RENT begins!

As closing night is upon us for Night of the Living Dead, my immediate attention now turns to RENT.

Originally, I was only scheduled to light RENT, but unforeseen circumstances have also put the set into my hands. While this suddenly has become a much bigger job, I also have a chance to again drive the visual quality for the show!  

For the past week, I have been scrambling to familiarize myself with the show.  I have seen it once when the tour came through St Louis shortly after it was on Broadway in the late-1990's.  I spent that evening in the top row of the balcony at the Fox Theater with my ex-wife's two teenage nieces and their boyfriends.  So, I didn't really absorb much of the show and remember very little about it.  Of course, the music is imprinted on my brain, having been the pop music of my theater crowd for years and repeated incessantly by Seth Rudetsky on Sirrus radio. 



OK, so I know that the story takes place in the East Village in the 90's.  I have been to NYC many times and have walked those streets. Although the area has evolved over the past 15 years, I have a general sense of place... graffiti art, not gang tagging, but real art...iron fire escapes, old brick facades...little shops on the ground floor of +- 10-storey old brick buildings that once housed manufacturing and warehousing.  I know the neighborhood...

Scott wrote a whole chapter on RENT for one of his books, which he forwarded to me so that I could begin to understand his perspective on the show. I also secured a copy of the coffee table book about the show, at first because it includes a copy of the libretto. But once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. The whole first half was an assembly of quotes and comments by the collaborators, director, staff and performers.  They combined to tell the story that  Jonathan Larson was not here to deliver first hand.  

I was particularly drawn to the comments by Paul Clay, the scenic designer.  It helps me to get a handle on the show understanding why he did what he did when he developed the original production at New York Theatre Workshop  and then adapted it for the Nederlander Theatre .

I started collecting photographs of the East Village and have shared a few of the more colorful here. I can see where Paul Clay got the inspiration for the junk sculpture that he included in his design.

RENT not only takes place on the streets and in the storefronts, but also in a shabby loft apartment, rented by Roger and Mark.  I started pulling images of downtown loft apartments.  Of course, the Internet is not filled with pictures of shabby lofts, but nicely re-done lofts that rent for more than I make per month! But the bones of the spaces are still there even with their modern furniture.

  The first thing that I observed was that the inside and outside of these places were actually very much alike...exposed brick, large industrial windows and iron stairs in the lofts were nearly the same as on the outside of the buildings. It is almost as though the buildings are just turned inside out and used for interiors. 

So, now I have a pallet of images and a general sense of what I need to to do to create the image of the East Village.  

The components that I must have include:

1. Some kind of iron platform and stair, but maybe rusted instead of new and black.
2. A couple of large windows with milky panes that can change color depending on the location and action in the scene.
3. A rusty, industrial door in a section of brick wall that is painted with graffiti
4. AND Scott requested a large raked disc down center stage, painted like a full moon... to be used for a variety of purposes in the blocking and choreography.

All of these images and ideas are currently rolling around in my head. This weekend, as we strike NOTLD and I once again have a bare stage, I will take more accurate measurements of the area that I have to work with. When I did NOTLD, my base drawing was not the scale that I thought it was and the set was a little small. I had to do some serious jockeying as we loaded in to get it in the right place. 

Next week, I will begin composing ideas on to the bare, black canvas... 

Until next week, you still have two more chances to see Night of the Living Dead!!!!
See you at the theater! Rob

Surviving opening weekend.

OK, so I lied. I am going to post more. 

When I posted the last time, I figured that my job was about over and essentially, it is.  The cast and crew have done a masterful job of executing the show through the first weekend.  I attended the preview performance on Thursday evening.  It was very strange to sit in the audience and just watch. No notes to take, no changes to make. I just sat there and experienced the show with the rest of the audience, trying to get a sense of what they thought and if they enjoyed it.  Apparently I didn't do a very good job of observing because, I really thought as I walked out of the theater that the audience didn't enjoy it.  Even my wife sitting next to me, seemed polite but not emoting.  I think that what I took for disinterest was really a bit of shock.  The audience was sucked in and emotionally spent by the time it was over. GREAT!

