What a Month

Theater is a marathon not a sprint.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I've been working flat out... mostly trying to get Mainstage Irving's The Addams Family open.  

And then - instead of collapsing - trying to catch up on my other shows: Death of a Salesman at Fun House Theatre and Film, Sexy Laundry at WaterTower Theater,  and The Importance of Being Earnest at Tarrant County College NE.

Opening night at The Addams Family had a few rough spots in sound and lights, but the set and projections were DONE.  (The paint was even dry.)  An accomplishment of heroic proportions let me tell you.

The Addams Family, Mainstage Irving Los Colinas - photo by Mainstage

Here you can see one scene set in the Addams' conservatory, a combination of built scenery and 3D projection by Nathan Davis.  This was a show that really was about collaboration!  And even more about drawing than I expected: the Addams Family originated as cartoons in The New Yorker, so it seemed right that the projections be largely drawings rather than photos, but, in fact, they were often, as here, a combination of hand sketches (architecture) and photos (sky, moon, and cobblestone floor).  My original background sketch was actually an assemblage of three sketches of about 14" long so it's kinda wild to see them blown up to almost 30' wide.

The projections for this show are fantastic!  Three dimensional spaces into which we fly in or out, doors and gates open, animations - Fester's "Moon" scene is wonderful - all just amazing.  Nathan did an incredible job.  For my part, I'm particularly proud of how well the projected scenery and the built scenery merge.

Even more merge-y than intended, actually...

Because of the press of time, much of the detail on the built set that was supposed to be real 3D construction, ended up as hand drawn/painted linework too, like all the paneling and trim shown here.  Which help coordinate the two worlds alright.

My hand is tired.

If you have the chance, go see the show - a still photo just can't show the coolitude of the projections. 

(And, you know, the cast are... incredibly good.  A very accomplished and fun show.)

Deep Breath

Phew!

I've been heads-down working for the last few weeks.  But, tonight, Uptown Player's production of Harbor opens!  With what I think is a good set, a Greek Revival house restored by an architect in Sag Harbor.

The play itself you ask?

Really good - with a fantastic cast.  Both entertaining and touching.  (Go see it!)

This was my second show to work with set dresser and interior designer Kevin Brown - who acquired furniture, art, and set dressing and painted and...  Worked really hard!  But we in theater take that for granted, just as we assume carpenters, painters, and designers (and actors, directors and many more) will all slog away faithfully to get the work finished in time for the audience.   It's hard work.

But that's unremarkable.  What I do want to remark on is the clever way he used pasted-up photos  to explain furniture choices to the director and producers:

Image by Kevin Brown - copyrighted

This composite of images over a photo of the as yet unpainted set was created using, I believe, Powerpoint, but could be done in Photoshop or even with scissors and tape.  What a great way to explain things!  It was part of a neat package that laid out various choices for furniture, lighting, and art.

As often happens, the final choices of furniture include some stuff from stock, some borrowed from several sources, and some bought from less expensive stores like IKEA and Walmart.  The art is all on loan (and aren't we being careful with it!).

Meanwhile,  construction on Other Desert Cities at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth is almost complete, with painting proceeding, but furniture and carpet gathering has hit a snag.  The budget is forcing some changes, but mostly the handy-dandy warehouse and in-house storage are not producing the furniture we want....

Budgets!  Availability!!  The Dreaded Sofa!!!!  Argh.

At the very least there will need to be a LOT of reupholstering before any of this furniture goes on stage.  But we're still looking...

And there have been meetings.  Many, many meetings.

Model Making: Tapes and Glues

Just found a great discussion (by an architect who obviously builds models) of various tapes and glues at youngarchitect.com.  HERE.

To which I'd add a recommendation of gaf tape - wonderful gaf tape!  On stage, of course, it's ubiquitous, but it's also useful in tiny amounts in model-making, especially used as hinges between cardboard pieces.  Particularly if it's a painted model.

And I'd add a caution about all glues - and even tapes - to beware the fumes and chemicals involved.  You can develop chemical sensitivities to the stickem if it touches your skin; the fumes can be sickening, carcinogenic, or occasionally instantly fatal like the methylene chloride used in paint strippers.

Ventilate, people!  Read safety instructions!

"Black Gaffer Tape" by c Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia

ADDENDUM:

Also helpful is a brief post on the same site about building architectural scenic models HERE.

The Funnies

Bloom County is back!

HERE

Books, Books, Books

I had a very refreshing chat about books the other day.

Nothing is more fun.

(Well, okay, hardy anything.)

