Set Designer's Weekend

Theoretically last weekend was Off...

Actually there was an opening Saturday night (The Fantasticks) and a First Read Through (The Frequency of Death! my black and white).  Really for truly, there was most of the two days preparing the design sketches for F of D so I could show them Sunday evening.

A very pleasant occasion.  Food, meeting new people and old friends, and the excitement of hearing the play aloud.  One actor did a nifty Jack Nicholson imitation (that won't be on-stage, sadly).  There was a film crew recording the occasion...  seems there's going to be a documentary.

public domain photo, courtesy of Totally Free Images!

Reminders

In the Next Room at Kitchen Dog in Dallas is still running.  Catch it if you can - I'm really proud of this one.

The Fantasticks has now opened at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.  A lovely show.

The sale on Alice Through the Proscenium at Lulu.com ends today - here's the Secret Code.

Don't miss 'em!  Life flies by...

Not A Review - The Fantasticks

Why "not a review"?

Because I can't be impartial - whether I was involved in a particular show or not, I usually know someone who was.  And because I can't pretend to judge: to decree that This was better than That, or this was Worthy or Unworthy.  I'm incapable of making any sort of a "Top Ten" list!  I just know what I like* (or don't) at the moment and usually (not always) why.

I can recommend a show... but it's up to You to decide whether you're likely to agree with me.

The Fantasticks?  Like it.  A good rendition - close to the original show's spirit - with real talent and nice voices.  Sweetness shines through.  I really really like the text.  The songs are still fresh and clever; I love "September."  In this production, everyone on stage does well (talented youth and experience), but my especial favorites have to be the Mime and the two clownish, side-kick characters - the guy who (mis)quotes Shakespeare and the guy who dies.  Funny, funny death scenes.

Buy a ticket to Circle Theatre's show.  See if you agree with me.

Commedia dell'Arte charcters - believed public domain

* "I know what I like" is the classic definition of the non-Art Critic, I believe.  Sigh

Designer's Life - Finishing and Reading the omens

There's a tendency for a theater set to Never Be Done!

I'm off to Fort Worth again today to - I hope - finish finishing the Fantasticks set that I thought I finished Monday.  This time it's to age and tweak the big "Fantasticks" banner.  Sigh.  This is pretty normal.  Like most art projects, a theater show is never so much "finished" as "you open anyway."

The Fantasticks opens Saturday!  (Come see the New! Improved! Banner...  and the show too.)

Image borrowed from Circle Theatre

Besides, any day when the staid NPR station wakes you with Kurt Cobain in your left ear is not a day for peaceful rest-itude, or so the omens suggest.  (I liked the song, it just startled me is all.)  Speaking of public radio: here's another couple art critiques from Our Reporter in the Midwest.

Designer's Day - Speed Teching

The Tech for The Fantasticks at Circle Theatre was incredibly efficient yesterday: I dropped by to drop-off the ribbon-curtain for the "Glen" scene and spent a whopping twenty minutes trimming this to fit and discussing with the director what's left to be finished on the set.  Tech is mostly a lighting and sound day.  So the lighting designer was busy as was the music director.  Things were happening!  The mood was purposeful and efficient (not true of all Techs I've seen) and progress was, um, progressing.  Actors were arriving as I was leaving, which is how it tends to go with set designers and actors.

Today I'll head back to do finishing touches - mostly stapling up fabric strips and adding decorative painting to the prop box.

The ribbon-curtain is a fun thing...  At one point in the musical, the lovers are in the woods.  To suggest this, the original production used a "curtain" made from strips of silk.  My version of this was fun to make, in a wrestling-with-an-octopus way.

Photo borrowed from Meridian Jacobs Weblog on weaving

The Fantasticks opens Saturday!

Set Designer's Day - Full Time

Yesterday was a full day.

Most of the day was at Kitchen Dog finishing up In the Next Room: painting "snow"; stenciling around the doctor's exam room (a Frank Lloyd Wright stencil - uber cool); hanging portraits of famous doctors in the same room; and watching the rest of the team struggle with snow machines.  (Special effects = tricky.)

The evening was in Fort Worth at Circle Theatre at a production meeting and a run-through of The Fantasticks.  (Which will be charming.)  I missed lunch but got a 15 minute dinner.

On the long, late, dark drive home there were two big construction detours that got me lost and the car's CD player ate my parking lot ticket...

Today?  Drive that loop again for final-finishing at KD and meet-the-painter and furniture pull in FW.

Set Designer's Life - Drafting

It's weird, but after only thirty years...  I'm kinda bored with drafting.

