No Matter How Well You Think You Understand...

You can think through your design all you like beforehand, think you completely understand every detail, even have sketched it at a small scale, yet when you sit down and start drawing the construction drawings you always find yourself thinking, "Hmmm... How does that actually work?"

Design never stops.

This time the "Hmmm..." moment came in detailing NYC skyline cut-outs for [Title of Show].

The Empire State Building - photo by Bobby Mikul, publicdomainpictures.net

Tech Details

It's a lovely thing to have a set pretty well finished for Tech.

This does not always happen.

But today I was onstage doing the sort of little but vital details I always hope to be able to do forTech. Instead of painting huge - belated - items or hauling heavy - belated - furniture, I got to haul wonderfully light thumbtacks!

These tacks have become - for me at least - a bit of an in-joke.  They read so oddly in a Rehearsal Report but turn out to be an important safety issue: an actor is slammed up against the cork board.  Obviously push pins would hurt and pop loose while nice flat Safety Thumbtacks will not.  See?

Details are important.  

public domain photos - messed with

Among the other details I worked on today for this set's imaginary Break Room:

1)   A few more signs.
2)  A clutter of mop, mop bucket, etc. in the hall outside the door.  (A dozen people may see this.)
3)  Covering table tops with plastic.
4)  Adding faux "store" labels on shopping carts.

and

5) Dressing the inside of a cabinet so that, when opened, it looks lived in too.  I raided the prop room for misc. coffee mugs, glasses, a Girl Scout cookie box, and misc. hot chocolate, tea, and other hot-drink boxes... some filched from the theater's  real break room.

Each detail (which the audience will hardly notice) adds noticeably to the success of the set by making it safer, better under theatrical lights (those dark tables), or simply more realistic.

Adding a mere mop bucket outside a door can make a whole theatrical world deeper.

Earlier post on thumbtacks HERE.

Little Details

Well, the Beauty Queen set is inching closer to finished.  In a minute I'll head out once more in my paintin' pants (a pair of jeans so stiff with paint they stand on their own) to do touch-up painting on the set.

But, on the way, I need to do some errands to:

1)  The copy place, for an enlargement of an Irish newspaper header page, to top my stacks of Dallas Morning Newses with.  (Even onstage newspapers get costumes.)
2)  The dollar store, for cheap mats-of-plastic-foliage to put in rain troughs to "tune" the sound of falling water into a proper "rain" sound instead of the present water-on-water splash that's more like "pee."
3)  Also more moss - to make more fake "peat" for this Irish fire.
4)  The art/craft store, for spray wood-stain to "age" my '50s fabric sink-skirt, which is looking too pale under the stage lights, plus, if I can find any, fake spider webs left over from Halloween to show that these characters don't dust much.
5)  My grocery store, for plastic "butcher-block" stickem paper for a kitchen counter top and also a mouse trap to put under the refrigerator.

The audience notices details...

public domain image courtesy of reusableart.com

Details

Part way through the rehearsal process for The Diary of Anne Frank the director made a comment that it'd be nice to add some set dressing of kitchen clutter - dishes, can goods, that sort of thing.  And it hit me that, of course, we couldn't just plunk down a couple cans of Campbell's Soup.  It would need to be WWII vintage Dutch cans of... what brand?  Knorr maybe?

Research is indicated!

Okay, okay, Italian Knorr, but the cutest picture so far...