Lull? Not So Much

The speed of this set designer's life is picking up again:

Today there's an interview with an almost-new client.  I worked with them years ago for basically what change they could find under the sofa cushions (plus tasty cookies), but this time it's all a little better funded and at a new address.  Meanwhile, I've learned that the builder for another set will no longer be building - there's going to be a scramble to see how that gets done.  Waiting on a director's phone call on a third show (I better nudge 'em, that deadline is approaching).  A forth show has had a sad delay, but now a production meeting date is set... for which I need to get a sketch in gear.  Oh!  And I've accepted the offer of a favorite show in - wait for it - Prague!  Cool, huh?  You'll be hearing more about these shows: Mistakes Were Made; Boeing, Boeing; Ruth; Sweeney Todd; and the Dallas Theater Center's Summer Stage program.

Plus, of course, I've been figuring out income taxes.  If you have your own business, taxes get, um, annoying.  All those receipts!  Mileage!  (Man! I drive a lot of miles to theaters.)  Calculating the exact square footage of the home studio versus the entire home in order to prorate the costs of electricity etc. as business versus personal costs...  Taxes are very annoying.  Especially if you replaced a car this year, as I had to.  (Saga of Scenic Rides 1 & 2 HERE and, for those of you who find other people's struggles with taxes as funny as I do, here are last year's rants: Tax Rant #1, #2, and #3.)

That explains why there was no post yesterday: I was too annoyed!

Sigh.

Van Gogh's Almond Blossums, believed public domain image

But it's Spring!  Easter almost.  I'm feeling better - family and friends are well.  The taxes look like they'll turn out okay.  And the recent tornadoes that ripped through DFW spared my neighborhood.  So life's good.

Sidelined

Or, okay, sofa-bound by this cold.

Sadly the show must go on... no matter how nasty you, the designer, feel.  At least neither of my shows is opening in the next few days, so I have a little bit of time to drink tea on the sofa and baby this cold today.  Tomorrow I absolutely have to be in Fort Worth to direct leaves going up - that's for Soccer Mom.  I brought home three different signs to paint for Collapse.  Those can wait till Wednesday.

Image = several public domain images + sketches

This dilemma of projects going forward whether you need a sick day or not is hardly unique to theater.  The world is full of deadlines.  Perhaps it is more awkward though for anyone who is self-employed - there's just no one to hand your work off too.  Ever.

The lesson children?

Stay healthy!

Set Designer's Weekend

Theoretically last weekend was Off...

Actually there was an opening Saturday night (The Fantasticks) and a First Read Through (The Frequency of Death! my black and white).  Really for truly, there was most of the two days preparing the design sketches for F of D so I could show them Sunday evening.

A very pleasant occasion.  Food, meeting new people and old friends, and the excitement of hearing the play aloud.  One actor did a nifty Jack Nicholson imitation (that won't be on-stage, sadly).  There was a film crew recording the occasion...  seems there's going to be a documentary.

public domain photo, courtesy of Totally Free Images!

Designer's Life - Finishing and Reading the omens

There's a tendency for a theater set to Never Be Done!

I'm off to Fort Worth again today to - I hope - finish finishing the Fantasticks set that I thought I finished Monday.  This time it's to age and tweak the big "Fantasticks" banner.  Sigh.  This is pretty normal.  Like most art projects, a theater show is never so much "finished" as "you open anyway."

The Fantasticks opens Saturday!  (Come see the New! Improved! Banner...  and the show too.)

Image borrowed from Circle Theatre

Besides, any day when the staid NPR station wakes you with Kurt Cobain in your left ear is not a day for peaceful rest-itude, or so the omens suggest.  (I liked the song, it just startled me is all.)  Speaking of public radio: here's another couple art critiques from Our Reporter in the Midwest.

Dress Rehearsal

Today is Cue-to-Cue for In the Next Room, when the light and sound designers and the stage crew - who move scenery or make it snow - practice all their parts, timing them to the actors' work.  Set Designers (who, inevitably just want to paint stuff) are mostly in the way.

But this evening is Dress Rehearsal, when the actors, in full costume (mostly), run through the entire show without all the morning's interruptions.  It's a chance to see what the whole production looks and sounds like, and what the timing is like.  The set designer needs to be there, taking reams of notes, and making a punch-list of To-Do items... to finally get this sucker finished!

photo believed public domain

Dry Tech

Today, being a Saturday, is Dry Tech day for In the Next Room.

