ideas aren't always limited by budget.  In our case, the wonderful precision of the set builder (Steve Leary) made that cheap masking tape ploy work.

Pictures in the Paper

Part of the set designer's career is to keep track of what "the papers" - nowadays mostly blogs - have to say about your shows. Luckily, reviews for my now-on-stage productions have been pretty good, which is always a relief.

(Many theater people say they never read reviews... yet somehow they always know.  Psychic, you think?  Me, I read the reviews.)

Here's a sampling:

Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theater

Sketch for Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theater

HERE's a pretty detailed review of WaterTower's Boeing, Boeing at CriticalRant.com

Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater

And a review of Kitchen Dog's Ruth HERE at The Observer.

Next up - Circle Theatre's Mistakes Were Made.  I thought the show and the chief actor were electrifying in rehearsal!  Guess we'll see what the critics have to say soon... opens Friday.  Tomorrow!

Or, better still, buy a ticket to one or all of these fine shows and form your own opinion.  

Kitchen Dog Theater - New Works

It's that time of year - Kitchen Dog Theater's New Works Festival.

My show Ruth headlines!

But there are also lots of exciting readings of brand-spandy-new-plays by, you know, living writers.  Come listen.  Help develop the next Great American Drama!  (Besides, we throw great parties.)

More information on Kitchen Dog's website HERE.

Inspirational Photos

Sometimes when you're trying to find a design idea it helps to look around...

For some weeks now I've been trying to come up with a schematic design for Smokey Joe's Cafe, a sort of '50s musical revue(ish), or rather, an evening made up entirely of music - no book - that seems to be more unified than a typical random revue, yet has no strong story-line either.  Scenicly, it has a strong sense of Time, but not so much of Place.  Specific settings change, as they tend to in a collection of songs.  Ambiance, maybe, is what this show demands.

I find musical reviews difficult, since sound isn't my leading sense (I favor words and pictures) and my imagination tends to fasten on stories and specificity...

So I've been struggling.

The plan?  Oh, the plan was easy - I had it half sketched before I left the initial meeting with the director.  But the "look"... really tough.  All that came to my mind were '50s cliches not worth drawing up.  The only thing that seemed hopeful was the lovely name of the show: "Smokey Joe's."  There seemed promise, though in fact all I developed from that was badly doodled smoke curlicues on the edges of all my notes made in other shows' meetings.

So I've spent a while flipping through books or the Internet, researching, looking for a hint.

And on the morning I absolutely HAD TO FINISH, I finally found my inspirational photo:

Believed public domain photo - from Imprint

I won't include the sketch yet (if you can, please go see the set itself!  at WaterTower Theater), but the secret was the circle.  Smoke rings gave me the design nudge I needed for a good set for Smokey Joe's Cafe.

What else is up lately?  Busy, busy.  Lots of emailing on various shows; lots of shopping mostly for Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower which opens soon; and several hours painting on Ruth at Kitchen Dog which also Techs this weekend and opens soonest.

Painting Slats...

And slats and more slats...

My Ruth set is going to have a built-out-of-pallets look, so here we all are painting the slats for the pallets.  (The blue box is the side of the theater building.  I'm the one bending over so elegantly, fiddling with a paintbrush-onna-stick.  Co-Artistic Director Tina Parker is the only one facing the camera - wearing her "Boss Hogg" Tshirt - and wonderful, wonderful volunteers are behind us, painting.  Thank you, volunteers!)

Later in the day, as the shade disappeared, this got to be a very hot job indeed.

Building Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Tim Johnson

Furniture Pull

This morning I'm meeting at a helpful theater's warehouse to pull furniture for my up-coming show Ruth, at Kitchen Dog.

It's a huge, HUGE help to poor and struggling theaters (i.e. all theaters) when those with furniture, props, or other assets share their wealth.  I am, personally, grateful for these loans.  It doesn't just improve a show, often it makes it possible.  Especially for period work.

In KD's In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play even the impressive legs of the doctor's table were loaners.  Sure, we could have built that table without 'em, but it wouldn't have looked nearly as solidly, Victorianly, authoritative as that exam table HAD to look - appearing a very Altar in the Temple of Science.

Those legs helped both sell this Doc's authority... and make the sexy carryings-on funnier.

