Stonewalling

 At yesterday's student charrette (which went well!) we did a lot of talking and the question of how to make good stone or brick walls onstage came up.  

My usual technique is to hand carve the mortar joints from sheet foam, using a snap-blade knife extended out a bit too far (be careful!) so it has a bit of flexibility to it.  Then layers of paint.

Here's an example starting with white, pebbley-textured polystyrene:

Photos from Uptown Players' Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike

 Another show using polystyrene but the carpenter's favorite - beautiful - technique called for many very coarse layers of paint spatter, then exposure to heat so that the least painted parts of the foam - like the mortar joints - melted most.

Humble Boy at WaterTower Theater

Here's another example, using that pink sheet foam insulation you find at the big box builders' stores.  Same knife technique:

The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Kitchen Dog Theater

In the center photo you can see where I was not quite finished yet - there's still some pink showing, as well as some obvious screw heads!

For brick I use a similar technique of foam cutting.

In the Other Room: the Vibrator Play, also at Kitchen Dog Theater

More stone!  This time with stones cut out individually, then placed on the wall.  

Circle Theatre's Incorruptible

Stop!  Stop!  Mercy!

Models and Miniatures

Okay, there are the models we build to explain a theater set... and then there are Miniatures.

Which may be a whole 'nother thing.  Look at these by Mylyn Nguyen!

Images from designyoutrust.com - copyright to the artist

Wonderful detail, in observation and execution.  Amazing.

The Book is Back!

After some misadventure, I finally got my hands on the proof copy of the second edition of my theater set design book, Alice Through the Proscenium.  (Catching the FedEx guy just as he was about to leave the package on the door mat - In The Rain.)

The cover for the upcoming second edition - copyrighted, obviously

Woohoo!

It's not bad.  Of course there's something funny about the spine, several images need higher rez scans, and one needs to be redrawn to have more legible lettering, but on the whole pretty good.  It has a nice heft.  And the cover is so so glossy.

Coming soon...

Meanwhile, this Spring's Apprenticeship Program has begun at Stage West Theatre.   Yesterday we met for the first time... a very promising and accomplished group!  I'm looking forward to this program.  More to come...

Oops - It's Been How Long?

Since I last blogged?

What can I say?  It was a busy Fall and I didn't blog.  Even once.

But instead of a super-fund-sized data dump of what I did do instead, let's just jump to today as I prep for the start of Stage West Theatre's Apprenticeship Program.  Tomorrow I meet my set design students.  Pretty exciting!

Along with get-to-know-yous and handing off the script for their next day-long design charrette, we'll also visit the set for Stage West's next production, Margorie Prime.  All I know about this at the moment is that it's designed by Stage West's talented Allen Dean, who previously painted the drops for my To The Breeches!  (Which I actually DID blog about HERE.)  And I just found a cool little post showing him actually painting them HERE.

The upcoming design charrette?

Based on a darkish musical version of Little Red Riding Hood that I totally made up.

A gotta-be Public Domain image from an ancient version of the story

So... what even IS a design charrette?

Definitions on the internet mostly stress the collaborative nature it can have, when disparate members of a design team and the client all brainstorm together.  Usually there's a passing mention of the pressure-cooker ambiance of this affair: one room, a single limited chunk of time, and the creation of a real product at the end of that time.

I like that version.

But this ain't that.  Because my first architectural design professor went to the E'cole des Beaux-Artes - in an ancient age when charrettes involved a tumbril-like cart that carried away your (individual) work to its doom - I think of charrettes as the pressure-cooker part.  A short intense effort in design.  We'll certainly work on collaboration.  Theater is very collaborative!  But this day will be about learning to be fast and free-wheeling.  To learn to trust your gut.  

This first design will be developed farther - may even be discarded later - but those first reactions to the text and first design impulses are uniquely valuable.  

Not to mention the survival value of speed!

HERE is a link to a discussion of last year's Three Little Pigs charrette.

It Takes a While

 I was reminded by Reddit of this quote by Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I've found that writers are often very articulate (go figure!) on the struggles of creating art of any kind... just substitute the word "design" or "painting" or whatever you art is.

Theatrical Drops

There's a perception that big painted theatrical backdrops are old fashioned.  Passe'.  

Sadly, this is largely true.  Nowadays we're more likely to create a backdrop, if we even want one, using projections.  (And consequently the art of scenic painting drops is dying away.)  It's even more common to do away with scenic drops entirely, instead using the upstage cyc (or scrim or wall) simply for fields of ever-changing color.  

But a painted drop can be pretty spectacular.  Look at this one, for a production of The Magic Flute:

Public Domain Image

But even in modern productions, usually for a "period" piece, sometimes a painted drop is still useful.  Here are a few I've designed in my career...

This was designed for the Trinity Shakespeare production of The Winter's Tale.  Huge!  To lay it out the scenic painter took over the whole floor of the opera rehearsal hall.

Below is another narrow drop - one of three painted legs - for Stage West's production of Into the Breeches!

For both these shows we wanted a touch of tradition and "period" which hand-painted drops nicely provided.

So much for history - what am I up to today?  Another post coming soon...

 

NY Public Library Archives and My Stuff Too...

 And they have theatrical photography collections!

Go check this out!  

 https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/lane/acclaimed-theatrical-photographers

Age of Innocence NY Library Collection

It's been super busy this spring - and remains busy - but I'll just throw a few photos up here.

I and You by Echo Theatre:

Echo Theatre's production of I and You - 

set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

photo by Zack Huggins

Also at Echo Theatre and by the same playwright, Lauren Gunderson, Natural Shocks:

 

Natural Shocks by Echo Theatre -

set design by Clare Floyd DeVries

photo by Zack Huggins

And, most recently, The Last Truck Stop by Crystal Jackson at Kitchen Dog Theater:

Kitchen Dog Theater, The Last Truck Stop -

set design (and photo of unfinished set)

by Clare Floyd DeVries

Complicated Emotions

 On one hand, my show, Natural Shocks, had a good opening on Friday night!  With a lovely afterparty, sitting in the pleasant breeze of a restaurant's porch.

On the other hand, after a long, hot, over-busy day of Designer Runs and Production Meetings, I came home to an upset call from my mother wondering if I'd been shot dead in the latest mass shooting... just up the road in Allen, Texas.  Followed by a discussion between the production team, cast, and crew of our just-opened play on whether its prophetic ending now needs a trigger warning in light of this latest mass shooting.

On the third hand, my set design students did GREAT! today in their presentations.