News Break

Just found out I won a Critics' Forum Award for the set of The Explorers Club at Stage West and WaterTower Theater.  Pretty cool!  (Critics Forums are hard to get hold of.)

Many thanks - I'm thrilled.  I'm also grateful for the HUGE amount of help from everyone at Stage West who beautifully built, painted, upholstered, created faux books, helped set dress, loaned us taxidermy animal heads (from a WaterTower backer, thank you!), and generally made the set possible.  Twice.

The Explorers Club - Stage West and WaterTower Theater

Note the bar top of cheapo "granite" plastic laminate and foam pool noodles covered with vinyl,

and the painted mahogany.  Behind it is a Plexiglas and Modge-Podge-ed "stained glass" window 

which I decorated, now decorating my studio.

General woodsy library with many stuffed animal heads.  Those books, 

believe it or not, are mostly faked by Stage West's prop designer.

Note the globe used as the topper of the stair's newel post.  There was a funny 

slapstick moment when a character leaned on it.

More libraryishness...  You can see an antelope head.  Photos courtesy of Stage West

My original sketch.  We never found a taxidermy bear, but we were 

kindly loaned a suit of armor instead!  The bar's support lions were another kind loan.

First Steps...

But if I'm going to show the development of Fun House's Romeo and Juliet set I really need to show the rough sketches that come before the "pretty" drawing (that drawing a designer uses to persuade the director and producers that This Is The Set They Want!).  HERE is that "pretty" sketch.

Here are some of those rough sketches.

These particular doodles were done in the near dark of another theater - Stage West - during an interval in the Tech rehearsal for The Explorers Club.  (Now onstage in Addison at WaterTower Theater - get yer tickets!)

Designers often do overlap shows - have to really - there being not enough weekends in the year or dollars in the fees not to.  Besides, by the time Tech arrives the set designer's job ought to be largely done - now you're mostly checking for goofs, omissions, and minor issues like light leaks or ragged hems on sofas - so that, if things are going smoothly, you have some extra headroom to think about the next show.

So this pic?

Documents me thinkin' about the next show.  In these sketches I was trying to work out the texture of the two towers and whether a flare to the base of the Capulet's would look right... and how to support that balcony anyway...?

Preliminary sketches for Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet- 

by Clare Floyd DeVries in the theater of Stage West during Tech for The Explorers Club.