Too Cool for This World

 A fun new You Tube video from my buddy AstrophagyMC  HERE

While coviding here at home for the last couple weeks (yeesh) I've been playing a lot of Minecraft.  This vid doesn't show much of my work, but it does show the fun of the world our team has been working on, most lately on a city named Ptolith.  And this particular build in the vid is the city's crown, the Time Temple.  (The Biiiig circle at bottom left on this map.)

The city of Ptolith - in the world of Aenoriia

imagined by AstrophagyMC and his team

Huge fun... and something like Folk-Terraforming?  Outsider-City-Planning?  Amateur (mostly) Architecture?  I think we're edging into Art territory now...

What a Month

Theater is a marathon not a sprint.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I've been working flat out... mostly trying to get Mainstage Irving's The Addams Family open.  

And then - instead of collapsing - trying to catch up on my other shows: Death of a Salesman at Fun House Theatre and Film, Sexy Laundry at WaterTower Theater,  and The Importance of Being Earnest at Tarrant County College NE.

Opening night at The Addams Family had a few rough spots in sound and lights, but the set and projections were DONE.  (The paint was even dry.)  An accomplishment of heroic proportions let me tell you.

The Addams Family, Mainstage Irving Los Colinas - photo by Mainstage

Here you can see one scene set in the Addams' conservatory, a combination of built scenery and 3D projection by Nathan Davis.  This was a show that really was about collaboration!  And even more about drawing than I expected: the Addams Family originated as cartoons in The New Yorker, so it seemed right that the projections be largely drawings rather than photos, but, in fact, they were often, as here, a combination of hand sketches (architecture) and photos (sky, moon, and cobblestone floor).  My original background sketch was actually an assemblage of three sketches of about 14" long so it's kinda wild to see them blown up to almost 30' wide.

The projections for this show are fantastic!  Three dimensional spaces into which we fly in or out, doors and gates open, animations - Fester's "Moon" scene is wonderful - all just amazing.  Nathan did an incredible job.  For my part, I'm particularly proud of how well the projected scenery and the built scenery merge.

Even more merge-y than intended, actually...

Because of the press of time, much of the detail on the built set that was supposed to be real 3D construction, ended up as hand drawn/painted linework too, like all the paneling and trim shown here.  Which help coordinate the two worlds alright.

My hand is tired.

If you have the chance, go see the show - a still photo just can't show the coolitude of the projections. 

(And, you know, the cast are... incredibly good.  A very accomplished and fun show.)

Variations

Sometimes the first sketched set design you show a director is exactly what they had in mind.

Sometimes it takes a few tries to work through the issues of the performance space and the particular production and to understand each other.

I'm usually lucky in hitting on a scheme the director likes fairly quickly, but sometimes... not.  Multiple designs are more likely to happen when you're working with a director or producer for the first time, or designing for a new venue, or are talking (and scanning drawings) long distance.  Right now I'm doing all three for a production of Sweeney Todd in Prague.

The assignment is a low-budget set that's relatively easy to build and put up and down in a rented theater space, a set that will act as a sort of screen for lighting and projections that will suggest the period and specific settings.  In a phone call the director spoke of overlapping ships' sails, shrouds, cemeteries, Victorian engravings, the drape of fabric...

As the Prague team looked at theaters, the director morphed his images of the production to fit the nature of each stage.  (Luckily, they'd settled on one theater before I came on board.)

Back at my board this is all turning out to mean lotso versions:

Version #1:

Sweeney Todd - the Drapery version

I like this one.  Movable fabric "wings" could pivot in and out of the stage to subdivide it, make dramatic reveals, or change the look.  Projections and lighting would animate these draped panels. I also enjoyed inventing a way to turn a photo of the theater into a perspective of this design: the 3D drapery effect is actually 3D drapery (made from thin tracing paper plus glue and colored pencil) squashed into the scanner. 

