Deep Breath

Phew!

I've been heads-down working for the last few weeks.  But, tonight, Uptown Player's production of Harbor opens!  With what I think is a good set, a Greek Revival house restored by an architect in Sag Harbor.

The play itself you ask?

Really good - with a fantastic cast.  Both entertaining and touching.  (Go see it!)

This was my second show to work with set dresser and interior designer Kevin Brown - who acquired furniture, art, and set dressing and painted and...  Worked really hard!  But we in theater take that for granted, just as we assume carpenters, painters, and designers (and actors, directors and many more) will all slog away faithfully to get the work finished in time for the audience.   It's hard work.

But that's unremarkable.  What I do want to remark on is the clever way he used pasted-up photos  to explain furniture choices to the director and producers:

Image by Kevin Brown - copyrighted

This composite of images over a photo of the as yet unpainted set was created using, I believe, Powerpoint, but could be done in Photoshop or even with scissors and tape.  What a great way to explain things!  It was part of a neat package that laid out various choices for furniture, lighting, and art.

As often happens, the final choices of furniture include some stuff from stock, some borrowed from several sources, and some bought from less expensive stores like IKEA and Walmart.  The art is all on loan (and aren't we being careful with it!).

Meanwhile,  construction on Other Desert Cities at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth is almost complete, with painting proceeding, but furniture and carpet gathering has hit a snag.  The budget is forcing some changes, but mostly the handy-dandy warehouse and in-house storage are not producing the furniture we want....

Budgets!  Availability!!  The Dreaded Sofa!!!!  Argh.

At the very least there will need to be a LOT of reupholstering before any of this furniture goes on stage.  But we're still looking...

And there have been meetings.  Many, many meetings.

HighBrow? or Lowbrow?

One of the funnest... most fun?  okay, most giddy! joys of being a theater designer is getting to play riffs on the "class" game.  For any show where you determine the look of a character's environment, you get to peg them into their little round or square hole in society's Game of Class.

(America class-less?  Hardly.)

Choosing just the right detail or set dressing to illustrate the character's situation and aspirations is fun.

So today's little internet gem (thanks BoingBoing) is a 1949 chart from Life magazine that spreadsheets and illustrates the differences in taste between High-Brow, Upper and Lower Middle-brow, and Low-Brow.  See it big n' beautiful HERE.

1942 Life magazine chart of  The Good Life, by social/intellectual status level

Hilarious.  And, as far as I can judge, pretty darn accurate.  I know that in the 1920s the U.S. Census Bureau had a similar sort of checklist that helped workers peg families into their status-holes - so many points for books in the parlor, more points for a piano, a rug, etc.  My favorite book to discuss these matters - from the 1980s - is Home Psych, by Joan Kron.  (Read an excerpt, "The Semiotics of Home Decor" HERE.)

So what would today's status/class markers be?

Things - objects - are easier come by nowadays than in the past, but I'm pretty sure owning  "real" art would still  be one marker of high-brow-ness...  So would be reading high-toned literature.  What else?

Art Museum Visits

Lately I've been popping into museums.

The Dallas Museum of Art has instituted a new free-entry policy which I think is wonderful... and probably good business too.  Until recently there was a charge to just stick your head in any of the galleries of the permanent collection, plus an extra charge to see any traveling exhibits.  Now those traveling shows still require a ticket: a hefty $16 to view three, I think, shows... one of them of Greek statues from the British Museum however, so cheaper than the usual plane ticket to see the Discobolus.

But now the permanent collection is FREE.  A price anyone can afford.  Museums, supported as they are by civic money and centers of civic pride, really should be accessible to all citizens.

There did now seem to be more people in the museum than has been true.  (Once inside the door, I bet more end up paying for the traveling exhibits too.)

I took my intern 'round a few weeks back to see the DMA's furniture and decorative arts.  The DMA really is a great teaching aid!  Their furniture collection got a serious start with the Bybee Collection of early American furniture and for years they've been adding pieces from other periods and places.  Recently they revamped a room of Craftsman and Arts and Crafts objects that includes a spectacular Tiffany stained glass door and sidelights (almost) looted from Greene and Greene's Blacker House.

Now that these collections are free, folks like me or my student can afford to visit and revisit to really study these objects.  This past weekend - having a little extra time - I visited the Dallas Museum of Art just for fun and said hello to all my favorites.

Love, love, love the new free entry policy.


