Passing...

This weekend was saddened by the death of Rose Pearson, co-founder of Circle Theatre.

Rose added hugely to the arts in Fort Worth.  

Any idea how much hard work, dedication, and grit it takes to make a theater last - thrive! - for 35 years? It's a BIG accomplishment.  A good memorial.

Throughout the fifteen years I've been privileged to work at Circle, Rose's influence was always strong in her theater, but what I'll remember best was how, even when she was very ill, she remained closely involved - coming in for important board meetings, meeting visiting playwrights, or working by phone when she could.  She even used her too-up-close view of the hospital experience to inform a production by making suggestions on the privacy curtains around the only-pretend-patient's bed.  Art uses everything.  

A woman of amazing strength.

Her theater?  Much saddened, but continuing on under the guidance of her husband and Circle co-founder Bill Newberry. 

Courtesy of Circle Theatre

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.

The Horton Foote Festival

Dallas / Fort Worth is starting a unique celebration of our home-grown Texas playwright, Horton Foote.

This multi-city, multi-group festival is exciting - theaters, cinemas, KERA, Arts & Letters Live, the arts magnet high school - all presenting Horton Foote's work.  I'm privileged to play a small role in all this, designing The Traveling Lady set for WaterTower Theatre's production.  (A big plus is that it is directed by a long time collaborator of Foote's.)  A lovely play.

Mr. Foote may be the most famous man nobody's ever heard of.  

He wrote 70 plays plus distinguished film scripts (including that jewel To Kill a Mockingbird!) and, oh, you know, a Pulitzer.  But he must have been a not-a-back-slapper kind of person... like his plays...  gentle, shrewd, well-observed, real-people drama.  Not much blood (I think it's wild that WaterTower is following the violent Lieutenant of Inishmore with the subtle Lady).  Stuff happens, of course - The Traveling Lady has more or less a prison break and chase, abandonment, theft, breach of trust, all that dramatic stuff - but it's at human scale and characters have recognizable real-human reactions.  You think - "I know that lady.  I know how she feels."

This is the second of Foote's plays I've gotten to design.  I find the effect of his work cumulative... seeping into my own world, helping me see other people a little more kindly - but more accurately.  Maybe I'm a little wiser?  Maybe we all need more Horton Foote more of the time?  

The Traveling Lady - Horton Foote, WaterTower Theatre, Addison TX

A Set Designer's Days

The pace is picking up here.

The Traveling Lady is being built at WaterTower Theatre, so I visited yesterday to meet painters and deliver paint go-bys and color chips and will visit again today to look at furniture in the warehouse.  There are notes and negotiations going on about exactly where the grave should be located and the normal tweaks.  I've shopped for spring foliage and taken a walk by the creek to collect chinaberries.

Meanwhile a first meeting with another director to decide on scenic directions for Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and furious sketching to show what was talked of at last week's meeting on Marvin's Room.  Lots more on other shows to do too.  Time is speeding up!

Critics

This blog will not talk too much about critics, but I was amused to see that one who wrote a good review for Boeing Boeing liked my custom-built sofa because it was suggestive (in every sense)  of a particular masculine body part...

This illustrates where art critics both can come in handy and be misleading: because that idea never occurred to me.  (That I hadn't thought of it and the critic did says lots about both of us, I suspect.)  Once it's pointed out I can sorta see it.  Given the play, it's wonderfully appropriate.  Being alerted to this fact - if it is one - might add to understanding and enjoying the play - which is part of a critic's job.  So...

A.  Is this critic just reading into this work aspects of that critic's worldview?
B.  Is the critic seeing something my unconscious mind put there?  Consciously, I just remember calculating that a sofa was needed there of about that size and shape, sketching variations, making a requested change, then feeling that the final shape was "right."
C.  Don't over-think this!
 Or
D.  All of the above.

I gotta go with D.

Incomparable Theater

Creditors:  I was lucky enough to see Broken Gear Project Theater's production of this August Strindberg play.  Easy to see what a delicate mechanism the play is... how quickly this love/hate triangle could slip into ranting or fossilize into one of those over-corseted classics where the back row audience snoozes.  Not here.  I never use the word "perfect" (it sounds so unlikely to be true), but I honestly can't think of a thing that could be improved.  Direction, sets, costumes, the sum of the parts including, most importantly, the wonderful performances... were just... right.