This show is my first to be reviewed by media critics.  I don't think that I realized how I would react to that process.  Most of the critics attended Friday evening's performance and reviews began coming out over the weekend.  While no one said anything negative about my design and some actually raved about my work, I still have a lingering feeling of insecurity.  All but one mentioned the set and/or the lighting to some degree. A couple credited all of the furnishings to the props staff. Those of you who have followed me through this process, know that I went through great pains to find just the right pieces to furnish this "farmhouse in 1968". Oh well... They didn't dislike the furnishings, they just didn't realize that I had done it.

I read the first review as my wife and I drove to Chicago on Saturday for her to run in the Chicago marathon.  I was so relieved and totally pumped as that reviewer glowed about my work using words like "magic" to describe the set.  Each subsequent review had me nervous, like getting tests back in school...hoping for a perfect score, but just wanting to not be embarrassed with a failure.  It was almost addictive, waiting impatiently for the page to load and reading through to see if there were any comments about set or lighting.  I don't think I like the review thing...too nerve-wracking.

Now that this is passed, I can relax and enjoy the rest of the run.  I am really proud of the whole company and the job that we have done with this show.  ALL of the pieces fit together well and really make this show an experience. 

I have three weeks to enjoy my first show at New Line. Then we tear it down and pack the pieces away for reuse in some undetermined future show.  Normally, I don't get emotional when a show closes. I view theater as a temporary art and closing night is just as great as opening. The few people who came to see the show are the ones who are lucky enough to have the memory.  That being said, this show's closing will be a little bittersweet for me, being my first.  I poured my heart, sweat and tears into this project hoping to really knock it out of the park.  I feel good about the results...critics or not.
R

Cue to Cue...the end of my journey.

I spent a not-so-quiet evening at the theater last night, building each look and recording cues.  It is not the most cue-intensive show that I have ever done, but it sure ranks up there in the top few.  Probably the worst was the production of The 39 Steps a couple of years ago.  That show had literally hundreds of cues.

I say not-so-quiet because Kerrie, the sound person was there for the 90 minutes or so, testing sound effects and wireless mics. It made us smile to have fire crackling sounds as I added the fire lighting effects. :) I will say that it was nice to have such pleasant company!

It has been an interesting and exciting journey over the past 3 months.  From the initial design concept discussions with Scott in late July, through fabricating in the scenic shop, it has been a lot of work and a lot of fun. Patrick, Melanie and I grew to be closer friends and I think we really became a team.

By the time we got to load-in two weeks ago, (seems so long ago! So many hours at the theater since then) it was like having three superintendents. All three of us knew how it went together and all three of us shared a common vision for the completed project.  I think that is why load-in went so smoothly.  We knew every nook and cranny of that set...every little piece and how it had to fit together.

Lighting was an adventure, as I previously commented on. But we worked through it.  The first time in a new facility is always a challenge. Like the set, I learned a lot about the space and how to light a show in it. I am sure that there will be holes in the light plot, shadows here and there that I cannot fix at this point because the instrument just can't stretch to fill it.  Overall, I think that it will be OK.

The cast has been SUPER excited and supportive of me as I made my way through my first show with New Line. The kicker was to hear Marcy squeal when she walked in Thursday evening for rehearsal and the set was warmed with stage lighting. Thank you, folks, for being AWESOME!

And I especially appreciate working with Scott...he has had a unique balance of a clear, focused vision and allowing me artistic freedom. Hopefully not so much that I hang myself.  I feel that I have been able to convey my ideas, and he either agreed or, without condescension, in a reasonable, thought-out, and frank manner, told me how his concept was different. It was a truly professional and collaborative process. It was not fraught with drama or ego.  He made it a pleasure to do this show.

Now we come to cue-to-cue day.  I have a few details to wrap up.  I will need to adjust the lights on the band after they get set up. After sleeping on it, there are a couple of cues that I want to edit a bit for better transitions. And I have the last of the set dressing to coordinate...mostly granny clothes in the dresser and putting the set back the way it should be at the beginning of the show.  WOW! Does it get trashed in 80 minutes of action!  :)

Then I will give Gabe the cue marks in his script and we will walk through it with the cast.  It is getting to be very, very close to where I must let it go and the cast and crew will bring it to life... what a great journey and tremendously rewarding process this had been.

Now I rest...  See you at the show!
R

"Hell week(s)"

In theater, we have an affectionate term for the week just prior to opening. We call it "hell week" because it means long hours, lots of details, and stressful times as we put everything together.  But for scenic and tech staff, hell week really begins at load-in. Our "hell week" lasts more like THREE weeks.  

