A Week in the Life

This week may not be exactly typical, but it's not uncommon either.  A set designer's schedule can go something like this:


Weekend - spend some time preparing for the coming week by finishing one set of construction drawings and starting the next.  Also pulling portfolio photos of work for an up-coming introduction/audition/meeting thingie.

Monday - up at 6:30 a.m.  Breakfast.  Scan and email one (small) set of construction drawings for one show.  (Application Pending at Circle Theater.)  Pull clothes (and even iron!) for the interview.  Have the interview.  Seems to go okay... maybe
I'll get the new show?  While wondering that, finish construction drawings then make a bunch of copies of those other drawings and design sketches for the other show you know you do have.  (Ironbound at Kitchen Dog Theater.)  Grab something out of the refrigerator at random to gobble while doing email one handed, then rush to the first read of Ironbound.
  
A fascinating reading!   Great cast.   Also got to meet for the first time in a while several favorite people from other shows. Snacks and chit-chattery very pleasant.  Production meeting afterwards.  (Have to be shushed at one point.  Scenic talk is too engrossing!)  

Sketchbook doodle during the Ironbound first read-thru

My sketchbook is really a Day Book, where I record whatever I'm 

thinking, reading, or researching about, plus meeting notes and

my earliest design sketches... and occasional grocery lists.

Home at 11:00 p.m.  Eat a sandwich in the bath because that refrigerator grab and snack at the Read-Thru weren't quite enough.  Also a drink.  Nothing better than a hot bath and a cold drink.  And a book.

Tuesday - sleep a little late - 7:30.  Create a model for yet another show so that theater's board of directors can approve the design.  (Sister Act at Mainstage Irving - Las Colinas.)  This involves making yet many more copies of yet more design sketches.  I'm getting to know the owner of the local copy place!  Hopefully I'll also find time to scan and send a director copies of an old 1950s version of "The Story of the Little Red Hen."  (Which makes more sense than it sounds like it would.  Really.)  I have a head start on model building in that I had the forethought to get supplies like foamcore board last week.  

Dinner at home with family, woohoo!  Wonder what I'll cook?

Here's an example of early design sketches - these are trying to

figure out how to make a few wagons (3) multi-task as about

87 different locations in Sister Act.  It is SO HANDY to have a 

sketchbook always on hand.  I buy my purses sized to hold one.

Wednesday - will be, in the evening, the production meeting that goes with that model.  Earlier comes the all-important lunch seminar on the American Disabilities Act which I need as continuing education credit to keep my architectural license current.  Lotso note taking!  

(My sketchbook is interesting lately: notes and sketches on several shows; ditto from my jury duty... sad sketches; ditto on an imaginary planet I'm designing just for fun; plus nice serious architectural ADA notes to balance out the frivolities.)

Thursday - a coffee-klatch with a fellow designer to look forward to.  

Friday - By now I need to have answered all the questions generated by my flurry of drawings - which may mean MORE drawings! - and have every show sorta settled for the weekend.  

Will I make it?

Designer's Life - Up and Down

It's just simple physics - the Conservation of Energy - but after you, the designer, have expended a lot of energy - mental, emotional, physical - in getting a design built and finished, after you've crunched right up to your deadline or Opening... you must rest.  Maybe you crash.

I'm pretty steady in temperament, even-tempered and cheerful most of the time, but I feel my energy and mood dip after the push to finish a big project.  I might be tired and crabby for a couple days.

In olden days (like the 1880s of In the Next Room) I'd have declared myself a bit hysterical and have wrangled myself a nice "cure" at a scenic spa or an amusing Chautauqua... or, if I couldn't get that, at least I'd have had a nice alcoholic swig of Mrs. Lydia Pinkum's Tonic or popped a tasty Liver Pill.

So that famous "artistic temperament"?  The manic-depression (nowadays called bi-polar) nature of many artists?  I get it.  It's perfectly logical.  A little extreme, maybe, but perfectly logical.

Set Designer's Life - Project, Service, or Ego?

Thinking about my previous post on getting along with people in a show, I ought to mention the other points of view.

My mantra tends to be, "I'm in this for the design."  So I judge decisions against that, asking: is this decision/action/behavior/hot-tempered outburst... better artistically, truer to the text,  or better for the show?  ("Better" is filtered through the playwright's, director's, and team's goals, not just personal whim.)  You might call this the Project Oriented camp.

You can make a good case for a Service Oriented point of view, where the designer serves the show, of course, but primarily serves the director.  (Directors like this!)  Many theater schools seem to teach this approach.  Or the designer might be yoked to the producers - a resident designer maybe.  Don't be fooled, service-first designers often design wonderfully well - they have to, to get and keep the gig.

Ego Oriented is where some designers pitch their tents.  This becomes slowly obvious in their work: their sets express a strong design idea - often brilliantly! - but are ungenerous in supporting the show itself, unhelpful to actors, director's, or other designers' work or to producers' and builders' difficulties.

In the real world, of course, we are, as somebody put it, "variously moved."  Some decisions you make for an artistic reason, some for a pragmatic.  Some days you need to please the director; others, the producers need help.  But it helps to know in which philosophical camp you want to pitch your tent: when confused, you have guidance!  Principles even.

Much of this difference in approach may be temperament, not choice.

My own first loyalty tends to be to the Project, though I believe in service, teamwork, and pragmatism.  Service orientation can feel acolyte-like or have career advantages: you might bond with a director and ride their coattails around the regional theater circuit.  (Assuming enough talent - always assuming talent and hard work.)  The Ego thing... I'm biased against (ego hurts the show and is obnoxious), but egotistical designers succeed.  Look at Frank Lloyd Wright!  Some designers think they need to be divas, since the gullible equate ego with talent.

So pick a camp - if you can.