The Thrill of the Find

My Ruth set needs a 1920s vintage stove - either a wood or a more modern gas model would do.

So we've been hunting for weeks for a loaner.  We've looked at several good imitations built of plywood; these were all either too wide or both too wide and too high, and generally looked rather more like plywood than like cast iron.  We've looked at several real stoves; these were all too recent, but even if they might pass for the right vintage, all weighed an absolute ton... being made of actual cast iron.

But today!

A wood stove of actual cast iron, but with beautiful roll-y wheels so we don't have to care how much it weighs - and sized to fit!

A 1938 photo of a woman cooking at a stove much like ours - from Old Picture of the Day

Variations

Sometimes the first sketched set design you show a director is exactly what they had in mind.

Sometimes it takes a few tries to work through the issues of the performance space and the particular production and to understand each other.

I'm usually lucky in hitting on a scheme the director likes fairly quickly, but sometimes... not.  Multiple designs are more likely to happen when you're working with a director or producer for the first time, or designing for a new venue, or are talking (and scanning drawings) long distance.  Right now I'm doing all three for a production of Sweeney Todd in Prague.

The assignment is a low-budget set that's relatively easy to build and put up and down in a rented theater space, a set that will act as a sort of screen for lighting and projections that will suggest the period and specific settings.  In a phone call the director spoke of overlapping ships' sails, shrouds, cemeteries, Victorian engravings, the drape of fabric...

As the Prague team looked at theaters, the director morphed his images of the production to fit the nature of each stage.  (Luckily, they'd settled on one theater before I came on board.)

Back at my board this is all turning out to mean lotso versions:

Version #1:

Sweeney Todd - the Drapery version

I like this one.  Movable fabric "wings" could pivot in and out of the stage to subdivide it, make dramatic reveals, or change the look.  Projections and lighting would animate these draped panels. I also enjoyed inventing a way to turn a photo of the theater into a perspective of this design: the 3D drapery effect is actually 3D drapery (made from thin tracing paper plus glue and colored pencil) squashed into the scanner. 

Version #2:

Sweeney Todd - the Sails version

These next two versions had to be drawn fast (no time to play with the world's flattest modeling technique!), so I'm back to ink and colored pencil.  (A bit washed-out here. Bolder in real-life.)  These represent the extremes of my understanding of the director's visions.  The platform added at SL (your right) is to create the bodies-exit-through-the-floor usual for Sweeney and a "real" oven door.  (Version #1 assumed a more minimal faking-it approach.)

Version #3:

Sweeney Todd - the Graveyard version

Essentially the same plan as Version #2 dressed differently.  This Graveyard version is fun, but this set is getting harder to build.  I'm starting to worry about budget and time.  Flurry of emails between designers, directors, technical director, director... a mix of pragmatic worries and enthusiasm for more elaboration.  Much back-n-forthing, resulting in:

Version #4:

No pretty sketch yet, just a hasty plan that amalgamates aspects of the previous three schemes while trying, desperately!, to also simplify things. 

As you can see, there's some real debate about what this Sweeney should be, with some conflict between the ideal and the budget-real, between several competing ideas in the director's mind, and (I betcha) by now between personalities too...

Email from the director.

Stop Press.

Version # 2A now in the works...

Film Fest: The Avengers

Enjoyed it!

For fans of big summer action flicks, this is a very good example of the sub-genre "Super Hero".  The action is well choreographed and exciting, with  New York City, as usual, given a hard time.

(Poor NYC and poor Tokyo too, what with that Godzilla constantly.)

But, as a fan of Joss Whedon's work, it was the banter and bickering between the ill-assorted heroes of the Avengers that I really enjoyed.  That and the Hulk!  Frankly, I had never understood the appeal of the Hulk in the comics, but in this film he's one of the best characters... and when he goes Green, he's either really impressive in his rage or wonderfully comic.  (Hulk one-on-one with the villain Loki - watch for it.)

There's a lot of character based humor in this film; it's clear that the director and screenwriter  both (Joss? both of 'em?) understand(s) the different points of view of his very different heroes.  i'd love to watch a poker game between these guys.

Screen capture from The Avengers from Collider.com, more pic there.

A fun summer movie with much much better dialogue than usual.

Painting Slats...

And slats and more slats...

My Ruth set is going to have a built-out-of-pallets look, so here we all are painting the slats for the pallets.  (The blue box is the side of the theater building.  I'm the one bending over so elegantly, fiddling with a paintbrush-onna-stick.  Co-Artistic Director Tina Parker is the only one facing the camera - wearing her "Boss Hogg" Tshirt - and wonderful, wonderful volunteers are behind us, painting.  Thank you, volunteers!)

Later in the day, as the shade disappeared, this got to be a very hot job indeed.