Last week, I wrote about set load-in.  With everything pre-built, two reasonably full days and we had a working set that the cast could rehearse on.  Wednesday evening, with no rehearsal, I had a quiet theater to myself and I worked on details and base painted the floor. Friday, my architecture partner Gary Karasek, Patrick and I did artistic touches and painted the floor like hardwood.  

While the set load-in was pretty smooth and easy, after base painting the floor on Wednesday and then wood graining the whole thing on Friday afternoon, we were hurting...that was nearly three hours on our hands and knees.  A little taste of hell... ;)  

Friday late afternoon, we picked up lights and began hang and focus.  I decided to start in the hard places first...get that out of the way.  The hardest lights to hang and focus are always the ones that you have to get above and around the set.  Of course, the set doesn't HAVE to be there to hang and focus, but it sure helps to be able to point at the real thing instead of assuming that it will be where you expect it to be.  The trade off is you are climbing an extension ladder 20 feet in the air and nearly straight up, hanging on with one hand, leaning over the set and adjusting a light with the other.  And it is hot as "hell" at the ceiling of a theater with the lights on...

Some facilities have really nice accommodations for their lighting staff like catwalks that you can walk right out on to or at the very least built in ladders.  Once you are up there, you may have to duck and crouch, but you have a flat surface to stand on. 

Other facilities are a bit rougher...you have to hang each light from below on a ladder. That means at least one trip up and down the ladder for each instrument you hang. And if you have to stretch a cable because the receptacle is not within reach of the hang point, it can be many more trips.

For Night of the Living Dead, we used 48 instruments. It is a modest but reasonable light plot for a stage the size of ours. With all of the refocusing and adjusting, I am quite sure that we made well over 100 trips up and down the ladders Friday night and and Saturday. Now, we are REALLY starting to feel the "hell"... ;D

After everything was hung Saturday at about 7PM, we start going channel by channel, testing and discover that 8 of the 48 dimmers will not dim. They stay at full brilliance until they reach 5% and then drop out.  We tried everything we could think of. Finally, after a 14 hour day on Friday and a 12 1/2 hour day on Saturday, we decided to clean up our mess and go.  Scott recommended that I talk with Ken Zinkl to see if he had any ideas. But by the time I got home at 10:30PM (after a well-deserved beer and burger for Patrick, Melanie and myself) it was too late to call Saturday. A little bit of respite from the "hell"...

Sunday morning, I have a conversation with Ken and he doesn't like what he is hearing. Sounds like the electronic control board for the one dimmer pack has gone out. He suggested that I talk to our lighting rental company to see if they have something we can swap in. I finally return to the theater Sunday evening (I needed some downtime to rest my aching muscles) and get a hold of Mark Shilling at the rental company who really knows his shit about lighting equipment. He talked me through resetting the dimmer racks and behold...everything works! WOW! Stress relieved.  

So I spent Sunday evening building some "looks" for the stage and just taking my light plot for a test drive to see what I could do with it.  Overall, I am pretty pleased.

So, after two long weekends and a lot of sore muscles, a little stress and frustration, confusion and dismay, and ultimate success, I can say that "hell week(s)" are in full-swing for the scenic and tech staff.  

God, I love doing this!!!!  :)

R

More set load-in photos...just for fun

Just for fun, here are some load in and construction photos that my wife took as the walls were going up last Saturday.  

The walls going up. (with Patrick, Larry and Melanie)

Framing the front door and kitchen. (with Patrick, Larry and me)

Ben hands a door unit to me on to the upstairs platform.

Larry, the master-carpenter!

Patrick, framing the wall for scrim.

Zak pitching in to frame the scrim wall.

Melanie spent a chunk of Saturday diagramming where the lighting circuits were on the ceiling.

Mike Dowdy getting into the black paint!

Zak Farmer...rolling mean!

Blacking out all exposed wood.

Dowdy trying out is dying spot...

or maybe we worked him to exhaustion.

This weekend, it is time to hang and focus the lights...
R

Loaded in

It has been a very long three days...