The most exciting traveling exhibit I've seen lately - for free yet - was yesterday at Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art.  This museum has had an interesting development too, from its start with a collection of excellent Western art (The Old West, like cowboys), adding/building a serious photography collection, to its present impressive collection of American art (like N. American).  The permanent collection is well worth a visit.  And always free.

The traveling exhibit?

Poseidon by Romare Bearden - believed fair use as this is a review 

and for educational purposes, image found HERE.  Copyright, of course, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.  Now I have to admit to a shameful ignorance of Mr. Bearden until almost ten years ago when the DMA had a show of his collages.  Since I make collages myself, I was absolutely fascinated with his work.  The colors!  The shapes!  The meticulous craftsmanship.

He goes about his art differently...  Where I use "found" pictures to create my narratives, he sometimes does that - usually to create human figures - but mainly uses cut/shaped colored paper in a Matisse-like, mosaic-like way.  One technique that intrigued me was that he sometimes sands the glued down papers to abrade and soften colors and edges.  The work in that show concentrates on the history and experience of African-American life, often with an urban flavor, and always with an emotional sound-track of jazz and blues... music which the artist said inspired his collage technique.

The show at the Amon Carter featured Bearden's ink drawings inspired by Homer's The Illiad and his images, both collage and later watercolor, for The Odyssey.  These are not exactly illustrations of Homer's story so much as a retelling of the legend, emphasizing and underlining elements that spoke personally to Bearden, who had long studied the story.  The first, most obvious, difference in interpretation is that Bearden has made the characters black and often specifically African, like his impressive Poseidon.  (All kinds of societal/historical commentary with that choice... also much bolder graphics, having crisp black cut-outs instead of wimpy pinky-tan ones.)  The Odyssey becomes here a metaphor for the African diaspora.  Another striking re-emphasis is the strength of all his female characters.

There is little use of found images, instead Bearden uses those strongly Matisse-like fragments of paper but in colors even Matisse might not have dared.  Gorgeous!

There's a quote in the explanatory film about use of color in Bearden's career: "He wouldn't let himself use color until he could use color 'that would walk around like the big men.'"

There are big men and women in his Odyssey.


The Smithsonian's explanatory film is a You Tube video HERE.

Ha!

Figures I used the rocking chair as my example for How to Choose Pick Stage Furniture the other day.

Because, of course, inevitably! it has changed... for stage kinda reasons.

Instead of the upright style of rocker we liked at the warehouse, we're going back to the lower, more rounded Windsor-style rocker the actors have been using in rehearsal.  Because it works better with the stage violence.

A Windsor rocking chair from DesignBoom.com 

(Where's there's a nice illustrated history of rocking chairs.)

THIS is actually how you choose stage furniture: by looks and design and sturdiness etc., by trying out various options, but most of all by deciding what "plays" best.

It has to play.

How To Pick Stage Furniture

After spending a few hours yesterday debating furniture with a director and prop designer, it occurs to me that it might help to explain what goes into choosing furniture for use onstage.

There are several equally important considerations to juggle:

1)  Sturdiness - A chair or sofa onset has to survive.  Depending on the script and blocking, an actor may jump on that sofa, commit murder in that rocking chair, or dance on that coffee table.  You need good communication between director and designers so everyone knows what this furniture needs to do.

2)  Shape and Size - Maybe an actor needs to hide behind this sofa, so you want a high back.  Or maybe it's imperative the sofa not hide important business behind it, so it needs a low back.  Know which!  Likewise, you may need a round table to allow flexible seating around it or a very small one because space is cramped.  For story-telling reasons you may want an extra big and pompous desk... so big and pompous you need to build it.

3)  Style and Color - The "look" of furniture onstage is important, since it will reinforce (or undermine) the scenic design.  Hard to pretend this palace is in the 18th century if that chair screams 1978's avocado green!  (Did Louis XIV even have an over-stuffed corduroy Lazy-Boy recliner back then?)  One vital question when borrowing is always, "Can I paint or reupholster this?"

4)  Availability - Is-it-possible-ness includes both the ability to borrow and the budget to buy, build, or reupholster.  This is the problem with happily sketching The Perfect Sofa into your scenic design.  The director will love it... but you'll never ever find it.

For this play we looked first through Kitchen Dog's stock of furniture and photos of other pieces from the homes of Dogs, but nothing was quite right as the "hero" rocking chair of The Beauty Queen of Leenane

So yesterday the director, prop designer, and I visited another theater's warehouse to pull furniture.  Among the pickup truck plus one small SUV and a car's worth of stuff we picked, we also debated which of three wood rocking chairs would best suit the show: one was Colonial (of the gracefully curved head and dowel-back type)  in faux mahogany; another was more rustic and straight-lined with a "pickled" finish, but with a too Texas-porch-looking slatted seat; and the third was a classic blond Bentwood rocker.  All were sturdy.