Building Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater - photo by Tim Johnson

Taping Out

One important stage in the rehearsal process is when the actors rehearse their blocking... but the set isn't there yet!

Instead, the stage manager "draws" the outline of the future set on the stage floor using spike tape.  (This is a kind of narrow gaf tape, or a thin duct tape, but in rainbow colors.)  Sometimes the set designer has to help, if the set's floor plan is tricky.

Last night was a Designer Run for one of my shows - a full performance of the play, but last night at least, concentrating more on getting the new blocking down than on emoting.  All acted out on a taped out set.  This is a very useful run for the lighting designer especially, because he needs to know where everyone will be in order to point lights at them.  An exercise in imagination!

(For the set designer the biggest amusement is usually to watch the actors walk through walls.)

This morning we start building the set.  Gotta run...

Furniture Pull

This morning I'm meeting at a helpful theater's warehouse to pull furniture for my up-coming show Ruth, at Kitchen Dog.

It's a huge, HUGE help to poor and struggling theaters (i.e. all theaters) when those with furniture, props, or other assets share their wealth.  I am, personally, grateful for these loans.  It doesn't just improve a show, often it makes it possible.  Especially for period work.

In KD's In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play even the impressive legs of the doctor's table were loaners.  Sure, we could have built that table without 'em, but it wouldn't have looked nearly as solidly, Victorianly, authoritative as that exam table HAD to look - appearing a very Altar in the Temple of Science.

Those legs helped both sell this Doc's authority... and make the sexy carryings-on funnier.

In Fort Worth - enlightened theater world! - one university shares a warehouse with many theaters.  All put furniture in it, all are welcome to borrow it out again, with a simple sign-out book and an honor system.  Dallas?  Nope.  Few theaters can afford a warehouse, but if you call around, many kind groups, schools, or individuals will offer what you need.  (I've had sofas out of living rooms sometimes!)  Theatre Three is particularly kind and helpful and rich in furniture.  Thank you Theatre Three!

Now look again at that photo of In the Next Room...

In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play - photo by Matt Mrozek

See the handsome antique cabinet on the upstage wall?  Holding medical books and instruments?  It helps set the time period, reinforces the doctor's wealth and authority - literally gives him weight - plus it's the only real piece of furniture in the room, almost on the set, so scenically it's quite valuable... (And, as a designer, I love that it has fat corner "legs" too, so it talks to my table.  It's funny.)

Wouldn't be allowed to borrow that this year.

For some reason - no one's been told why - the Dallas Theater Center, which has a grand and very rich storehouse of furniture and props (paid for, in part, by tax money and in tiny part by my ticket purchases over the years)... Well, they've stopped loaning out.

No loans.  Nobody.

This is a great loss.  I'm very grateful for their furniture over the last decade, as I know many many other designers and theaters are, all around town.  The Dallas Theater Center's stock has enriched plays in the entire region.  They have by far, by multiples of tens and hundreds or thousands, the budget for furniture of any other theater in Dallas, Fort Worth, or all the cities around.  Their warehouse is a treasure trove!  I'm sure their generosity cost some time, but... surely the flagship of Dallas theater thinks supporting this region's theater is worthwhile?

I'm heart-sick that DTC's generous lending has stopped.

I wish the Dallas Theater Center would reconsider.  Please loan out to us little guys again.  We may be poorer, but we do good theater too.  We would appreciate your help.

(More on furniture: Return of the Dreaded Sofa and Pulling Furniture, an earlier post on the topic.)

Surfin'

I just happened across the on-line portfolio of a lighting designer, Lisa Miller, who I've worked with several times.  It was a treat to see photos of our shows together at Kitchen Dog:

Charm

In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play

(Both photos by Matt Mrozek

For me, these two shows seem to be bookends to each other... I suppose because the Victorian period is the same and some of the "women's" issues in each play, although the styles of both texts, productions, and sets were completely different, Charm being a sort of magical realism and In the Next Room much closer to realism.  Even the set colors are opposite: blues and greens versus reds and oranges.

Some Days...

As a designer you just want to say, "That's the way I drew it because That's the Way I WANT It."

Sigh.

Wise to find a more graceful phrasing.

The alternate (equally maddening) situation is, "I want it that way and so - look! - I drew it that way."

Naturally, as I wrestle with a couple shows where I'm NOT saying either of the above, it is today that I am introduced to a company that offers pre-designed theater shows.  Rather like an architectural plan shop, the places that offer those send-away-for plans for ski chalets and kit-houses in the backs of magazines.

Buy a pre-designed show and change anything you like 'cause the designer doesn't know or care.

Though this horrifies me as an architect, it makes some sense since most folks really only want a roof - many buildings just want to be buildings, not The Art of Architecture.

A catalog kit-house, public domain image Wikipedia

But ALL theater production is - by definition - trying to be Art.

Sigh.