On Saturday morning, my trusted crew met at the scenic shop at 8 AM and loaded the set into a 5' x 10' trailer, and the back end of two hatchback vehicles.  We left the scenic shop at 8:40 for the trip across the Mississippi River and to the theater.  The group arrived at 9:15 and we began pulling in only the things we needed to get started, knowing that there would be young able-bodied teenagers to carry the bulk of it into the theater.  

Patrick, Melanie and I set about digging existing platforms out of the New Line storage room while two other carpenters, Larry and Glenn began putting legs on platforms.  Everything on this set anchors on the stair and platforms that make the upstairs.  We had to get that piece in place and right before we could go on.  

My wife, Kathleen arrived about 10:15 with reinforcements and they proceeded to empty the trailer into the theater while we finished platform legs.  We then righted the platforms and began probably the most difficult part of the day...getting the set positioned in the right place on stage.  

Normally, I will use AutoCAD to give me a few dimensions to place key elements and this makes laying out on stage an easy task.  Also, I am used to having access to the theater for a longer period and constructing in place. So I can tape the floor and the cast can move around the tape marks for a rehearsal or so before hard elements start going up.  That way I can make adjustments before we build. Didn't have that luxury here.  

Also, I have mentioned before that this stage is a little odd to work on because it is a pie wedge, not rectangular...so what do I dimension off of. Instead, we guessed. Based on my plan drawing, the stair ended at center.

So, we chose to work off of the stair.  Turns out that the stage is actually about 5 feet wider than I thought, so we pushed the set upstage about four feet. With the pie wedge shape, the wings tightened in on the set. Also gave Scott an additional 4' of playing area out front and this turned out to be beneficial.  

It took us an hour of jockeying 6' tall platforms into place to finally decide where it was going to finally go. Once I gave the OK, platforms were tied together in minutes and we were climbing on the levels.  

Walls went up fast.  Turns out that, all of the pieces that I designed and Patrick, Melanie and I built in the shop, fit together nicely. We modified NOTHING in the field.  Walls were braced, doors were set, and plumbed to operate smoothly.  

I assigned one crew to frame the opening for the scrim and a second one to construct maskings outside the front door and window.  Larry put safety railings on the bedroom platform upstairs.

Mike Dowdy and Zak Farmer came a little after noon and donned paint brushes and blacked out structure and maskings.  

Scott came about 2 to see how we were doing, and by 2:30 we were turning lights out and locking up for the day as black paint dried.

Sunday morning, Patrick, his daughter Lydia, Melanie and I loaded our vehicles with as much furniture and props as we could fit and returned about 10 AM to finish things up.  We pre-cut the pieces to make the upstairs roof and Lydia and Melanie painted those on the floor while Patrick and I started stretching scrim. That is always a challenge...and here I designed a REAL challenge.  A sloping top wall with a corner in the middle...yea, that took some finessing to get it right.  

We applied the "crown molding" (really just 1x4's painted trim color) to create a strong, clean top line to the walls.  Then we tackled putting the roof up.  This was not an easy feat.  Melanie was on the ladder 15' in the air, wrestling her end of a 10' 2x8 rafter, while Patrick and I screwed it to the flats that formed the upstairs walls. Melanie then wired it to the lighting grid pipes...three rafters hung, then a few planks on top and the ceiling was done.  

We made the boards to "board up" the door and window, hung curtains on the window, adjusted masking legs and put furnishings in place.

We pulled out around 3:30 with the set ready to rehearse on. There are still a few things to do...paint the floor, some additional black fabric maskings behind doors, etc. And then, of course, at the end of the week Gary and I will splash it with a little magic. We need to make it look "lived in". After all, a little old lady lives here...

This was my first set for this stage and I made a couple of mistakes and learned a LOT!

Melanie and I attended rehearsal last night for the cast's first time working on set to see if there were any problems and see their reaction to our work.  Two of the doors work just fine with the blocking. The upstairs door, however, should have swung the other way or better yet, swung upstage, into the "bedroom". It gets in the way in an already tight space.  Another thing that I learned is that this is a very tall space with steep seating that rises above the stage so that the audience is looking down a bit. This is a condition that I have not designed for before. My design called for only 8' walls on the living room and kitchen.  So, once you get up a few rows, you start seeing the top of the walls and over the walls. This means that we had to clean up the tops of the flats and paint them black. It also means that you see the top of the masking flats extending behind the front door and window.  Right now, a work light shines straight down on it and it makes a strong line upstage. I am hoping that when I get stage lights on, I can avoid hitting the top edge and make it less noticeable. 

