Book Sale!

Wahoo!

My printer, Lulu.com is having a sale on my how-to theater set design book Alice Through the Proscenium.

You can learn more about Alice HERE on Lulu or on this  Squidoo  page.  And, as always, it's also available at Barnes and Noble.com as an eBook.

Painted Model

I don't build a model for most shows.  I tend to think in 3D and to be able to document ideas for directors and producers in sketches.  It's faster (and cheaper) to scribble than to construct a model.

But for this show sight-lines are tricky.  Hard to estimate on paper.  The lighting designer kindly made an AutoCAD 3D model which helped immensely, by letting you virtually-sit in any seat.  Fantastic!  Still, a physical model could enhance our understanding.

What decided me that I needed a model was the scenic painting.  This design is not the simple paint-by-number, give-'em-paint-chips! paint job that many sets are.  (Realistic interiors, for instance, can be straightforward to paint: flat or simple scumbled color, then dirtied up.)  This show needs to be much more "scenicly" painted.  But I was having trouble understanding how color ought to vary across the walls without seeing them together in 3D.  AutoCAD models are great, but famously poor at rendering color...

I needed a model for my own sake - to figure things out - and for everyone else's sake - to explain.

So.

I spent one efficient Sunday making little side trips outdoors to spray-glue copied construction drawings onto foamcore board, which I then cut and glued into the basic "white" model.  Finicky work.

White model of a theater set - copyright Clare Floyd DeVries

The next day I painted this white model (and the model for the other scene I'm not showing you - come see the show, eh?)

Tell you the truth - I was nervous.  Afraid I'd botch up 8-hours worth of model by 8 seconds of Oops! with a paintbrush.

But it worked out okay.

Painted model for the same theater set - copyright Clare Floyd DeVries

ADDENDUM:  My buddy Joseph is featuring this model on his Stage Design by Joseph blog.  His posts are worth reading as another view of the set designer's life.  His current project is Man of la Mancha.  (A show I love.)

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.

Fabric Shopping

Fabric shopping is one of the unexpected joys of set design.

Unexpected by me, anyway.  As an architect I'm comfortable with selecting building materials - brick, stone, wood etc. - even if in theater these materials are, like as not, merely painted imitations of the real thing.  Since most sets turn out to be of interior rooms, there are interior finishes to pick too.  Architects often choose carpet, but many hand off carpet selection and certainly "soft" furnishings to interior designers or even to clients.

Not in theater.  If it's physically on stage and neither worn by nor carried by an actor, then the scenic designer chose it.  Or at least okayed it.

Which turns out to be kinda fun.

Fabrics!  The colors, textures, the drape and weight and translucency!  Fabrics are fascinating.

Dallas is luckily big enough to support a lively collection of fabric stores and warehouses.  There are the big chain sewing/fabric stores like Hancock's or JoAnn's.  Retail prices are high for theater budgets, but these  stores have frequent sales.  Remnants sometimes.  Retail fabric stores that specialize in upholstery, curtain, and decorating fabrics, however, are mostly too expensive even with sales, but there are great cut-price fabric stores along Harry Hines.

The most famous of these discount warehouses is Golden d'Or with its legendary Bargain Room.   (Half off of already discount prices!)   I enjoy visiting Golden d'Or - in part because it's such a hidden I-know-the-secret-door sort of place - but my favorite and luckiest store is Wherehouse Fabrics just up the street.  It's organization is more slap-dash, tables heaped with fabric rolls, but prices start at $1.50 a yard.  Can't beat that!  Best Fabrics next door has a great decorating fabric selection at good prices... but I have more luck at Wherehouse.

Believed public domain

The other day I had luck for an upcoming show.  If not quite the silver-blue brocade I was looking for, which was 22 $/yd even at a discount, then my find is a very good substitute at 2.50 $/yd.  Seven yards?  That's a savings of almost $140 - a substantial fraction of this entire set budget.

Ruth Photo

I just saw this (rather gorgeous) photo of Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater, taken by Matt Mrozek.

From a set designer's point of view, a good photographer who actually shoots sets along with actors is a rare jewel.  Many thanks.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

I loved this show!  A great script with a powerful idea (Vicki Cheatwood); ideal cast and director (Tim Johnson); really in-sync design team...  And, as you can guess from this photo, I especially loved the lighting by Aaron Johansen.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

One side note on that lighting:

See the coolo lighted slots between the wood strips of the wall behind the guitarist?  At the same time Ruth was on-stage, the Dallas Theater Center's set for its Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat had a similar detail.  (Scenery designed by the amazing Bob Lavalee.)  The DTC accomplished their effect by many man-hours of cutting strips of Plexiglass TM to fit between their slats.

