First Steps...

But if I'm going to show the development of Fun House's Romeo and Juliet set I really need to show the rough sketches that come before the "pretty" drawing (that drawing a designer uses to persuade the director and producers that This Is The Set They Want!).  HERE is that "pretty" sketch.

Here are some of those rough sketches.

These particular doodles were done in the near dark of another theater - Stage West - during an interval in the Tech rehearsal for The Explorers Club.  (Now onstage in Addison at WaterTower Theater - get yer tickets!)

Designers often do overlap shows - have to really - there being not enough weekends in the year or dollars in the fees not to.  Besides, by the time Tech arrives the set designer's job ought to be largely done - now you're mostly checking for goofs, omissions, and minor issues like light leaks or ragged hems on sofas - so that, if things are going smoothly, you have some extra headroom to think about the next show.

So this pic?

Documents me thinkin' about the next show.  In these sketches I was trying to work out the texture of the two towers and whether a flare to the base of the Capulet's would look right... and how to support that balcony anyway...?

Preliminary sketches for Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet- 

by Clare Floyd DeVries in the theater of Stage West during Tech for The Explorers Club.

In Brief...

Busy drawing and thinking here: revisions on [title of show] and first sketches on Exit, Pursued by a Bear.

Mostly thinkin'.

The trick for me with Exit, Pursued by a Bear is that it follows another "kitchen" show.  This kitchen needs to look very different from that kitchen... and yet there I am starting with same thrust stage with the same single upstage wall to line up kitchen cabinets and appliances on and the exact same sink/stove/refrigerator.  Even the same counter peninsula is called for!

Hard to make this kitchen look strikingly different.

(Speaking of a kitchen's "look," I was very pleased to hear that playwright Tom Dudzik , who wrote Miracle on South Division Street, saw a photo of my set and said it "looked just like his grandmother's kitchen.")

Photo courtesy of (I think) Circle Theatre

Set Designer's Day - Meetings

Funny how meetings seem to flock together.  Yesterday turned into a meeting day - and pretty much the whole day once I reread both scripts (Seven with One Blow or the Brave Little Kid  and The Diary of Anne Frank); added notes and questions to both scripts; doodled; and then actually, you know, met.

Public domain image

Fun meetings with both directors to talk through the plays, the acting space, and what the set needed to accomplish.  Now I'm full of bubbling ideas.

Which is a good thing, because I need to have sketches for Seven by Tuesday!