Hopefully these things are not considered too bad and I get asked back again to do another show... Maybe I am being critical, and I need to be a little critical of what I do to make sure I improve. Gary says that the average person probably won't even notice. (I hope...)

Next weekend...LIGHTS!

More pictures later (sorry for the quality of these but it was the best that I could do with my iPhone and the house and work lights aren't the best for taking photos of a set.)

Rob

One more set update before load in...

One week out, everything is ready to go for load-in and installation starting bright and early next Saturday morning. I have assembled all of the furnishings except for two end tables.  I have been posting pics of some of them as I aquire them.

Here is the next round of things that I have gotten/made.

 

couch and rocking chair. Do these look like grandma's house or what?

shelf and bench for the little girl in the cellar

chest of drawers which is going tin the upstairs hall

the floor lamp next to the radio...right out of the 1940s. My grandma had one just like it

The next time that you hear from me, I will be posting pix from installation.  It will be fun seeing it all come together.  I sure hope that it fits on the stage. :)

Rob

Part 3...Composing the stage picture

Architecture school taught me is how to develop a floor plan and 3-D form simultaneously.  It is one of the few design skills that are applicable to scenic design. Proportion, scale and composition are all three dimensional concepts and the plan relationship between entities is equally important as how each element is shaped.

Most of the bad buildings that populate our cities are the result of coming up with a brilliant solution to the planning problems with complete disregard to the building's form or even to the character of the interior spaces that it leaves. The plan is just extruded vertically into walls and it is what it is.

Likewise, some buildings are beautiful pieces of sculpture that are grossly dysfunctional for their users. Most notable of these might be Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum on 5th Avenue in NYC. It is an iconic form, both inside and out. But from a curator's perspective, it is a disaster. Built as a continuous downward spiral, there is no gallery with a flat floor; all of the walls slope out at the top. The guests cannot meander through the galleries and it does not foster stopping and experiencing the art. It is all about experiencing the building. But I digress...

With a crude planning concept scratched out for Night of the Living Dead, the design evolves through a looping, reiterative process. The plan is worked to scale on the stage floor plan and then immediately looked at vertically. Individual elements of the design are shaped and moved as related to each other until the stage picture is composed. As part of the planning process, I have to consider the director and staging requirements and opportunities.

In art, there are a few compositional rules that help give an image visual dynamic. When composing a painting, an artist will usually try to identify three major elements and triangulate them on the canvas, forcing the eye to move between them, creating energy.

In addition, on stage, there are four compositional quadrants to the stage. Downstage right and upstage left are strong, powerful and positive locations. Downstages left and upstage right are weak, recessive and tense quadrants. I try to compose the scenic plan to make these areas readily playable while visually triangulating the built set.

For NOLTD, the cellar is down right, the front door and window where the zombies eventually break in is upstage left…strong, powerful and dominate positions.  The upstairs area and kitchen are less dominant playing areas and are placed downstage left and upstage right.  Then, in my staging concept, the scene where the truck catches fire and our first two characters die is way downstage left…a tension location.

Night of the Living Dead requires 3 major playing areas on three different levels. We have the main floor of the farmhouse, an upstairs and a cellar. Obviously, I cannot stack all three levels on top of each other. The set would be 30 feet tall. However, it made sense to  visually “stack" a couple of levels. The majority of the action and most of the physical movement takes place on the main floor and requires the bulk of the stage. The cellar and upstairs are used a lot less and not nearly as actively. These two levels could be stacked.  They couldn't be perfectly stacked because of height because we only have 16 feet of height on the stage, so two levels had to be staggered, with the upper level constructed upstage of the cellar. Also, stacking them would create a lighting nightmare.

I worked out the heights and then switch back to plan. How much room do we need in these locations? Making the space bigger or smaller changes the proportion of the scenic elements. I triangulated the stage picture between the cellar, the upstairs and the main floor/front door area. This created a strong, tall set on stage right, visually falling to the front door on stage left.  Then the eye crosses back right and down to the cellar.  Strong compositionally… 

In my next installment, I will discuss developing the aesthetic for the set once the stage is composed.