We did the exact same thing in half an hour using $1 worth of masking tape.

Funny.

Just goes to show that ideas aren't always limited by budget.  In our case, the wonderful precision of the set builder (Steve Leary) made that cheap masking tape ploy work.

Wodehouse World

I've just finished reading P. G. Wodehouse's Summer Lightning or, rather, rereading Fish Preferred, which was its American title when I first read it years ago.

It hasn't gone stale.

There's something timeless and wonderful about Wodehouse's world of country house parties and purloined pigs, a clock-work  lunacy to his farcical plots, and an eternal freshness to his slang.  (I particularly like his version of American gangsters, missing from this book; they sound like a cross between James Cagney and maybe Woody Allen.)  Wodehouse is a master of the colloquial.  And can the man turn a phrase!  He's a stylist.  A miracle of quotes and almost-quotes, like this gem:  "But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter's doorstep."

This particular novel is set at Blandings Castle so, naturally, it is full of pig-thievery and all the split-second timing of farce.  It is impossible to explain its plot.  But its humor!  It has only gotten funnier since its first publication in 1929.

Cover, Summer Lightning PG Wodehouse

Why did I reread it?  Well, I skimmed through the intro at the library...

"A certain critic - for such men, I regret to say, do exist - made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'.  He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning.  With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names.  Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."

How could I resist?

A Glimpse of Smokey Joe's Cafe

On WaterTower Theater's website there's a video interview with the director, Terry Martin.  At about the 1:45 mark, there's a glimpse of my sketch for the set and then video of the set itself: scroll down to Conversations@WTT: Terry Martin & SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE   HERE.

Opening and Other Up-Dates

Saturday night was the Opening for See How They Run at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.

A very funny show.  The audience howled and clapped - adding ten minutes in laughter, so that actors had to find ways to vamp until their next line could heard.  A nice kinda problem!

I'm pretty happy with the Tudar style, half-timbered set.  There had to be a few minor compromises on the details of this one due to real-life-situations which took up some of the builder's time, but nothing an audience would notice.  It happens.

I spent the afternoon before opening in Fort Worth.

The Kimbell Art Museum had few visitors (they're between big shows and knee deep in construction), but part of their wonderful permanent collection was on display, so I was happy to visit favorites like Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun's self portrait and Matisse's L'Asia.

Ancient pieces are currently featured.  There's a lovely bronze head with amazingly curling hair.  A lovely crouching marble Venus.  A few red-figure vases...  How, I wondered, could the Greek vase painter of 2500 years ago make the gory death of Pentheus so beautiful?  Even his dismembered torso (partly hidden by the display stand) has dignity and beauty.  You can see it below, or better on the museum's website  HERE  (Click on the Pic for a detailed close-up.)  There's a wonderful crispness and richness to the lines that define the characters in this tragedy and a balance between linear and solid-area painting that I admire.  Decorative ceramic painting is an unforgiving art - it's hard to fix a mistake - so the sure hand here is remarkable.

In many ways this illustrated story is similar to a modern graphic novel.  The original viewers would have known the story and not needed the museum's cue card explaining that King Pentheus had forbidden the worship of Dionysus (or Bacchus, the wine god and the king's own cousin).  He forbade the women of his kingdom (his aunties and mother included) to take part in these rites.

Well.

You can imagine a Greek god's reaction.

Pentheus's mother only recognized her son's head on her sharp stick after the wine induced frenzy faded.

The longer you look at and think about this scene of the insulted god Bacchus's revenge, the more disturbing this beauty is...

The Death of Pentheus, Kimbell Art Museum, believed fair use

Construction of the new addition to the Kimbell Museum is proceeding.  New concrete work is finally above grade.  A few long beams have been delivered and set in place.  Wrapped in such heavy black plastic, I wonder whether these are wood beams?  Or pre-cast concrete unusually well protected?  You can start to see the massing of the new building versus the existing one now and, so far, it seems as if the original will not be overwhelmed...  we'll see.

I do hope, once the new building is done, there will be some repairs to the existing Kahn building; I spotted quite a bit of damage to the too-thin travertine of its steps and porch floors.

After this museum visit - pizza!

I was happy to see one of the theater critics having a good meal at the same restaurant.  I have long advocated for DFW actors and designers to chip into a special fund to make sure critics get a good meal and a drink before coming to see a play - the last thing we want is a hungry/grumpy critic.

A grumpy critic might write a review a little too much like that ancient vase-painter painted his gory picture!