I admired the set and costumes.  The set was just a couple little bookend walls added to the jogs and corners of the existing space in what feels like an old garage.  There is a painted-over window and a cracked concrete floor.  All of this is simply painted over again in subtle shades of gray to suggest vertical boards that blur into a sea view - mostly a dark horizon line, pale water, lowering clouds, with the feeling of a Japanese ink brush painting.  Furniture is beautiful Victorian stuff, which either looks white-washed (and white upholstered) or gleams a little redly, like the actress's auburn hair.  Costumes take this delicate color game even farther, with gray, subtle shades of cream, palest green, hints of auburn, and in the gown, another green and a pale slate-y blue.  All nuance.

The play itself - which I'd never seen performed -  was a fascinating three-way duel of jealousy and mental-power games as written by a sort of evil Henry James (a contemporary).  All the characters were in their own ways, monsters.  This is going to sound fanciful, but it made me think of a delicate glass goblet, the kind made in Murano for Medicis and Borgias, filled with a white wine like crisp apples, all floral bouquet... and poisoned.

image borrowed from Rossana & Rossana 

Boeing Boeing:  A rollicking farce, set in the 1960s Paris about a man with three fiances, each one an air hostess - he just has to keep their schedules straight.  Could there be a greater contrast to Strindberg?  Mental whiplash!  Yet, you know, both plays are about men and women and love triangles/ rectangles/ pentangles (pentagons?).  I can't pretend to review Boeing, as I designed it, but I will say that directing and acting a farce are - in a utterly different way - just as difficult as in the most serious drama.  This farce is, I think, successfully accomplished and very funny.  As for the tech parts: the stewardess' uniforms are period correct in zippy colors and the set... well, when I read on page 2, "exit door # 7" I smacked my forehead.  Hard.  But amongst all those doors I did manage to sneak in a few playful views of Paris and some bright, '60s art.

Apples versus oranges?  At least those are both fruit - these two plays are poisoned apples versus orange shag carpeting.  Impossible to compare.  Except... maybe... both productions are souffles.

image borrowed from flikr

Too Many !!!!s

It's that kind of week: a show opens, my Alice book launches (and has an intro-sale).  Exclamitory times.  But a favorite author, Terry Pratchett, writes that 4 exclamation points is a sure sign of madness - in which case...um...

Show Opens!

Boeing Boeing opens Saturday night at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth!

Approaching Opening

Some (okay, most) shows seem to enter some Twilight Zone time loop as Opening gets closer: you keep painting, dressing, even building, yet the set never seems to get closer to finished.  This is an illusion, but a common and painful one.  The first audience is Thursday - today is Tuesday.

The Boeing Boeing set is finally, finally about finished building and painting.  Mind you, a week of Snowpocalypse didn't speed things any, but the end is, I think, now approaching.  Tomorrow needs to be Set Dressing Day.  (Whether walls are dry or not.)

As an experienced designer, you find yourself getting more stream-lined and efficient as the deadline nears so that, for instance, painting a tabletop as faux travertine (that streaky bacon-fat looking beige marble), which a few years ago would have taken me half a day of worry and work, took exactly the 20 minutes I had left for it.  Redesign the bench (again) ten minutes.  By Thursday morning I could probably knit an entirely new set in three.

Recently found an old British World War II slogan that ought to be a theater motto:

image borrowed from ribbonandrope blog

As You Like It

I don't usually design first in model.  Because it takes longer, mainly, and I usually have a good grasp of the space, so I don't need the model so much for myself as to explain my idea to directors and builders.  But this is a new theater for me and I'm less comfortable with prosceniums.  Hence the model.  ModelS.

# 1 the straightforward what-we-were-talking-about version:

And # 2 the more 3D version:

The director picked my favorite, # 2.

NOT a Theater Review - Macbeth

For one thing, I like people in the cast and am a member of the company, so I can't be impartial, for another, I'm no critic.  This report on Kitchen Dog Theater's production of The Scottish Play is simply the reaction of a set designer to a production she didn't design, but is rootin' for.  Right?

So...  I liked the set. (Of course I start there.  First thing the audience sees!)  Minimal, industrial, steel and wood stairs* and a large platform at upstage center with wide steps down.  The black concrete block walls of the theater were untouched except for stenciled grafitti... the only thing I slightly disagreed with.  Grafitti?  Fine idea.  It's placement/composition was satisfying, but though it was at three sizes, there was only one design: all white, a chess piece - a king - with, under it, the letters ME, all in a rectangular cartouche.  Now, if scattered among other grafitti designs, it would have been witty, but plastered all over as the only decoration...  "King ME"  Really?  Wit needs to look tossed-off-casually. But the wagon movement that created the banquet table for Banquo's big scene was a great idea.  Clever and effective.  The spareness of the set was perfect for this production.

