Stumble-Through

It's always interesting for a designer to see what the actors are up to.

Last night was an early run-through (hence "stumble-through") for Se Llama Christina.  The actors were almost off-book, the first blocking had been established on the taped-out floor plan of my set, and rehearsal furniture had been pulled.  (Including a sofa I think we'll use for real.)  With a little imagination - much less needed than when reading the script! - I could begin to see what the final production will be like.  I'm excited about it!

Such run-throughs are helpful for the lighting designer too, who can begin to see where what will happen and for the costume designer, who can assess how physical the actors will be in their costumes.  For the set designer, it's a matter of making sure nothing is required of the set that you hadn't anticipated and making sure the set isn't somehow getting in the way of the performance.

The production meeting afterward is time to confirm agreement on, for instance, using that rehearsal sofa in the final production and agreeing that the "found" crib, though different from the first design thought, is okay.  Adding window mullions instead of using glass.  Adding a certain cool effect (through carpenterly means) upstage.  Thinking through the requirements of lighting and projections as they affect the set.

The normal tug and adjustments of developing a show.

Public domain image from Karen'sWhimsy

Meanwhile... gotta finish construction drawings for Miracle on South Division Street!

Catch-Up

Okay, okay, I've been slow about posting lately - blame the IRS.  The tax deadline is breathing down my neck.  Day after day - or so it feels - I sit at my board sorting receipts from the whole past year.  (To sketch for yesterday's production meeting, I had to total yet more receipts just to free my drawing board.)  I find taxes stressful.

Any one else?  Raise your hand.

Anyway.  More posts will be forthcoming eventually.

Meanwhile, I can heartily recommend other reading: the historical mysteries of Barbara Hambly set in the New Orleans of 1833 and later, with hero Benjamin January.  Start with Free Man of Color.  Good reads!  I happened across these because I'm researching a slightly younger New Orleans (1790-1820).

I haven't written too much here about my trip there last fall (afraid to dissipate my head of steam), but I can say that it's fun to take a vacation with a research goal.  It adds more interest to sightseeing when you're always mentally editing your surroundings: was this here then?  Would historic character X or Y have stood here like this?  Would character Z have smelled this?  Tasted that?  Been cold and muddy or sun-baked?  Surroundings become populated with ghosts you bring along with you - DIY haunting!  Of course, New Orleans is an especially easy place to do this because history just oozes out of the brick, but if you do your homework most places have more history than you'd think.  For instance, there's a mundane-looking hardware store just blocks away where I'd never work - never shop - because I remember the ex-employee of the ex-sporting goods store who slit the throats of several ex-coworkers for the sake of the weekend till and boxes of expensive sneakers.  Digging through old newspapers would turn up those facts... if you looked.  (The place has gotta be haunted.  Not that I'm superstitious - ha!)

Lately I've been dabbling in history.  The Journal of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, one of America's earliest and most distinguished architects is a fascinating read.  He visited New Orleans in about 1818 - died there too.  As did his son, also an architect, and yet another Greek Revival architect, Barthelemy Lafon.  All of yellow fever.  We forget how lucky we are to live in a time and place when epidemics are not the scourges they were.

This period of the War of 1812 - which we hardly remember - turns out to be an important turning point in the U.S. and Europe, laying foundations for later events: the industrial revolution, both the plantation system and slavery's abolition, the Trail of Tears and western expansion...  History is more interesting than I'd guessed.  But then fifth grade Texas History left out all: pirates; cannibals; slave smuggling; slave-smuggling, knife-wielding not-so-heroic heroes of the Alamo; and beautiful quadroon slaves offered up to Mexican generals as a military strategy.

The battle of the Alamo - public domain image

All the interesting stuff!

HERE's a link to what I did write about New Orleans - a bit about Plaza d'Italia, that post-modern fountain.

Production Meeting Weirdness

Last night's meeting was mostly about vomit.

Seriously.

Producing the play The God of Carnage means dealing with the special effect of one actress becoming ill... aaaallll over the set and costumes.  Which means inventing and making fake sick which both looks realistic yet won't cause the entire audience to turn green.  And then cleaning that up.  Twice on Saturdays.  Lots of laundry and clean-up!

I know one local theater (cough-cough) that didn't quite get the clean-up right for the first few performances leading to a Plague of Gnats! in the theater.  The solution required both professional pest control and then steam cleaning every night.

Ick.

All this is mainly a technical problem for props and stage management - plus an acting challenge - but this special effect also effects the set (carpet? No thanks!) and the costumes (dry cleaning?  Please no!).  Disguising the mechanism for spewing the ick requires collaboration between sets and props and possibly costumes in its camouflage.

So we had a loooong discussion.  Recipes for fake-sick were handed around.  Really.  Kinda the New Year's rebuttal to all those Christmas cookie recipe swaps, huh?

Actually, we laughed quite a lot.

That's us... when we're NOT laughing.  A ridiculously solemn moment... 

as  I suck on my pen thoughtfully, apparently.  Sigh.  Photo courtesy of Circle Theatre

Could be worse: I once worked on a production of Blasted.  (That play, as far as I'm concerned is a sorta dare-ya for how-much-theatrical-ick-can-you-take?)  That production meeting involved a lot of technical discussion about dead babies.  (Fake ones obviously!)  Not ONE joke was cracked.

If you read my how-to set design book Alice Through the Proscenium there's a funny version of me watching the designer run for Blasted while peeking through my fingers.