Rob

Part 2...The design process

I have developed a process for beginning a new project. First, there is script analysis...yes, I really do have to do that, however my analysis is different from the actor's or director's analysis because I am looking for different information. My job is to create the world around the characters and to do that, I have to uncover the tone of the story and somehow translate that into place. That takes time for the story to gel.

I read the script once and then put it away, sometimes for weeks if I can afford the time. (Too often, I am asked to do a show the week of auditions. It is hard to do something special when I get started that late.) Putting down the script after one reading allows the story to melt from the immediacy of the plot and characters into a feeling or impression. As stated previously, my job is creating the visual character for the show. I shouldn't be worried about the specifics of dialog except to capture any specific staging needs. The director and actors are responsible for the dialog and relating the characters to the audience. 

Many stage productions grow from books, movies or TV shows...and visa versa. If it was originally a piece of written literature, I read it. Authors must do the same work that I do. Through words, they have to not only expose their characters and interactions through dialog, but they must also immerse the reader into the world in which the characters live. Reading the book is very useful, even if the play isn't entirely true to it.

I often get asked if I saw the movie. Seeing the movie is the Cliff Notes of the story. I mean, come on...you get the abridged version of the story in two hours. Now maybe you can read the book in two hours, but for most of us, we take our time with the book and really crawl into the story. You don't do that with a movie. Plus, the movie is already a visual interpretation. So, it has the potential of tainting your understanding of the story. It can form preconceived ideas that may or may not fit with the play script. So, I avoid the movie until after I have a strong concept developed. Then I might turn to it for ideas on addressing details. Film art directors are usually great with the details.

Likewise, I do not try to see every other production that has ever been done until after I have my concept formed. Just because it has "always been staged this way" doesn't mean that it works for our stage, for our director's vision, etc.  

Usually after a week or two of mulling my first impressions, I have captured the tone or feeling. Now, let me explain that mulling isn't just sitting back and "sleeping on it." I actively think about the emotions that the characters go through. I close my eyes and try to picture the action really happening. I try to identify the feelings that I had as the story unfolded for me in the reading...the FIRST impression. After all, I am trying to create that visual first impression for the audience. Most of them get to experience it once. I have to instill in the audience the same feeling that I felt when I first read the material and then capture that feeling in a built world.

Often, during mulling is when the initial ideas start to pop out. I don't talk much about the project until I get past this point. For some shows, it takes a second reading and a little more mulling. Most of the time, this is to make sure I understand and am confident in my understanding of the story and its setting. Then I share my initial thoughts with the director and discuss them. Hard decisions aren't made yet. They are only staging ideas, visual concepts, etc.  

For Night of the Living Dead, this first conversation between Scott and I took place at the theater, when he was giving me an orientation of the organizations resources. Before he arrived, I spent about an hour in the theater just sitting and looking at the stage, congealing the feeling that I had gotten from the script...trying to envision how that might play on this stage.

I realized that Night of the Living Dead demanded a realistic set when I understood the physical relationship that the audience was going to have to the storytelling. Scott confirmed my feelings when he said he wanted it to feel claustrophobic. The audience needed to feel, not like they were in the auditorium or even onstage, but instead like they were in the living room with these six people, fighting to stay alive for one night.

By the time that we had finished talking that afternoon, I did a VERY crude free-hand plan on a ruled notepad for the basic layout of the set. We agreed on the direction and I moved to the next step...

Quick detail update

Last night, we finished fabricating the stair railing, and we painted the stair units and the boards for the crown molding.

Saturday morning, we will texture paint the the railings and stair units and make the legs for the 6 foot tall platforms. Then it is time to clean up the shop and wait for the 21st.

One Saturday morning between now and the 21st, I will take a couple of folks to the theater and clean out the set storage room and get organized for set assembly. Any help would be very much appreciated...

Part 1...My perspective on creating for theater

With the Night of the Living Dead set substantially ready for load in and assembly, I turn my thoughts to somewhat more ethereal discussions about the performing arts in general and design specifically.

Art is about stories. Sometimes the story is historical or literary. Sometimes the story is current social or political commentary. Most visual art forms attempt to capture a moment within a story, or they are inspired by a story. Sometimes they choose to only capture a feeling or an emotion. Theater is unique because it tells the whole story and when done well evokes an emotional connection between the audience and the story.