I nixed the Bentwood immediately as too '60s or '70s looking.  The director and I preferred the weathered look of the pickled finish over the gloss of the mahogany, as well as the pickled chair's plainer lines.

But what about the wrong-looking slatted seat?

The Mother-character who sits in it is an invalid...  So I'll pad the seat to fit the character, comfort the actress, and hide those slats.  Multiple cushions maybe?  Going for that layers o' stained fabric cat-bed kind of look?  I was lucky enough to find a sheepskin.  Bed-ridden patients lay on sheepskins to avoid bedsores, so why not sit on one?  Perfect!

That's how furniture is chosen.

Now multiply that same discussion x however many pieces of furniture needed.  With the added consideration (which any interior designer would understand) of calculating how well each piece of furniture chosen will interact design-wise with all the others!

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

A note on that photo of a rocking chair: I found it illustrating a funny and true rant, "Stuff That Doesn't Completely Suck Part I," that discusses worthless versus sturdy chairs HERE at Gordie's Lounge.

My own rants on furniture?  "Return of the Dreaded Sofa"  HERE.

Fight Call and Farcical Design

Last night was the Designer Run for the British farce See How They Run at Circle Theatre.

It's going to be funny!

But before the Run there was Fight Call, to rehearse various chases and physical bits.

Director Robin Armstrong is known for farce and physical comedy - creating one of the best comic moments I've ever seen in Incorruptible - a brilliant silent fight between a man and a woman (who was supposed to be dead at the time) literally over the head of a monk who knelt, praying, with his eyes closed.  As he finished his prayer and opened his eyes, the woman lay there again "dead" in front of him - fight over.  Perfectly timed.  So it was fascinating to watch this new show's fight rehearsal.  I didn't know (being no actor or athlete) that such scenes are practiced at varying speeds: slo-mo, 3/4 speed, and full speed (AKA did-you-catch-that?!)  I could see the actors becoming both controlled and fluid.

For See How They Run, it's lots o' chases and mock fights that turn into real mayhem... Very funny stuff.

How does this effect the set?  (Because a Designer Run is not called just so I can giggle.)

Well, first of all there's safe footing for these running actors.  We'd intended to seal the painted stage floor with a slightly glossy/slick polyurethane, to ease a scene when an actor is dragged away.  But, what with all this running around, it became obvious that it's more important to make the floor non-skid. We'll leave the stage as an UNsealed painted finish.  Luckily its faux "stone" look will hide some skid marks and, if damaged, will be relatively easy to touch up.

Then there's the rug in front of the sofa.  There's a mock fight there, so padding under the carpet is important (not to bruise actors), but there's still all that running... so we'll triple pad the rug, then firmly staple it to the stage to keep it from sliding.

Furniture selection is inportant.  There is so much physical business on (and over) the sofa that it had to be not just a good period "look" (meaning appropriate fabric and style) but well padded.  There are gym mats that get less of a workout than this couch!  The sofa will get screwed down to the floor too.

In a farce doors must always be sturdy specimens with heavy-duty hinges, catches, knobs, and latches.  Having doors "bounce" back open when slammed is a problem to solve.  At this stage of the build, doors are in place, but hardware is still being found and installed.

At the floor plan stage of set design, door placement and distance between entrances are critical decisions, because this effects comic timing.

I've designed this vicarage as a Tudor half-timbered house.  Building timbers from foam might have been a good/cheap idea for a straight play, a drama, but as this is farce they need to be of sturdier plywood.  There's a stair rail that gets some rowdiness, so the carpenter has built it like a wooden M1 tank.

A wooden tank - found HERE

After watching the Designer Run, building this set like a wooden tank seems about right... it's a comic battlefield!

The Thrill of the Find

My Ruth set needs a 1920s vintage stove - either a wood or a more modern gas model would do.

So we've been hunting for weeks for a loaner.  We've looked at several good imitations built of plywood; these were all either too wide or both too wide and too high, and generally looked rather more like plywood than like cast iron.  We've looked at several real stoves; these were all too recent, but even if they might pass for the right vintage, all weighed an absolute ton... being made of actual cast iron.

But today!

A wood stove of actual cast iron, but with beautiful roll-y wheels so we don't have to care how much it weighs - and sized to fit!