Still in tech mode: the space was a bit too sound-reflective, making upstage dialogue hard to catch.  Perhaps sound panels were needed on that wall or hung above?  Lighting looked good and responded nicely to changes in the dialogue - especially at the "Tomorrow" speech - and Banquo's Ghost light was creepy.  Costumes were black-ish and military-ish which seemed right.  Loathed Lady MacDuff's dress, sorry.  But the red drapes for the Macbeths at their royal apex were lovely, in fact, the orchestration of black and red throughout the play was wonderful..

The whole production?  Really enjoyed it.  I liked the stripped feeling of set, costumes, and cast.  The fluidity of actors changing roles!  And the minimal costume changes to accomplish that was beautiful - especially the over-the-head-rags of the witches, those roles bounced like balls between many actors.  I loved that the theater catwalks were used.  Stage fighting is fake-y (if you've seen a heated competitive fencing bout, you see the difference), but this fighting had energy and, in opening moments of the show, was cleverly used to foreshadow the tragedy.

The performances?  Really good.  Mr. and Mrs. MacB were (as they should be) fascinating.  Compared to other productions they had more reality... more earthiness maybe?  One critic praised the "Is this a dagger?" speech as actually seeming as if the actor could see a dagger.  That sums it up for me - this production and every actor in it seemed, for once, to be really seeing.  Really there.  Because they were convinced, we were:  MacDuff was heartbroken, Lady Macbeth would dash an infant's brains out, Macbeth would dare... anything.  Banquo's ghost was real.

Unbiased opinion?  Worth seeing.  Go buy a ticket if you can - it's selling out.


Sidenote: it's odd, as a designer, to see people you know acting.  I know it's acting, but you do sometimes wonder where the gentle person you know off stage finds the violence and anger displayed on-stage... and you quietly promise yourself not to get them mad next time you work together.

Footnote* One of the stairs was borrowed - I know because I designed it myself for summer Shakespeare a few seasons ago.  Another friend on stage.

Shopping

One of the guilty pleasures of the set designer/set dresser job is that you get to go shopping (with other people's money!) for stuff to go on your set.

Yesterday was a big shopping day.  I hit at least, um, eight stores plus the printing place.  It would have been more, but my favorite antique place was locked up with a note on the gate... while through the chain-link I could see - but not touch - exactly the right table base.  Tempted to climb the fence.  Hey, I'd have left a note!

On the Boeing Boeing set there's a bench that's become the main thing the audience stares at -  it needs to be cool.  It also needs to be sturdy since this is a farce.  Finding this bench is proving tough.  The best choice available may be a concrete bench... which has a good "look" but is a bit more expensive than I'd like (the thrill of spending other folk's money is dissipated when you realize you ought not to squander it, sigh), and is a LOT heavier than I want to tote.  So, more research today.

Funny Skills

Theater people need funny skills.  Today I'm off to Fort Worth to:

Finish painting views of Paris
Age and weather faux-lead mansard roofs
Help fake a parquet floor
and probably pad and upholster a sofa

Nothin' unusual - but nothing they me taught in architecture school.  Or anywhere else...

Theater folk, I've discovered, have to be real self-starters, self-educated in all sorts of funny skills.  Carpenters are always solving weird problems - like how to have a hotel room open up like a drawbridge (wall becoming floor) and prop people routinely build the impossible.  I once watched a prop designer build a giant boar's head, hair by hair.  It looked real... except for the 2x life size thing.

Amazing!

Theater Set, um, SHOW Review

Dallas Theater Center's Arsenic and Old Lace.  Lots of fun - exceedingly well done screwball comedy.

For a production advertised as a duo-diva show, it was amazingly ensemble - talented actors throughout giving very good characterizations.  Equally surprising was the fresh funniness of the material.  One critic pointed out that a character who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and shouts "Charge!" each time he mounts the stairs has no right to be funny anymore...  but he was.  Particular standouts were Tovah Feldshuh as the dottier of the old-maid sisters, who was charming and fey, and Lee Trull as the saner nephew, who handled his dialogue (alternating between Manhattan sophisticate and gob-smacked relative) with panache.  And the physical comedy!

The other star of the show was the set.  At the top of the show the audience saw a huge Victorian house set in a cemetery with, in front, a model of itself.  That model made clear the doll house quality of the set - that this was all a extra quaint, extra charming, rather-less-than-literal reality.  (Plus a funny bit I won't reveal.)  Perfect for the show.  As the action started, the set turned to reveal its interior... just like a doll house.  Perfect.

