My Theater Dance Card

Dance cards were a thing a lady used to have at a ball - a charming little booklet with an attached dainty gilded pencil to mark down promised dances and her gentlemanly partners.

 Dance card image courtesy of Wikimedia

I've always kept a scribbly, scabby version of a dance card myself, to remember what shows I've promised to design, for which theater group.

Well, I did until covid.

Today (while updating my theater how-to book Alice Through the Proscenium, watch for this new expanded! edition's publication date) I happened to need to refer back in time, to see what shows I was juggling in 2019-2020.  After I remembered that I had a little black book, found it, and blew off the dust, I saw... well, the perfect illustration of just exactly what covid did to the schedules of every theater artist.

Here's my dance card for 2018 and 2019:

Thirteen shows I designed in 2019, for eight different theaters.  In 2020 it was eleven shows, seven theaters, and an Off-Broadway showcase.

Here it is for 2020 and 2021:

Two real shows I designed that actually appeared on stage, one speculative hypnotism show that did not, a cancelation and... blankitude...

That's what covid was like for me and for most of us for those two years.

Sometimes the Wheels Fall Off

Or you fall off the wheels.

Or there ARE no wheels.

Or...

Public Domain image of a theatrical set builder on a bad day.

It's been unspeakably busy here at Scenic Central lately.

Two shows opened almost simultaneously - All My Sons at WaterTower Theatre and The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas.  While, a close third, I & You at Circle Theatre is sloooowly finishing...  the slowness mostly because the carpenters and painters had to fit its build in with the Fort Worth Opera's schedule.

Juggling schedules, that's what it's all about for designers and builders... and for actors and directors and producers too.  Or sometimes just juggling.  On a high-wire.  On a bike, feels like.

Usually my sets get finished in good time before Opening - are mostly finished, except for details, for Tech.

This time?

This time I actually - no kidding - had exactly half an hour at home to wash the mud off before dressing and returning for the opening of All My Sons.  (Mud because I'd been scattering dirt and pea gravel on the "backyard" set, then stomping it into paths right up till the last moment.)

Because a few wheels fell off a few bikes this time...

The biggest whoopsy! bike-crash was when one poor TD drilled into his hand and had to have surgery.  That delayed things.  Some over-optimistic scheduling.  Some needing to redo or tweak hard stuff that didn't come out perfectly first time.  Some replacing of fake grass (more on that later).  Some hanging posters on some concrete walls.  Some small floods.   Most recently a desperate hunt for some replacement rolling desk chair wheels that fit weird Swedish-metric sockets.  Every rolling chair in sight had its casters ripped of to try their fit!  (It's like a desk accessory version of the glass shoe fitting thing in Cinderella.  But so far it's all Ugly Sisters; the builder is stopping by Casters R Us and International House of Casters tomorrow.)  So some delays and difficulties.  Some... well, lots of somethings actually.

But the MAIN thing, the IMPORTANT thing, is that everything did/will eventually, mostly get done and the sets are/will looking good on time.

Blood (literal), sweat, and tears, Baby!

Now I can put the casters back on my drafting chair before I fall off it again.

Catch Up

There's been lots going on here... just not much blogging.

On the theater front, the set for Fun House Theatre and Film's Stiff is about done.  Due to summertime theatrical kid camps which run onstage all day, followed by, you know, rehearsals, I've been starting my scenic painting at about 9:00 p.m. and painting until midnight.  Last night was, I think, the last of this night-shift.

Theater.  Weird hours.

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, the carpenters are busy building Stella and Lou.  Since this play is set in a bar, we've been researching cool equipment like beer taps...  Pricier than you'd think!  I went shopping today for burnt orange burlap (okay, an unfashionable bar), and found something pretty close.  Also faux leather for the faux booth upholstery.

I'm also starting the design process for two other shows: Thinner Than Water at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas and Godspell for OMG Productions in the San Francisco area.  In both cases I've read the text and discussed ideas with the director, but it's Thinner I need to sketch first - like instantly!  I'm letting ideas percolate just a bit longer...

Public Domain image - found HERE with explanation of why it's public domain.

In the Studying Computer Lore campaign, I've now had a couple classes on AutoCAD and am relieved to discover I'm not the slowest student in the class.  (Huge relief.)  In fact, I think I'm going to do fine, if I can only get enough practice time in.  Learning Sketchup is still on my schedule... just a bit back-burnered right now.

Comparing the two programs and their more or less intuitiveness, I think an actual artist/designer type person might have been involved in creating Sketchup.  (Though perhaps an insane artist, who didn't want to do what I want to do with it.)  But I am increasingly convinced that computer drafting is a drawing system invented by a computer guy, rather than computing system designed by a drawing guy.  Maddeningly non-intuitive!  Plus lotso memorizing for the shortcuts that are the only way to draw quickly.  Well, quickER.