Version #2:

Sweeney Todd - the Sails version

These next two versions had to be drawn fast (no time to play with the world's flattest modeling technique!), so I'm back to ink and colored pencil.  (A bit washed-out here. Bolder in real-life.)  These represent the extremes of my understanding of the director's visions.  The platform added at SL (your right) is to create the bodies-exit-through-the-floor usual for Sweeney and a "real" oven door.  (Version #1 assumed a more minimal faking-it approach.)

Version #3:

Sweeney Todd - the Graveyard version

Essentially the same plan as Version #2 dressed differently.  This Graveyard version is fun, but this set is getting harder to build.  I'm starting to worry about budget and time.  Flurry of emails between designers, directors, technical director, director... a mix of pragmatic worries and enthusiasm for more elaboration.  Much back-n-forthing, resulting in:

Version #4:

No pretty sketch yet, just a hasty plan that amalgamates aspects of the previous three schemes while trying, desperately!, to also simplify things. 

As you can see, there's some real debate about what this Sweeney should be, with some conflict between the ideal and the budget-real, between several competing ideas in the director's mind, and (I betcha) by now between personalities too...

Email from the director.

Stop Press.

Version # 2A now in the works...

Collaboration

I had a really productive, collaborative meeting with a director the other day... working out the design for Circle Theatre's production of Becky's New Car.  Rare.  Really rare.  Here's a link to an earlier post on what (I think) is needed to achieve it.

This fun meeting was held at my house, because my ride refused to start.  Again!  (Link to that saga, for those interested.)  But boy did my Firestone dealer - which installed the faulty starter - respond well!  I was very impressed.  I mean, I had three guys from the shop on my driveway almost instantly and a fixed-for-free car back on my drive same day.  Amazing.

This vehicular hitch delayed me visiting Tech on As You Like It until the next day: the production is going to be beautiful I think (acting and design "beautiful").

It also delayed my shopping for fabrics for Five Woman Wearing the Same Dress.  For that we email-ordered an actual Laura Ashley bedspread.  Now that that's arrived I'm trying to find a coordinating striped fabric for "wallpaper"... but these late '80s early '90s colors are out of style, so I'm having a hard time.  Today's blues are tinged with green, while this is a pretty pure blue-blue.  And the director and producers prefer a buttery yellow to an egg-yolk-y one, also an unfashionable choice.  The two colors together?   Aaaargh!

I've worked through all my favorite fabric shops - more fabric shopping today.

Second Thought on Collaboration

Thinking about yesterday's schematic design meeting, I ought to repeat how rare collaboration is.  You always want it - you so seldom get it.  Why?

Nothing is more fun than kicking ideas around with someone!  But not only do the stars have to align... everything else does to.  I've noticed that there do seem to be some minimum requirements to make a design session work:

1)  Compatible people - and not too many of them:  The best collaborative design sessions seem to involve 2-4 people: more than that is a committee.  ALL these folks must (for this session) be relaxed, low-ego, bright, trusting, feeling a bit playful, and aimed at the same goal: a good design.  (See how easily this can go off-track?)  Add in natural personal sympathies and antipathies that affect the flow.  It's not that everyone has to be friends - often those fondest can't design together - it's more whether mind-to-mind you "get" what the other is saying.  Perhaps that's why relative strangers can find this easier... they can just handle ideas, in an playing-a-game way, without reading under-layers of feeling?  People.  Complicated.
2)  Management: The meeting has to be playtime: rough-n-tumble, giddy maybe, bouncy with ideas... yet everyone has their say and a respectful listening.  In the end, Mom or Dad decides what to do.
3)  Preparation: Can't do much till everyone has read the script and seen the space.  Have a floor plan and research materials.  And sketching stuff.
4)  Time: Idea-kicking doesn't need to take long - sometimes ten minutes is enough - but it can't feel rushed.
5)  A Supportive Atmosphere: Best is a quiet, comfortable room with a nice big, smooth table and food and drink - but just some of all that will work.  If folks are focused enough, noise can be okay or even help, as long as you can hear each other easily.  If ideas are exciting enough, you can ditch most of the comfort.  But you gotta have the table!  A clipboard might work, but I bet the ideas would be as cramped as the sketches.  A tile-topped table is just a tease - puleeeese!

I'd love comments on this one.