A 1938 photo of a woman cooking at a stove much like ours - from Old Picture of the Day

Furniture Pull

This morning I'm meeting at a helpful theater's warehouse to pull furniture for my up-coming show Ruth, at Kitchen Dog.

It's a huge, HUGE help to poor and struggling theaters (i.e. all theaters) when those with furniture, props, or other assets share their wealth.  I am, personally, grateful for these loans.  It doesn't just improve a show, often it makes it possible.  Especially for period work.

In KD's In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play even the impressive legs of the doctor's table were loaners.  Sure, we could have built that table without 'em, but it wouldn't have looked nearly as solidly, Victorianly, authoritative as that exam table HAD to look - appearing a very Altar in the Temple of Science.

Those legs helped both sell this Doc's authority... and make the sexy carryings-on funnier.

In Fort Worth - enlightened theater world! - one university shares a warehouse with many theaters.  All put furniture in it, all are welcome to borrow it out again, with a simple sign-out book and an honor system.  Dallas?  Nope.  Few theaters can afford a warehouse, but if you call around, many kind groups, schools, or individuals will offer what you need.  (I've had sofas out of living rooms sometimes!)  Theatre Three is particularly kind and helpful and rich in furniture.  Thank you Theatre Three!

Now look again at that photo of In the Next Room...

In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play - photo by Matt Mrozek

See the handsome antique cabinet on the upstage wall?  Holding medical books and instruments?  It helps set the time period, reinforces the doctor's wealth and authority - literally gives him weight - plus it's the only real piece of furniture in the room, almost on the set, so scenically it's quite valuable... (And, as a designer, I love that it has fat corner "legs" too, so it talks to my table.  It's funny.)

Wouldn't be allowed to borrow that this year.

For some reason - no one's been told why - the Dallas Theater Center, which has a grand and very rich storehouse of furniture and props (paid for, in part, by tax money and in tiny part by my ticket purchases over the years)... Well, they've stopped loaning out.

No loans.  Nobody.

This is a great loss.  I'm very grateful for their furniture over the last decade, as I know many many other designers and theaters are, all around town.  The Dallas Theater Center's stock has enriched plays in the entire region.  They have by far, by multiples of tens and hundreds or thousands, the budget for furniture of any other theater in Dallas, Fort Worth, or all the cities around.  Their warehouse is a treasure trove!  I'm sure their generosity cost some time, but... surely the flagship of Dallas theater thinks supporting this region's theater is worthwhile?

I'm heart-sick that DTC's generous lending has stopped.

I wish the Dallas Theater Center would reconsider.  Please loan out to us little guys again.  We may be poorer, but we do good theater too.  We would appreciate your help.

(More on furniture: Return of the Dreaded Sofa and Pulling Furniture, an earlier post on the topic.)

At Home

That's the title of the latest Bill Bryson book (latest to me anyway).  The guy just has a way with explaining things!  At Home gathers research - and extremely odd facts - about pretty much everything around the modern western-style house, adding engaging, funny, and/or appalling background to our daily lives.

Some facts have that inevitable "duh!" quality of a truth we should have known, as with the appearance of the modern dining room.

Until the 18th century, people tended to eat where they happened to be.  In medieval times family, friends, servants, traveling strangers, their dogs, and rats all often lived, ate, and slept in the single great Hall.  (The kitchen might be the only other room.)  Through the 1700s houses developed more rooms, but these were (to us) strangely undifferentiated in use, all rooms - even bedrooms - were used for all purposes.  Chairs and "occasional" tables tended to live shoved against the walls until needed for a card game or a greasy snack.

But as expensive and easily stained upholstered furniture grew more commonplace, so did separate rooms for gravy.  Living rooms grew separate from dining ones.

Just think: if clear plastic sofa covers had been invented in the 15th C, Thanksgiving turkey with gravy might be traditional sofa food.

Family dinner, public domain image messed with.

So I'm working my way through this fun grab-bag of a book...

I've escaped the terrifying chapter on fleas, bedbugs, and rat infestations (put the lid down on the toilet - take my word for it -just do it!)  and am now reading about poisonous wallpaper and lead paints.  Fascinating stuff!

Homework

On many shows there are little jobs that the set designer may bring home to work on.

For the up-coming Collapse, it's been painting: a coffee shop sign, a condo sign, and now a coffee table top.