Details, Details, Details

If you design theater sets for a while, you'll run into that set builder who seems absolutely unable to ever, ever, ever finish a set early.

Sometimes this is because the sets are too ambitious, sometimes because the builder is that kind of time-manager, and sometimes... sometimes this is Strategy.

Because I have also, after designing enough sets, run into the odd reality that, if the director and producers are given enough time to stare at a (nearly) finished set, they will start to get pickier, start to micro-note it.

Notes?

Notes are the remarks, questions, and requests under the "Set" part of each day's Rehearsal Report.  The normal sort of scenic notes tend to read like:

"Stage right door sticks / need coat hook SL / can we darken chair? it's washing out under lights / need glo-tape at exit."

What I'd call micro-notes are more like:

"Fix faint blue drip / need thumb tacks not push pins / more bird poop."  (That last is my favorite-ever director's note!)

Image is of a vinyl sticker that I think you can buy HERE - 

if the owner objects to its reproduction, please let me know.

Savvy set builders learn that the longer everyone stares at a finished set, the pickier they all get.  So... some builders make sure the set is never finished till the last instant.  Saving them many hours of fiddly little revisions.

This strategy drives me crazy (because I want to be picky too), but sometimes I do understand the temptation!

News from the Painting Front

Paintin' away here...

At this point - a week after The Lucky Chance build started, the set is about finished.  And about painted.

I'll be back at the theater at noon though to paint the laaaaaast bits - mainly some trim that was added yesterday evening after I had to stop painting for the day so paint could dry for rehearsal.

There seem to be two methods of scenic painting, or perhaps of scheduling scenic painting.  One way is to build scenery, usually in a scene shop, and to base and finish paint each piece on a paint floor with just touch-up in the theater.  The other way is to assemble the set in the theater space and then to paint the scenery "up."

Image from Wikkimedia Commons HERE © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar / CC-BY-SA-3.0

There are advantages to painting scenery down on the floor.  For one thing, more paint methods are possible - like spattering - which needs to be horizontal to work.  You can be messier without worrying about spattering the velvet seats!  All your tools and materials are already there and convenient.  And it's possible to assembly-line the painting and thus speed it.

I love this photo, which shows just how detailed and controlled (yet huge!) scenic painting can be.

I'm having a hard time coming up with advantages to painting "up" and in the theater... except for the obvious one that, if no scene shop or paint floor is available, then painting in the theater is the only choice.

Usually, in order to ensure the set is finished in time, scenic painting at the theater has to start before carpentry is quite finished, building in a certain amount of inevitable delays, confusion, and re-dos.  But for The Lucky Chance - if I'd waited for the carpenters to be done before starting to paint - I'd be starting to paint TODAY.

The Lucky Chance opens in two days, on Friday.  Tickets HERE at Echo Theatre.

Come see!

Back In Town

Boy, ya look away for just a minute...

and the work piles up!

Back from a brief trip, I'm scrambling to catch up.  Yesterday was devoted to building a model for The Mystery of Irma Vep.  This morning - in mere moments! - I'll paint it.  This morning I also need to select paint colors for that and for the show Or, then physically buy paint for that show's set... which I hope to start base painting this afternoon.  Meeting at 4:00.  Run Through at 6:30ish.  Late home.

Tomorrow?  Another morning of on-the-board work, more afternoon painting, and then two meetings, starting just before 5:00.  Sometime in there I really need to go hunt more furniture.

Meanwhile, a third show The Beauty Queen of Leenane waits impatiently - ideas scratching at my skull - for me to put pencil to paper.  I've been thinking about it for a while.  A fourth, Ghost Writer, waits for me to read it and to start thinking.

Busy, busy.

Believed public domain image.

Interrupted By Work...

Sorry for this delay in Blogging Service.

I've had a rush of actual, you know, Work here and oddly enough it's delayed the writing about the work.  Strange.  Two successful Openings: of Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater and Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theatre.  Meanwhile a heaping plateful of other deadlines are looming...

LOOMING I tell you!

Back to our Regular Blogging Service asap.

Set Designer's Life - Sleep Deprivation

Mind you, I'm recovering from a thing so need more sleep than usual, but last night's First Read Through for Ruth went to about 11:00 p.m., what with set design and construction and furniture discussions afterwards - plus drive time home - and this early morning's quick!-finish-the-drawings! for Mistakes Were Made is just finishing, barely in time for shower, dress, drive to Fort Worth, 9:30 a.m. meeting (oh, and get gas and copies on the way), before racing back for an 1:00 p.m. meeting, and I'm kinda...

