Not A Review - In the Next Room

At last.  Kitchen Dog Theater's  In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play opened last night.

A good production.

Everything - set, lights, costumes, acting, direction, sound - jelled.  (Snow fell!)  I'm partial, but I thought it was a really good show.  Love Sarah Ruhl's script.  And I think we did it justice.

Nice after-party with one of the most elegant buffets I've ever seen: rose petals as a tablecloth, clear red Plexiglass TM stands holding meat-n-veg on little sticks, and killer! Killer! cake balls.  Vodka somewhere.

I congratulated folks awhile on successfully pulling this show off... until suddenly exhausted.  Bed.

This morning I feel like I ran a marathon.  In this quiet place before reviews start coming in, I feel satisfied: I think we did good.

Volunteers!

Bless 'em, I say.  Theater couldn't happen without 'em.

Work continues on the set for In the Other Room: the Vibrator Play.  The bulk of that labor comes from committed Kitchen Dogs who, though they may or may not be an official part of this show, turn up to help out.  The rest of the slogging comes courtesy of just flat-out volunteers, who from friendship or love of theater or some crazy-altruistic urge show up and get dirty and Get Things Done.  One of our volunteers helps, seems like, every theater in town.  Wonderful people.

Thank you!

I'd like to re-institute the Order of Merit I first created for that (killer!) build for Edward Albee's play The Goat and hereby bestow it upon You, the loyal, untiring builders of this show:

Set Designer's Life - Time Off

When things get busy, days off sorta... disappear.

But after working three weeks straight, I actually Took Yesterday Off (except for a few phone calls).  Felt nice.

Today is back to business: research on the next black & white show in January, The Frequency of Death for Pegasus Theatre; cut a bit more brick for Kitchen Dog; lunch meeting on the B & W; paint more brick (and other stuff) with help from my trusty apprentice as the hard-working builders keep building (no day off yesterday for them! I feel such a slacker); dinner; exhausted sleep.  That's the plan.

Brick photo believed public domain

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...