If I can get started, I'm okay.  Force myself to my board and get involved with the design...  Because there's always more design!  You figure out details: how to build this?  What would be the cheapest or most straightforward assembly of materials?  What's critical to visual effect or use and what isn't?  In architecture,  materials and connections have to be substantial, but theater lasts five weeks - which allows a little cheating.  Make that joint Gaf tape!  (Love Gaf tape.)  I rather love the ability to cheat; sometimes it's easier to get the look you want working with cardboard and Gaf, than with granite and stainless steel.

There's no end to design.  After construction drawings are done you talk with the builder, who has a better idea.  Together you develop a third - even better - way.  You scribble details in your sketchbook or on scrap plywood.  Think slow and thorough at your board - then fast and collaboratively at the build site.

I've been busy at my drafting board, working on The Fantasticks for Circle Theatre.

A simple plan, yet mine own... or...  No, actually it's a redesign of Ed Wittstein's original scenic ideas for the first production of The Fantasticks, in Greenwich Village.  This is the longest running  show ever in the U. S. at 42 years.  Here's an amazing Wikipedia quote:

"The producers spent $900 on the set and $541 on costumes, at a time when major Broadway shows would cost $250,000. The original set designer, costumer, prop master, and lighting designer was Ed Wittstein, who performed all four jobs for a total of only $480 plus $24.48 a week."

Amazing?  For two reasons:  Wittstein's  ideas are still perfect for the show (I don't use "perfect" lightly); and both set budget and  designer's pay haven't changed much in forty years.  Circle's budget for both is bigger (thank goodness!), but I'd bet every designer in the DFW area (or elsewhere) has had less to spend and has been paid less on some show or other.  

Be honest.

Okay - I did the math.  According to one estimate, $ 1.00 in 1960 would equal $ 7.46 in 2011 dollars. So...  Wittstein had the equivalent of a present day $ 6714 to spend on his set and was paid (ignore the weekly) $ 4036 as a base fee... for, count 'em, four jobs... so let's say $ 1000-1200 for wearing the set designer hat.

Times haven't changed at all!  In fact, set budgets may have declined, while pay is... still pathetic.  Ouch.

Set Designer's Life - So Much Going On

So much is going on lately, I've skimped on up-dates.  (Thank goodness! you cry.)  Set designers - or set designers who want to eat or... make that creative types who want to eat - have to juggle multiple projects.

So my last week was busy.

In the Next Room is heating up: I visited a theater warehouse (thank you Theatre Three!) to pull furniture and found a Victorian fainting couch in - further miracle - the right color!  Huge luck.  Today I'll visit the Dallas Theater Center's warehouse (thank you DTC!) looking for a sideboard.  I found many $ 1.29 matching gold(ish) frames at a thrift store.  More luck.  Thursday night was Designer Run... This is going to be a good show.  Lots o' emailing re: lighting fixtures and pianos.  Saturday was Load-In, at Kitchen Dog more like "Lug In" as stock platforms and flats get hand-carried from storage to performance space.  I didn't do too much lugging (a French door), but I did I lot of let-me-measure-that-ing and consulting.  And helped paint the French doors; modify the "green" lamp (another lucky find, a Craftsman lamp); and added padding and new upholstery to the pouffe (AKA a hassock or ottoman).

public domain sofa

The Fantasticks for Circle Theatre is also starting.  I sketched a schematic plan and elevation, presented them at the first Production Meeting, and need to revise them slightly today.  Like now.  (Type faster.)   I'm excited to work on this charming play, though it doesn't offer a lot of design scope, since the original production nailed it.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is sound design advice.

Misc.  I'm gathering momentum on the new design book;  I'm aiming for a basic explanation of the creative process to the innocent... hoping to replace the unreadable text that didn't help me in Basic Design class lo! those many years ago, a book still assigned by professors, bought by students, and unread by anyone.  A book that says "ideate" when it means "think" is...  unhelpful.

Time for change, I say.  We'll see.  Meanwhile there are two scripts I should be reading.  And that plan revision...

Set Designer's Day - Research

I'm just starting on The Fantasticks for Circle Theater (if one show opens, the next starts).  I've read and noted the script - which I love - now I'm researching...

I don't usually look at earlier productions before I design - in case it over-influences me - but in this case the director wants to stay pretty close to the original production, so I've been looking at that.  I've also looked at  the touring productions.  Over-produced, I think.  Mind you, I understand exactly the problem the designers of those touring shows had: how to make this intimate show fill the usual huge venues on the road.  Fortunately, Circle's small space doesn't present that problem.  (Ha!  Circle's ceiling is only this high.)

Now I'm doing a little research on Commedia dell'Arte, the renaissance era Italian comedy troupes which much influenced this show.