...pooped.

This afternoon a nap.  Please.

Sometimes the deadlines just get a bit crowded.

Ruth went very well last night and I think Mistakes should be very funny.

Scheduling in Advance

Well, sometimes...

Many theater companies ask set (and other) designers on board just as soon as they decide their seasons and choose their directors.  A few even choose designers before directors(though I think most directors would prefer the chance to at least cast a veto!).  Other theaters wait till late.  The worst-case, of course, is waiting till the last minute or past, as when they have to find a late replacement.

Accordingly - since this is April 2012 - I have just picked up two almost-last-minute shows for June...  and one for February 2013.  Two months away and ten months away.

I'm going to have to buy a new calendar.

Photo courtesy of Photos Public Domain.com

On the Drawing Board

Funny how projects gang up.  It would seem good statistics that, if a designer has four projects, they'd be in different stages... one being built, another in the design, another in construction drawings, maybe the fourth in early stages of research and schematic design.

Ha!  Guaranteed: they're all being drawn at a rush or all a'building the same week.

Now for me it's drawing board time.  A kitchen remodel/addition and two shows all designed at once.  Luckily, they're different, so I may not get muddled and put the Paris penthouse or the ante-bellum ruin in the kitchen sink .

Keep your projects straight!  Believed public domain images messed with

Nudges from the Future

Emails arrive reminding me of deadlines for Circle's next show.  (Secrets of a Soccer Mom just opened!  Go See!)  And of WaterTower Theatre's next show.  Time to reread, sketch, and meet with directors.

Meanwhile...

As the Build for The Frequency of Death has been finishing up, the Build for The Diary of Anne Frank has been quietly progressing.  I've been popping in now and then to check progress, look at painting, and answer questions.

In a few minutes I'll head that way again to help puzzle out a sight-line problem that will probably require relocating a couple faux truss pieces.  We'll see.  Monday is Tech.

Meanwhile, I'm still scratching silver paint off my arm from chandelier painting on Frequency.  (Earlier post.)

Set Designer's Day - Visit From the Future

Now and then you get a little nudge from the future - in the form of a call or email from a director or producer asking, "How's that design coming along?"

The play's opening may not be for months...  But the design is suddenly NOW!  It's that Time Shortage again.

The vintage blackboard calendar (public domain), courtesy of Happy Hearts at Home 

Drowned In Work

When I first started in architecture, I thought my bosses couldn't schedule an umbrella on a rainy day!  We were always either drowning in a downpour of due-dates or parched for work.  Why couldn't these bosses see a storm or drought coming?  How could it be that hard?

Nowadays, I schedule myself - and in theater, mainly, where Opening days don't change (unlike architecture where a project may get put in the drawer for a year or two, which tends to mess up scheduling).  But STILL I get unexpectedly soaked.  This week I'm like the pedestrian walking through a heavy rain with a teeny tiny umbrella... as a big truck passes... splashing through the flooded gutter next to me, drenching me in its spray!

public domain images from http://www.reusableart.com

Overlap

It'd be easier to see the orderly, step-by-step process of designing then building and completing a theater set, if you didn't always overlap one stage with another...  For instance, I'm at the last stages of finishing Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, but also in the earliest stages of reading and talking to the director for Sara Ruhl's In the Next Room: or the Vibrator Play.  While, on my drafting board, are first scribbles for Becky's New Car.

But it's not just that one show overlaps another - on the same stage, same show, one stage of completion often nudges against another.  Yesterday set dressing for Five Women was (mostly) completed, yet today I need to go back and repaint the floor where ladders scarred it.  (Ladders for delayed arch painting and chandelier hanging.)  So there I'll be, juggling clumsy paint buckets and drippy brushes, trying not to klutz paint on fabrics or rugs, or to break china, just like a toddler loose in her big sister's dollhouse. Overlap!

Set Designer's Life

Actors take one show at a time - it's hard to show up at more than one rehearsal.  Lighting designers overlap shows, but, again, can only show up at one Tech at a time.  Costume designers, since much of their work is done outside the theater, are more able to almoooost be in two places at once.  Set designers have the further advantages that their design and time-consuming drawing/modeling are done early and that shop and stage visits must be done when actors won't be inconvenienced ("are out of the way" is the other way to phrase that!).  Tech is less important since by then the set ought to be on course - plus, it just doesn't take all day Saturday to see that light leaks through that flat or that the floor squeaks.  So we can overlap shows.

Since we can, we do.  Fees are low.  If you need income, you need to take as many shows as you can handle.  But this means weeks like this one, with meetings and deadlines on four different, over-lapping shows.

Two deadlines down, two to go.