This is the day lighting and sound designers work with the director and stage manager - inventing, explaining, experimenting, applying design ideas to the rhythms of the play and... well, seeing what works.  For weeks or longer, these designers have thought through the challenges of the play and assembled ideas, light fixtures, sounds, or music.  They create paperwork - plans locating lighting instruments and notes until they create a Paper Tech - basically taking the script and written charts of what sound or light ought to occur where, then talking through this with the director.  (Simple shows may not have a formal Paper Tech.).

The Dry Tech ("dry" because no actors yet - think "hard" and "soft"-ware, right?  Theater has "wet" and "dry" techs, though it sorta sounds more polite to say Dry Tech and Cue-to-Cue.  No one wants to call actors all wet.)  Where was I?  Ah!  Dry Tech is the time to take those ideas that work on paper and see if they actually work 3D in time and space.  So the lighting designer plays with colored lights and - even more important - with transitions and timing.  The sound designer's job is similar.  Then toss in practicing with the snow machines or moving scenery or whatever other technical fun has to happen on-stage.

Tomorrow will be Cue-to-Cue (Wet Tech!) with actors onstage.  All technical aspects of the show become integrated with the text: actors speak dialogue, open and close doors, walk from one pool of light to another... and spend hours waiting for the next tech moment.  The different parts of a production become a Whole.

Here are links to earlier posts on Tech:  Set Designer's Life - Tech  and an on-line site on Hell Week (AKA Tech).

Set Designer's Life - Drafting

It's weird, but after only thirty years...  I'm kinda bored with drafting.

If I can get started, I'm okay.  Force myself to my board and get involved with the design...  Because there's always more design!  You figure out details: how to build this?  What would be the cheapest or most straightforward assembly of materials?  What's critical to visual effect or use and what isn't?  In architecture,  materials and connections have to be substantial, but theater lasts five weeks - which allows a little cheating.  Make that joint Gaf tape!  (Love Gaf tape.)  I rather love the ability to cheat; sometimes it's easier to get the look you want working with cardboard and Gaf, than with granite and stainless steel.

There's no end to design.  After construction drawings are done you talk with the builder, who has a better idea.  Together you develop a third - even better - way.  You scribble details in your sketchbook or on scrap plywood.  Think slow and thorough at your board - then fast and collaboratively at the build site.

I've been busy at my drafting board, working on The Fantasticks for Circle Theatre.

A simple plan, yet mine own... or...  No, actually it's a redesign of Ed Wittstein's original scenic ideas for the first production of The Fantasticks, in Greenwich Village.  This is the longest running  show ever in the U. S. at 42 years.  Here's an amazing Wikipedia quote:

"The producers spent $900 on the set and $541 on costumes, at a time when major Broadway shows would cost $250,000. The original set designer, costumer, prop master, and lighting designer was Ed Wittstein, who performed all four jobs for a total of only $480 plus $24.48 a week."

Amazing?  For two reasons:  Wittstein's  ideas are still perfect for the show (I don't use "perfect" lightly); and both set budget and  designer's pay haven't changed much in forty years.  Circle's budget for both is bigger (thank goodness!), but I'd bet every designer in the DFW area (or elsewhere) has had less to spend and has been paid less on some show or other.  

Be honest.

Okay - I did the math.  According to one estimate, $ 1.00 in 1960 would equal $ 7.46 in 2011 dollars. So...  Wittstein had the equivalent of a present day $ 6714 to spend on his set and was paid (ignore the weekly) $ 4036 as a base fee... for, count 'em, four jobs... so let's say $ 1000-1200 for wearing the set designer hat.

Times haven't changed at all!  In fact, set budgets may have declined, while pay is... still pathetic.  Ouch.

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...

Set Designer's Life - Stuff!

I'm pretty sure all set designers and set dressers have full garages.  Where else do you store all your stuff?

My own is absolutely FULL.  I can carefully inch a car into it, but every other inch is filled with the usual garage stuff - shovels, tools, bathtubs - the rest is crammed with theater set dressing, small pieces of stage furniture, and architectural fragments that might be useful on a set.  Vital stuff!  Because when I need to do, say, an Art Deco living room or, as now, a house of the 1880s, I can't count on instantly finding and buying or borrowing the perfect, telling, period details I need.  (Not at a price I can afford.)  So I store, for instance, a wicker sewing basket, a crystal and brass chandelier, a modernist desk chair, a circle of excellent fake grass, and (bought yesterday) a small Art Deco radio.  Among a thousand other things.

