A Peek into the Past

I'm teaching myself Sketchup and, in that process, am doing research on how-to.

So...

I stumbled across this lovely little bit of history, someone recreating his family's 1912 farmhouse in virtual 3D.  Sparking this project was the discovery of original blueprints (actual blueprints!) and old contracts for that construction, as well as some delightful old photos.  Take a look at the Mason Farm HERE.  (I'm thinking of a similar, much less ambitious project of my own, actually, so I was especially impressed.)

Blueprints, that archaic tech - believed public domain

Research.

How much fun it is!  And how addictive!  Because, of course, there's always just one more little bit of information out there waiting for the researcher...  I'm hopelessly addicted to research myself and have watched a number of others succumb, most recently someone introduced to the genealogy bug, which is a particularly virulent strain of the research infection.

Research is one of the great joys in theater design.

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.

Research Libraries

For those of you in Texas, I just discovered a new way to get your hands on research books in libraries you normally can't borrow from.

Maybe you're already familiar with the Interlibrary Loan system, which allows any public library patron to request a book; your local librarian will then track it down somewhere in the country and have it mailed to your local library so that you can borrow it.  One time - no renewals.  I've only used this method one or twice for hard to find books when I didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) buy them.  I remember though that the book through the Loan System took a few weeks to arrive... from Wyoming!  And was exactly what I needed.

My usual number of books at check-out - public domain image

But I've discovered another way: the Texshare card is a three-week-long library card that lets you walk up to the check-out desk of member libraries and Check-Out! Books.  A limited number.  Today I did not actually end up checking out the book I was interested in - because I could take fast enough notes - but my spiffy crisp-new little Texshare card gave me the confidence to walz into SMU's Fondren library and demand to know where, just exactly Where! my book might be.  (I needed the help, it's a maze of a library spread over several buildings.)

So.

Research.  Easier than you think.

Into the New Year

Time to get ready.

Time to fill in play-opening dates in my 2013 calendar.  Time to clear off my desk (there's wrapping paper scraps on it and... is that a recipe for beef brisket?).  Time to reorganize my whole work area, to put the colored pencils back in their drawers, to send up-date emails, to clear the decks for the new shows of the coming New Year.

Among my preparations...

Research for Aphra Behn's play The Lucky Chance for Echo Theatre.  Because we're changing the play's setting to the Swinging London of the 1960s.

Image from "Andy Warhol Pop Politics" at the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research

The Fun of Research

At present I'm doing research for a writing project so I'm having lots of giddy history fun (battles, cannibals, pirates, woohoo!), but research for set design is also fascinating.

One of a set designer's mandates is to understand the time period and milieu of a play's setting.  Even when you have a dramaturge (a production's Official Research Guru), it's usually still the set designer who is the authority on the visuals.  Dramaturges concentrate on aspects that affect actors and director more than set, while set designers have professional interest in architecture.  And interior design.  And furniture.  And...

So it's your job to know what the time period looked like.  Plus, as much as possible, to understand the logic - economic, construction, social, artistic - behind why it looked as it did.

Recently I've been researching the countryside and villages of Connemara, Ireland, Victorian-Gothik mansions, ancient Egyptian monuments, and office spaces in 1919 New York.  A nice varied menu!

The law office of R. Y. Williams in 1919, part of the Santa Ana Public Library's History Room Photograph Collection

Here's the most inspiring photo I found for Ghost Writer.  Though this law office pictured was on the west coast, not in New York, other photos showed it was characteristic of the time.  

What I found fascinating as a scenic designer was the spartan quality of the room: the severe wooden furniture; the contrast between dark woodwork versus plain paint; the rectilinear geometries, with only curved chair arms for relief; the details of picture rail and paneled door with textured glass; and the bare, bare walls - that ad-calendar the only decoration.

In my interpretation for the set of Ghost Writer, I added an opened transom above the door for a little 3D-ness and more verticallity for Circle Theatre's short space.  (More on my version of that calendar HERE.)  But though our writer's office remains bare looking, we did add books (from the script), soften the color contrast into sepia tones, and add a wainscot of bead-board -  because spartan was a bit too spartan onstage for a romance! 

A theater set needs to be true physically - to its time or location - but it must also be true emotionally.

Many thanks to libraries and collections like the Santa Ana Public Library, that generously make their collections accessible to the public online.  It's impossible for a designer to own every book on every topic or even to find all information needed locally, so I'm very grateful.  

(BTW, I believe copying this photo here is Fair Use, as I'm teaching theater set design, but please let me know if I'm mistaken and I'll remove it instantly.  Please don't copy it elsewhere, Dear Reader, without researching restrictions HERE.)

Research - Time Periods

I'm working on a Mystery Project that requires some digging into the ancient past: 1984.

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was a big song that year.  Ah, the classics!

HERE's a video clip.

Set Design - Research

Often as I research a new play I look for photos of the location where the action is set.  In this case the play is Collapse, by Allison Moore, and the city is Minneapolis.

I happened across especially beautiful local photographs at http://mtpmcg.wordpress.com/category/city/ 

Can't figure out yet who the photographer(s) is/are or what the name of this site is or anything, but I'm huntin'.  Meanwhile, enjoy this teaser photo:

Image belongs to the Mystery Photographer of Minneapolis

Set Designer's Day - Research

I'm just starting on The Fantasticks for Circle Theater (if one show opens, the next starts).  I've read and noted the script - which I love - now I'm researching...

I don't usually look at earlier productions before I design - in case it over-influences me - but in this case the director wants to stay pretty close to the original production, so I've been looking at that.  I've also looked at  the touring productions.  Over-produced, I think.  Mind you, I understand exactly the problem the designers of those touring shows had: how to make this intimate show fill the usual huge venues on the road.  Fortunately, Circle's small space doesn't present that problem.  (Ha!  Circle's ceiling is only this high.)

Now I'm doing a little research on Commedia dell'Arte, the renaissance era Italian comedy troupes which much influenced this show.

A Better Example - Mark Twain's House

Less Gothic, more Stick Style, kinda Queen Anne... this looser style might suit the show.  Love the porch and gable end "sticks."  Mark Twain House and Museum

Designer's Life - Research

Research is one of the great joys.

I'm working on first sketches for In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play, by Sarah Ruhl, which starts Kitchen Dog Theater's new season.  It opens September 9th, so I better hurry!

But this morning I'm going back through my research for 1880.  The director and I are tempted by Craftsman Style, but that's a bit late, especially since a character would rarely live in a house built at their play's period; most of us live in houses a few or many years old.  So I'm leafing through a foot-high stack of architecture, interior design, and building detail books...

I refuse to design generic stage Victorian. (If I see another corner block...!)

But maybe Gothic Revival?  The sorta pick-up-stick Carpenter Gothic version?

image borrowed from Art History Housewife

Considered a very "moral" style in its day, it might set up a nice flutter of symbols with "modern" technology... and our contemporary attitudes.  We marvel at the characters' ignorance, but they saw this situation as a medical condition, not sex-life.  Sex, as we think of it, was not something... nice women thought about then, or admitted to thinking about anyway, or something.  Ignorance is very muddling.

The prop designer is finding fascinating early vibrators as part of her research.  Research is fun!  But not getting me closer to solving my technical problem at the end of the show...
Research?  Procrastination?