When hunting for furniture on a low budget, you're very much at the mercy of what you can find.  This time it appears that the sofa we'll end up borrowing is more of a love seat, which means all the other furniture will need to be a bit reduced in scale too.  So our coffee table will be a smallish Danish modern piece.  It's a nice little table... with the totally wrong top.  (Red.  Floral.  Wrong.)  So I'm repainting it to look like that '50s - '70s tile medley of white and Scandinavian blues and greens that was so popular.  It's looking good so far.  The finishing touch (when my typing and its drying are done) will be to put gloss medium (a sort of varnish) just on the tiles.  Under stage lights the painted "tile" will glisten but the "grout" will not - totally selling this illusion!

Believed public domain photo

Weather

A set designer spends so much time driving and hauling junk around that a pour-down-rainy day like today can be a real inconvenience.

Multiple public domain images, messed with

I'm scheduled to pull furniture from a theater warehouse.  I'll go, but now it'll only be to look.  Because a sofa just will not fit into my car and the guy-with-the-pickup-truck (everyone should know one of these useful folk!)... Well, a sofa in a pickup in the rain?  Not good.

Another Strike

In the Next Room closed last night and the set came down today.

Sad.  But sorta Circle of Life-ish.

public domain image

Because, of course, this set comes down so the next set goes up.  (I saw its fascinating model at the strike for mine.)  In a particularly life-cycle way, some of my hand-carved brick was saved so that it can be used to build someone else's set elsewhere.  I saved the brick fireplace arch to be an insta-fireplace on some future set of my own.  Plus a lot of curtain fabric ditto.  But then, the screens we used for this set had already been used for a locally filmed television show, before being gifted to Kitchen Dog.  Much of the furniture (borrowed from two other theaters) has appeared in many earlier shows and will appear in yet more... some of them mine.  That's kind of nice to look forward to.

In theater, what goes around comes around and around and around...

(Earlier posts about Strikes: here and here.)

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...

The Dreaded Sofa

Looked for a sofa today.  One of the hardest things to find for a theater set is a sofa.

If a theater has a warehouse, they don't like to waste space storing sofas.  If they don't... where would they?  Chairs, tables, even beds can stack, hang, come apart for storage... but not a couch.  So there are few stock sofas.  Borrowing a davenport from civilians is also iffy - people miss their sofa if they loan it out.  Besides, what if you ruin it onstage or in transit, and have to replace it?  A sofa is bulky, awkward, and, inevitably, has to be carried downstairs.  And turns out to be a sofa bed - built of concrete and cast iron.

But sofas are specific in style.  They matter!  A designer can't use any old thing.  Yet loaners are rare, rentals are expensive, and reupholstering one to fit your scenic design is a major and expensive chore requiring Advanced Skills.

Sofas! 

Hate 'em.

Except for this one, the "Climbing Settee" by Lila Lang.  See it here at Decorfair.  So cool  I have to love it.

Set Designer's Life

Got home last night at midnight after the designer run through of Marvin's Room.  (Good, funny, sad.)  Up at 6:00 today, in part to email those set notes to carpenter and painter before meeting at 9:30 a.m. at the warehouse of a theater kind enough to loan out furniture for Five Women Wearing the Same Dress... if we can find what we need.

Eep!  Gotta run...

Phew!

What a lot of running around - I think I drove a huge clock-wise circle around Fort Worth.

Set dressing.  First there was a trip to the big theater warehouse to pick up some furniture, but mostly to confirm that, yup, there are no chairs like what I need: 3 (not 2, 2 is easy) matching, side-chairs with arms, paintable, and, by preference, bentwood style.  Zip.  So after that a run to a fabric store for the muslin I keep forgetting (a liner to the plexi-glass faux glass block wall); on to Garden Ridge for cute, cheap, colorful chairs; on to my noon meeting; back to deliver chairs and fabric; home.  Sit.

A big part of set designing ought to be called set-driving.

(I once heard an amusing description of the New York City version of my day, except that designer was lugging furniture on the subway.  Poor soul.)

POD Chairs!

POD, or Print on Demand, is the new-wave of book publishing.  It allows niche writers (like me) with too small a public to interest a publishing house (who prefer to make big profits) to publish themselves.  Used to be an author could self-publish... but might be stuck mortgaging their house to afford to... then filling that house's garage with unsold books.  Now each book sold is printed as it's sold.  POD

The writer/artist can afford to publish their own work.

The music industry has been doing something like this, as we see from the recording establishment's profits these days.  (They angered too many "little" musicians in favor of blockbusters.)  The book publishing industry is going the same way: corporate blockbusters or Independents.  And, heck! the film industry invented the phrases "Indie" and "Blockbuster."

Now furniture: here's a POD for chairs Diatom Studio

Exciting times.  I think I'm going to need new chairs soon...