A few years ago - when the car no longer fit - I had to decide whether to rent a storage unit for this clobber, or to get serious about storing it neatly.  Renting a storage unit looked like an endless drain on my meager profits, so I invested a little money and a lot of time on sturdy shelves and organizing the junk into giant Tupperware TM style containers.  It's now much easier to find things...

...though once the weather cools down (109 F again yesterday) it'll be time to reorganize.

Set Designer's Life - Reimbursibles

This is the hardest thing...  As a designer, you have to save receipts for everything you buy for a show and then turn them in to be reimbursed!


I know this doesn't sound that hard - BIZ 101 - but it's surprisingly hard to follow through on.  You forget to label the receipt immediately because you're grappling with cards or cash, wallet, purchase, there's someone waiting on you and so on.  You lose or mis-file the receipt.  You're so darn busy finishing the show that you put off organizing receipts.  Time passes...  A year later, as you do your taxes, you realize that you forgot to ask for repayment and that all those forgot-to-asks add up to a tidy sum.  Maybe a car payment.

So today I'm herding a sliding mess of tiny, slippery receipt slips across my desk, trying to catch up.  Yuck.

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

Set Designer's Life - Gettin' Along with Folks

Talking with a colleague I was reminded that the person-to-person end of design can be a minefield.  Pulling together a show is high-pressure and people involved in theater care (often passionately) about the show and their part in it.  These tend to be, well, let's say dramatic personalities, shall we?  This means occasional flare ups.  It's inevitable.

What's a designer to do?

public domain image

Well, first off, make SURE you're not the one who's lost their temper!  It's unwritten, but a tacit part of your job as set designer, to always, always, always be calm.  Calm.  Actors, directors, some other designers may get to be divas, but the Scenic Code requires calm.

How to maintain that calm?  Or fake it?  Remember this:
1)  You've survived worse.  (If you haven't, you WILL have the Show from Hell.  Maybe this one!  You'll survive.)
2)  You're clever and resourceful, you'll figure something out.
3)  You are a gentleman or lady and, what's more, a grown-up.
4)  This person yelling (perhaps at you) is proving themselves none of the above.  They look silly.

When some other personality royally annoys you, walk away a minute, telling yourself: "I am in this for the design work.  People are side issues."  When you've cooled down, deal with the issue in the most professional way you can.

Is your design good? THAT is the point.  Amazing how that thought can lower your blood pressure.

Designer's Life - the External Factors

One important factor in the design process is the condition under which the designer works.  It shouldn't have any real effect on the quality of the product - how good a design it is - but it sure effects the designer's life.

A well designed studio makes working more efficient.  Good lighting, a proper chair, design tools within reach...  Improve your work space, wherever it is, and the more pleasant it is, the easier you'll find it to sit down to work.   I wrote on this topic in February, but I'm thinking of it again because, well, you can only control so much of your environment...

Unlike last time, the External Factor effecting my converted-porch studio is not snow outside, but heat: 100-110 degrees F lately.

I'm melting!  Drawing early in the morning is my only hope - drawing fast!

Set Designer's Life - First Read Through

This is a milestone in the actors' rehearsal process - the first time the cast reads the script together.  Everyone sits around a big table (or three pushed together, actually), so there's no movement really, no blocking or props or set, just words and voices.  Still, I'm always surprised by how much funnier or more touching a script becomes when it's spoken aloud.  In the Other Room: or the Vibrator Play is going to be much funnier than I expected.

Mostly I just listened - and made a few notes along the lines of, "Don't forget sink! Ask about candles - real or electric?" and "Hides behind piano - how?"  (My best such note ever, from a Designer Run rather than a Reading was: "Can't watch eyeball eating!!!"  No kidding.)

Image courtesy of http://www.wpclipart.com

Sometimes designers are invited to the First Read, sometimes not - most directors are glad to have designers visit anytime.  Last night, not only were designers there, there were both of the artistic directors and a few board members, which is a little unusual (Kitchen Dog often is).  We were celebrating: First Read Through of the first play of the new season!