Now I am not trying to diminish any of the other arts. Their purpose is no less valid and their artists are no less capable. A great concert or painting can be just as powerful as a great play. A good book can draw you in and captivate your imagination for many hours and potentially change your perspective on our world. So, other art forms are not greater or less...just different.

Painting, sculpture, writing, can and largely are done as a singular effort. An author still relies on editors, illustrators, and graphic artists to produce a novel. But the performing arts are different, they are a collaborative process. All members of the theatrical production team share one common purpose. We work together to tell the story. Telling stories is what makes theater different from all of the other visual and performing arts.

Almost never are the performing arts an individual effort. With the exception perhaps of a street performer or a singer/songwriter sitting on a stool in a bar, all of the performance arts require multiple disciplines. Even a one person show has a writer, director, design and technical staff to put it together. Each player on the team has a different role and tells their piece of the story in a different way. The actors and musicians actively tell the story and their contribution is obvious to the audience. Other members of the staff tell the story in much more subtle ways. The directing staff have an overall vision and guide the individual artists, composing the overall story.

So, specifically about design.The design staff develops the visual impression for the story.  We take our cues from the director as to their overall vision. To say that sometimes the visuals are obvious is clearly short sighted. An immediate example are the ever fresh and creative stagings of Shakespeare that appear year after year. A couple of years ago The Shakespeare Festival in Forest Park staged Taming of the Shrew in the 1950's. It was quite entertaining and did not diminish Shakespeare's sharp wit and beautiful dialog in the least.

There are numerous components of the visual portion of a play. Costumes, lights and scenic are the most common. There are also special effects, sound, flying, pyrotechnics, atmospheric effects and video media. No one can dispute the climactic impact of Mary Poppins final exit out over the audience and into the balcony as a potent visual device. In themed entertainment, designers continue to incorporate smell and touch into the story telling experiences, IE the 4D movies like A Bugs Life at Disney where the audience gets sprayed with water, stinky smells, and fog culminating in getting poked in the bottom by "bugs leaving the theater".

In American theater, each of these disciplines is relatively autonomous and answer equally to the directing staff. In other countries, the Production Designer takes on or at least oversees many of these disciplines. A part of me really likes the idea of working this way even though it means many long hours for one person.  Ironically, I have spent much of my career working on productions where, because of an absence of talent or budget to hire the specialists, I have had to perform multiple design and technical jobs on a production.  The benefit is that I can really weave the various media together, carefully coordinating color, light and texture.

So, next time I will expound on how I create for the stage.
Rob

Ready for load-in!

We worked this morning and finished painting the last of the walls and the scrim.

With that being finished, I am essentially ready for load-in. Over the next couple of weeks, we need to make railings for the stairs, pre-cut legs for the upstairs platforms and pre-paint 1x4s for crown molding but those won't be cut and installed until the set is assembled on stage.

Now, I need to focus some attention to architecture projects for a few weeks to earn money to support my theater addiction. 

In the mean time, go and see a play...

Got a truck!

I have spent the past several days combing Craigslist, looking for a late-model Nissan Frontier. Nissan apparently makes two sizes of pick-up truck...the Frontier is smaller and the Titan is...well...Titan.  Found a 1998 in High Ridge, MO.  It has 250,000 miles on it, so it has lived a good life.  But it is in remarkably good condition. No rust, only a few little dings that we can work out or Bondo over the top of.

I looked at it yesterday afternoon and called Scott.  We made an offer for less than they were asking, but they took it.  So, Monday morning I will drive down with check in hand and drive back in our "hardbody"

It is going into storage for a while. I need to get the set for "Night of the Living Dead" out of my shop first. Then I can move it in and begin the process of transforming this beauty into our truck for the show. While it shows well in pictures, there is an awful lot of faded trim, grimy and scuffed wheels, etc to fix and then a shiny coat of cherry red paint over the faded gold.. Not to mention that we have to tear it down to carry it up a flight of stairs at the theater and rebuild it on stage.

And so, it begins...

Initially, I was hired only to fabricate the truck for Hardbody.  When I first applied for the temporary lighting designer position advertised by New Line Theatre last April, I included production sheets from previous shows as a portfolio of my scenic and lighting work. One of the shows that I included was the 2010 production of "The Grapes of Wrath" at Looking Glass Playhouse. (the one in Lebanon, IL, not the Tony Award winning one in Chicago)

For this show, I fabricated a beat-up, old 1930's truck that moved around on the stage as the show progressed.  Made out of wood, fabric, chip board and two trailer fenders, it was a stylized, 2/3 scale model of no particular make or model. The intention was to simply capture the flavor of a truck from that era.  A good paint job of rust and grime, and it worked.

