Book Sale! and Status Update

My printer Lulu.com is having a site-wide sale... Your chance to stock up on my theater set design how-to book Alice Through the Proscenium!  (And a lot of other good books too.)

Got to Lulu.com's main page HERE for the deal and HERE to see more about Alice.

Status?  The Mystery of Irma Vep opened successfully last night - always a relief.  From the set designer's point of view, the last minute addition of a leopard skin rug (beautifully painted on) worked just fine.   Lighting was lovely.  The set looked almost like the model and nothing fell off on an actor or anything, so I was happy.  This was a fiddly carpentry and painterly set and the carpenters and painters worked like fiends to get it finished - thank you!

The only upset was the sudden illness of one of WaterTower Theater's board members.  He was doing better almost immediately and was taken for further care - all good wishes to Buddy today.  After about a fifteen minute break, the actors jumped back into the show very smoothly, very professionally... which is tough to do, actually, since they build up a head of steam in performance and need that momentum.

Funny show!

Today - a meeting with the builder on The Beauty Queen of Leenane.  My own personal theater train just keeps on steaming along...

Simultaneity

In the crunch, in the last days and minutes of finishing a set, many things happen at once...

Carpenters build "finish" details there was no time for earlier, but also repair Really Big Stuff that, for some annoying reason, isn't working properly, and they add missing elements, like masking.  At the same time, painters base-coat the new "finish" stuff as soon as carpenters place it, while continuing to paint everything else.

Ladders clash.

It is a wise theatrical convention to try to paint a set in stages. First a base coat on all raw wood.  (Under stage lights raw wood glows like an Ain't-Finished-Yet sign.)  Next, as time allows, scenic painters make sure every set piece gets a sort of broad-brush version of its final treatment - colors, texture, and some delineation of any image.  In The Mystery of Irma Vep, this would be the outline and base colors of the Sphinx's head on the Egypt wagon.  As soon as possible, this fast version is improved with the final finish - perhaps what was a flat color gets scumbled in several shades or, for the Sphinx's face, careful gradations and shadows would be added.

The Mystery of Irma Vep, WaterTower Theater C

In this photo you see the Egypt wagon getting its finish painting (the Sphinx's eyes will be revised, for instance) with, behind the wagon, tall parts of the main Sinister English Mansion set and its Portrait # 1.  (Those are props and set dressing sitting around, in the way, not the painter drinking lunch.)

But because carpenters are still building, any neat three-step scenic painting process is continually interrupted to hop back to slap paint on sudden new wood or to touch-up a finished surface marred by later work.  Also, special projects are finished, like dashing through, at a single sitting, that second portrait that everyone's been only pretending to use for Act III.

Triage.

Late-stage set building and painting (and dressing! and furnishing!) is all about juggling priorities until - if lucky - the set is perfectly finished or - in the real world - the audience sits down.

The hard deadline of Opening explains the painting strategy: if, at any moment "Places!" is called, no scenery will look raw and it will all be (roughly) at a matching stage of readiness.

The Mystery of Irma Vep - amazingly enough - is going to be about done.

The Mystery of Irma Vep

That should be The Marathon of Irma Vep...

Set Designer's Weekend

Weekends off?

Ha!

I'm having fun this wonderfully gently rainy day... but I'm not off duty.

Saturday, I spent several hours sketching on the floor plan for the set for The Beauty Queen of Leenane.  It'd gone sticky on me - the vernacular architecture of this corner of Ireland (which I love) not meshing well with the seating configuration of the performance space at the MAC, or with the director's needs for blocking.  I made some progress, but it remained sticky.

So I switched to research instead.  Research is useful, but sometimes far too much more fun than other urgent, but harder parts of set design.  It can become goofing-off-with-camouflage.  However, I did find a couple good sources for Irish ephemera, which will help in set dressing.

This morning, Sunday, I woke up with my plan problems all unstuck.

The subconscious is a handy design tool, I tell ya!

Public domain photo courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net

That, or maybe today's almost Irish "soft" weather has finally put me in tune with Connemara?

Anyway, that epiphany meant another couple hours at the drafting board today.  Then, in about an hour, I need to leave for a run-through of a completely different show.  I'm eager to see The Mystery of Irma Vep on its feet - should be great fun!  But, since there's a production meeting afterwards, today is definitely a work day, not a day of rest.

I could use a nap though...

Earlier POST on the helpfulness of sleep in design.

Fun Stuff and Colleagues

I had a lively meeting today with a fellow set designer, talking about our various projects: I showed sketches for Irma Vep (upcoming at WaterTower Theater); Joseph showed sketches for Man of La Mancha; I had tiny architectural models to play with; he had photos of an enormous model for the dream sequence of a student film.  Fun.

In the course of our discussion, we found some interesting online material to share here...  work by artist Emily Allchurch that references the imaginary prisons of Piranesi. Fascinating work that I hadn't run across before.  HERE

Pianesi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - See More!

Related links: Joseph's theater design website and my own Man of la Mancha and its earlier flirtation with Piranesi.  You can see my version HERE. (Click at the left on the show's name.)


Oh! and in another online discovery, I found that D Magazine readers voted WaterTower's The Diary of Anne Frank (which set I designed) as their Readers' Pick for best theatrical production.  Pretty great news!

It's really really helpful to talk with a fellow designer.  They learn from your triumphs and mistakes and vice versa - and you can cheer and/or commiserate each other as needed.  Sometimes only another designer understands.  Having a few friendly colleagues is good both for the work and for morale,  a real comfort and help... sometimes as an extra painter or adviser, sometimes as a sanity break!

Go make friends with a colleague.