What jogged my memory today was a blog post HERE about a new book called Soviet Bus Stops, by Christopher Herwig.  I haven't got my hands on this book yet, but it looks fantastic...  a photo study of ubiquitous, humble - yet socially important - architectural monuments.  These small buildings seem to have received all the whimsy and delight that official Soviet architecture quashed.  Just Google "soviet bus stop" for the wild range of styles.  This one I like as sort of Romanesque-Modern with a flavor of '60s Pop.  (It'd make a cool garden folly.  Please mentally add a blue pool and girls in Holly Golightly sunglasses, sipping martinis.  See it?)

Not sure if this photo is truly from Herwig's Soviet Bus Stops.  

Copyright-holder please let me know if you want it removed.

Folk architecture - whether designed by amateurs or pros - is always lively.

Picture books are fun aren't they?

That book chat was not about architecture or picture books, actually, more on WWII topics.  I'm currently reading Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm.  The man can write!  Another WWII book was recommended to me (but I don't have that note handy); in turn I recommended George McDonald Fraser's The Complete McAuslan, entertaining stories of  a Scottish regiment at the end of that war, and his more serious, excellent memoir of fighting the Japanese in Burma, Quartered Safe Out Here. 

A recent good novel about that period I highly recommend is All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.  This read was the result of book club friends recommending it to my mother, she to my sister, then the same copy on to me, then to my child...  That's a catchy book!  I won't spoiler it: let's just say that I had to stay up all night to finish it.  Dawn, I'm sayin'.  Actual dawn.

At about the same time a kindly person lent me a copy of Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.  Also engrossing - apocalypse plus traveling Shakespearean orchestra... how could I resist?  (NPR on it HERE.)  Naturally, I had to give copies of both novels on to others... nothing is as catching as a book.

It's a good week - month! - when you get two excellent new books to read.

North Texas Giving Day

In honor of Kitchen Dog Theater's 25th anniversary, we're looking for 250 generous new friends to pledge $25 apiece.

We need all the friends we can get this year!

Of course we're also very grateful for larger (or smaller) gifts and for dear old friends...  


This is a big year for the Dogs.  

Not just because 25 is a nice number, but because our company has left the MAC - our great home of 20 of those years - and we're fitting ourselves into new temp quarters, looking for longer term quarters, and - wahoo! - planning towards a new permanent Dog House.  (Or should that be a new Dogs' Kitchen?)

Find out more about North Texas Giving Day HERE.  Your help is always welcome... but tomorrow your gift can be magnified by additional funding.  Freebies!  Who doesn't love freebies?

Your generous gift can help us grow! 

News Break

Just found out I won a Critics' Forum Award for the set of The Explorers Club at Stage West and WaterTower Theater.  Pretty cool!  (Critics Forums are hard to get hold of.)

Many thanks - I'm thrilled.  I'm also grateful for the HUGE amount of help from everyone at Stage West who beautifully built, painted, upholstered, created faux books, helped set dress, loaned us taxidermy animal heads (from a WaterTower backer, thank you!), and generally made the set possible.  Twice.

The Explorers Club - Stage West and WaterTower Theater

Note the bar top of cheapo "granite" plastic laminate and foam pool noodles covered with vinyl,

and the painted mahogany.  Behind it is a Plexiglas and Modge-Podge-ed "stained glass" window 

which I decorated, now decorating my studio.

General woodsy library with many stuffed animal heads.  Those books, 

believe it or not, are mostly faked by Stage West's prop designer.

Note the globe used as the topper of the stair's newel post.  There was a funny 

slapstick moment when a character leaned on it.

More libraryishness...  You can see an antelope head.  Photos courtesy of Stage West

My original sketch.  We never found a taxidermy bear, but we were 

kindly loaned a suit of armor instead!  The bar's support lions were another kind loan.

Paper Rules!

An encouraging finding: among 4,000 designers surveyed world-wide, most of them - 64% - still use plain ol' paper and pen or pencil to brainstorm.

Doesn't surprise me at all.

One designer remarked on the particular usefulness of this old-tech method in a meeting.  

Exactly!  Nothing is as fast, as flexible, as readily available as scribbling on paper.  You can respond immediately to the flow of thought in a meeting - or while solo brainstorming.  There is less temptation to perfect the drawing (and computers do prefer perfect); instead the impulse on an impromptu scrap of paper is to rough out something messy but expressive. 

The this-ain't-nothin' worthlessness of a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin is part of its value - it stops the rough idea from becoming too precious to change or discard.

Sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries - do not use commercially please.

The ability to create fast hand sketches is so useful that I once

got flown to Tennessee just to show design grad students how.

Now, the old style of formal hand-drawn drafting or presentation drawings... those easily(ish) translate into computer hardware and software use.

More on the survey HERE at Wired.com.