As an architect, I did have a few little shudders of, "that detail, that detail's not quite..." purely involuntary architectural twitches and I'm taking pills for it.  (Pills and injections.)  No.  The occasional exaggerations of the set's architecture added to the cock-eyed, screwball feel of the show.  Colors and patterns - mostly reds and roses - were sensitively chosen... and when the rose floral dinner plates came out I sighed in pure satisfaction.  I will make the slightest possible quibble about set dressing of upstage bookcases, which (okay I grant the butterfly specimens: Roosevelt = naturalist, yup) still suggested the random decoration of a Friday's restaurant, but that's microscopic against the overall wonderfulness, the wonderosity! of the set.  Loved it.

Loved the whole show.  Left humming the scenery.

Model Building

Some shows can only be designed in model...

So I have very sticky fingers today!

Time to run and gather furniture: IKEA (love it), antique/junks stores, and theater warehouses.

Super Bowl as a Gig

The Super Bowl half-time show has got to be a very difficult show to invent.

The big problem is size: the "stage" is enormous and much of the audience is waaaay far away from the performers, so that even the biggest of rock stars is going to look like an ant.  It's necessary to do big stuff - stages, effects, and certainly to add dozens, scores, hundreds of backup dancers... Which usually looks like a herd.  Whatever the show is, it can't be subtle!

But yesterday's show by the Black Eyed Peas overcame all this.  The music was strong enough for the space and crowd.  The herds of dancers managed to look choreographed.  Cool Tron-like lighted costumes looked fantastic.  Pieces of set that came out during the show (which helped solve the hurry-up problem of getting all this started) really added interest - having them light up too and spell out giant words was clever.  Everything "read" even from high-up seats.  And there was a real sense of occasion.   (Plus I liked the confetti cannons.)

Not my favorite kind of show, but I've got to admire its slick success.

Arts Fund Raiser - Paaaartee!

Tomorrow is Kitchen Dog Theater's cool annual Hootch & Pootch party.  Always good fun.  Buy your ticket right here: Party Pass!

Go!  spend money!  Support one of the best theaters... well, in a loooong travel in any direction, frankly.  We do New Work - hardly anyone else does - better than that, we do Good Work both new and old.

So go party.  And if you buy one of the mystery bags you might get lucky and find one of my unique collaged jewelry pieces.  This year I made a big assortment, from silly bejeweled Mexican Bingo card badges to serious silver and collage art necklaces and pins.   Adorn yourself with micro-art.  (Whoever gets the Humpty Dumpty locket... I almost kept that.  I did keep the Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum pin with the goofy hand-blown glass beads.)  But there's the Tahitian lady on mother-of-pearl and the "language of flowers" necklaces up, literally, for grabs.  Catch Humpty quick!

Car Load of Strike

Ha!  And yesterday I was complaining about having a box of models and drawings to put away...  Today I have a car full of things from Strike that need to be stored or returned.  In my (small) car at this moment - no kiddin' - are;

1. 1 lg. oak desk chair with arms - return theater #1
2. 1 sm. secretary chair w/out arms -  "         "       "
3. 1 drafting stool (disassembled) - store
4. 2 tall stools (unmatched) - return 1, store 1
5. 1 tall metal rack shelf unit (disassembled) - store
6. 6 boxes painted books - return theater #2
7. approx. 8 pc. large foam molding - return theater #3
8. approx. 5 pc. small wood molding -    "         "      "
9. 7 practical lanterns - just inherited, store
10. 2 paint trays & rollers - trash dirty roller covers, store rest
11. 1 ice bucket, 4 glasses, 1 bowl, 1 tray, 3 "pewter" mugs, 1 trophy etc. - store
12. 6 pc. assort. mad-scientist gear, inclu. 1 "remote control"
13. 1 trashcan w/ misc. set dressing - store set dressing...

I get my studio trash can back!!

The thing about set designing no one mentions is that mostly your car (and garage and attic and front hall...) are Full Of Junk.

Strike

A sad day - Strike.  That set that you only finished it seems like minutes ago, now has to be dismantled.

For the black & white show, Death is No Small Change, tonight is the last performance and the strike.  The set designer has to show up and collect her stuff.  Which means I'll get my studio trash can back!  Wahoo!

Otherwise sad.  Quite sad.  Very sad.

Some shows you miss long afterwards: I still miss long ago Sweeney Todd and Urinetown, and the recent Charm.

Charm at Kitchen Dog Theater

High School Ambassador

Saturday was High School Tech Theater Day:

A fun chance to explain theater set design to a room full of interested students.  Some good questions.  Some Show-N-Tell.    (I have a big box of models, sketches, and production photos sitting on my drafting board now, waiting to be put away again.)  Some very bright kids who guessed the secret that I confirmed....

The Techies have all the fun!