In Fort Worth - enlightened theater world! - one university shares a warehouse with many theaters.  All put furniture in it, all are welcome to borrow it out again, with a simple sign-out book and an honor system.  Dallas?  Nope.  Few theaters can afford a warehouse, but if you call around, many kind groups, schools, or individuals will offer what you need.  (I've had sofas out of living rooms sometimes!)  Theatre Three is particularly kind and helpful and rich in furniture.  Thank you Theatre Three!

Now look again at that photo of In the Next Room...

In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play - photo by Matt Mrozek

See the handsome antique cabinet on the upstage wall?  Holding medical books and instruments?  It helps set the time period, reinforces the doctor's wealth and authority - literally gives him weight - plus it's the only real piece of furniture in the room, almost on the set, so scenically it's quite valuable... (And, as a designer, I love that it has fat corner "legs" too, so it talks to my table.  It's funny.)

Wouldn't be allowed to borrow that this year.

For some reason - no one's been told why - the Dallas Theater Center, which has a grand and very rich storehouse of furniture and props (paid for, in part, by tax money and in tiny part by my ticket purchases over the years)... Well, they've stopped loaning out.

No loans.  Nobody.

This is a great loss.  I'm very grateful for their furniture over the last decade, as I know many many other designers and theaters are, all around town.  The Dallas Theater Center's stock has enriched plays in the entire region.  They have by far, by multiples of tens and hundreds or thousands, the budget for furniture of any other theater in Dallas, Fort Worth, or all the cities around.  Their warehouse is a treasure trove!  I'm sure their generosity cost some time, but... surely the flagship of Dallas theater thinks supporting this region's theater is worthwhile?

I'm heart-sick that DTC's generous lending has stopped.

I wish the Dallas Theater Center would reconsider.  Please loan out to us little guys again.  We may be poorer, but we do good theater too.  We would appreciate your help.

(More on furniture: Return of the Dreaded Sofa and Pulling Furniture, an earlier post on the topic.)

A Grab Bag

Lots of little notes today:

On my desk is a lovely old copy of Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance by Roger Smith.  My copy is old (found at Half Price Books for a whopping $5, love that place), with a hand written note of "1952" in it.  But after checking online, it looks like the book was actually copyrighted in 1908... which explains the lovely illustrations.  Public domain!  Wahoo!  No doubt you'll be seeing images from it in future posts too.

The Grand Canal, illus. from Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance by Roger Smith - public domain

Also in books, I'm presently reading, well, several things.  Among them the very funny and eye-opening history of the American '5os as a memoir by Bill Bryson, The Thunderbolt Kid.  Also a revisionist history of interior design since 1600 (whose title I can't recall this second), more on that later.

On the Film Fest front: I recently watched Cedar Rapids.  I was only accidentally watching it at first - it was on in the room - but I was soon caught up in the adventure and misadventures of the hero, a naive small-town-Iowa insurance salesman on his first visit to his industry convention in the wicked city of Cedar Rapids.

Epic!  The guy's an Odysseus on stormy seas indeed - harrowed to his soul by the temptations of this larger pond.  A fascinating and very funny movie.

Also movie related: Aardman Animations new film The Pirates! is open and I want to see it badly.  These guys are brilliant... Wallace and Grommet?  Chicken Run?  Brilliance in stop motion Claymation.

On the set design frontier: I'm scrambling to keep up with several projects.

Boeing, Boeing is being built.  Its flats (walls) are largely built, leaning around the shop ready to get installed, as the main stage level is built, using the stock steel joists WaterTower Theater has on hand.  On top of that will go a few steps and a slightly raised rear "hallway" with a French "wrought iron" railing.  I got to take a field trip to a shop where the decorative curly-cue part of the railing is waiting - not actually bent metal, but cut from plate steel by very high power and focused water jets.  Fascinating machinery.

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Mistakes Were Made is also being built.  This show will have a puppet fish in it, so the real complications of this simple set are all around how to build this fish tank area to make the fish visible, yet the puppeteer screened.  Tricky.

At Kitchen Dog, Ruth is getting close to building.  The carpenter is considering the drawings - which have been revised a bit as rehearsals, the script, and the director have evolved the work.  Working with a live playwright and developing text is always interesting.  (Earlier post on living playwrights HERE.)

And, of course, there are a couple shows on the drawing board.

Phew!

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