Set Designer's Life - Documenting the Work

One of the hardest parts of being a theater designer, in the rush of getting shows designed and realized, is remembering to document the finished design!

Usually this means photographing the show.

There are all sorts of technical problems in photographing a set.  For one thing, it's usually high and/or wide and an ordinary camera lens can't catch it all easily.  For another, sets look best under stage lighting, but those light levels are rather dim for the camera.

Today I hand over to the lighting designer - months late! - my photos of my The Traveling Lady set.

Designer's Life - Lists

What on earth would a designer do without lists?

Furniture lists.  Material lists.  Gimme lists and gotta-find lists.  To-Do lists...  At the moment my To-Do list is - horrifying.  Way up at the top is "find alternate sofa" and we all know how aggravating sofas  can be (previous post).  Jostling for top spot on the list is "sort out old car title" for the trade in of the old Scenic Ride designer pedal car...  I can only guess how aggravating the Motor Vehicle place will be... from the on-line forms.  Yeesh.

But I gotta love the lists.  Without 'em I couldn't remember to find my own head.

Reviews

Another good review in for As You Like It (Trinity Shakespeare in general).

Funny, as much as reviews encourage or depress the reviewed-upon-one, they have relatively little effect: one producer told me a great review only adds 10% in ticket sales.  Any review gets the word out.  I've found that individual reviews - fantastic ("stunningly brilliant") or terrible ("crappy") - don't seem to have much immediate effect on a career... though their accumulation does.

(I've seen one critic campaign, over many reviews, to get a designer fired - and succeed.  The reviewer has started another campaign, so far inconclusive; I'm rootin' for the excellent designer!  Not me BTW though as a bystander I caught a little shrapnel.  Not me yet.)

But a review's effect isn't always what you'd expect.  If, say, a set gets mentioned favorably first in a review, such prominent praise is not always helpful to a designer's relationship to every director in the world... understandable, if they get dinged in the same review, but maybe even if that director gets praised in second place...

Of course, most theater people "don't read reviews."

There's a great NPR "Fresh Air" interview with actor Robert Duval where he quotes an early painful review - remembering it decades later, word for word.

Dress Rehearsal

Watched the Five Women dress rehearsal/Tech last night.

Set design is kinda funny...  Tech and Dress, which are such very BIG deals to the rest of the design team, cast, and crew, are (unless the set moves a lot) dull for the set designer.  Although its interesting, even fascinating, to see the show on its feet, as far as getting your own work done, you kinda wish everyone would get out of your way and let you: staple down the new rugs, straighten that lampshade, paint that piece of wall, install that "wallpaper" etc.  At this stage the set designer and crew can feel... alienated?  Also tired.

But the run through looked good!

Film Fest Wedged into Tech

Rewatched The King's Speech - which holds up to a second viewing well.  (See my original notes on it HERE.)

But that was late yesterday, wedged into a pretty busy Tech Weekend for Five Women.

Among the funny skills a set designer needs - in theaters without the budget or staff of big regional or university stages - you need to be able to fake upholstery.  On stage you can get away with crudities like staples or hot glue that would never do in a living room, but work still needs to be neat and must stand up to harder use than at home.  So yesterday I wrestled with creating a smooth seat cushion on a rhomboid shaped window seat (padded with three separate pieces of foam)... where actresses sit, stand, and wriggle too much.  I also re-covered the dressing table's chair (keeping fabric stripes very straight) and created two seat cushions for borrowed chairs.  To protect their cane seats, the cushions have plywood under the padding, making upholstery a matter of stapling, not sewing.  Much easier.  To finish these blue moire satin cushions off, I stapled a blue-n-yellow rope trim round the edges and added a pair of blue ropes with tassels at the rear corners, as if to tie the cushions in place.  Très élégant. Upholstery, drapery, wallpapering, painting... the set designer is Jack-of-all-decorating-trades.

Today I am finding, copying, cutting, matting, and framing art.  Tomorrow I'll hang it.  And set dress.  Busy!

Staggering Onwards

Nonetheless...

Today is a busy one: a meeting with the director on the next Circle Theatre production, Becky's New Car (don't forget to see the one onstage now - Marvin's Room - very good); fabric shopping at the outlet stores on Harry Hines for Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, which is a'building; and a visit to Fort Worth to take a peek at the cue-to-cue Tech of As You Like It.

Even when I'm bummed, a day in theater is a good day.