About the time that I applied, Scott was mulling over whether or not to try to take on "Hands on a Hardbody" which was just closing on Broadway after a disappointingly short run.  I believe that it ended up with less than 40 performances. His biggest concern was how to handle the truck.  His first question to me was not about doing lighting for the rest of the 2013-14 season, it was if I were willing to build a truck for him. "Sure" I thought... not realizing that not only did it have to look like a NEW truck, it had to be a specific truck... a late model (there are lines that one contestant has a son in Afghanistan so it takes place within the last 10 years), Nissan (it is a Nissan dealer holding the contest)...red (there is a lyric in one song about the red one looking good next to the blue one already in the driveway). SIGH...  but I agreed nonetheless. I'm always one to embrace a challenge.

As we talked early on, we bantered about "should it be a real truck?" "can it be a stylized truck...ala the horses in Warhorse?" Stylized would certainly be easier and cheaper. If we can't find money to fund a real truck, I'm sure we can do something that suggests a truck.  Then, as word got out that New Line was taking this challenge on, inquiries began to come in about how we were handling the truck and it appeared that, maybe, there would be a rental market for this truck after we finished with our run. Now, the pressure is ON! This truck MUST be good enough to become a rental demand.  Scott has a reputation for taking shows that seemed dead after quiet closings on Broadway and turning them into regional successes with a new lease on life. If history rings true, "Hands on a Hardbody" has a bright future in the regional theaters...and we have a bright future in truck rentals. :)

So, what does that mean for me and making this truck.

• It has to be realistic.
• It has to be solid enough for the cast to climb on  but light enough to move.
• Somehow it has to come apart so that the pieces fit through a 3-foot door. New Line's theater is on the second floor of the building and NO DOUBLE DOORS!
• Even if it doesn't move on stage in our production, the truck in the Broadway show moved on stage. If we are going to rent this thing, it probably needs to have accommodation for being on casters.

There are only two or three ways to make a realistic looking truck.  

1. I can build a framework, cover it with hardware cloth and foam, then carve it, coat it, and paint it. But, unless you are a REALLY good sculptor, it is hard to reproduce the lines of a real truck. Imperfections are instantly obvious. Some quick pricing by prop houses indicated that this would cost between $10-15K. OUCH!
2. I can find a real truck, have molds made of the body panels and cast the parts in fiberglass, assemble them on a framework and finish them...not unlike a kit car. OK, but who will let me make molds from their shiny new Nissan truck?
3. I can get a real truck with a body in great shape but ready for scrapping because of a blown motor, flood damage, a million gentle miles on it, etc. Cut it apart, assemble the body panels on a framework and repaint it to red.

Right now, option 3 seems the way that we are headed.

So, the search is on for a Nissan truck that looks new enough and in good enough shape.  Craigslist is a great resource and I have a couple of leads.

More to come...

It's been a quiet week...

We have not worked in the shop since Sunday so I don't have a lot of flashy photos to share.  I've have been splitting my time this week between collecting the rest of the furnishings for "Night of the Living Dead" and trying to find a Nissan pick-up truck for "Hands on a Hardbody"  Believe it or not, the latter is much harder to pull off.

Gary did offer an OLD metal TV stand from the 60's for the show.

We will put it "upstairs" with the TV on it until the guys go up and find dead grandma and the TV and bring the TV down to the living room for the second broadcast.  I LOVE finding old stuff like this in basements. Most people look at it and think "junk, gotta go!" I think "Where can I use that cool, funky thing in a show?"

Also picked up a wall phone for the kitchen...classic black rotary dial bakelite phone.  LOVE IT!

The scrim did arrive on Monday, so we will get it and the last two sections of wall painted this weekend.  Then, it just leaves details like railings and crown molding.

Weekend of paint...

A lot of hours this weekend, mostly painting.

Saturday, we spent 6 hours painting wallpaper for the upstairs hallway and the kitchen wall.  In a previous post, I included a pic that I found with the kind of character I was looking for in wallpaper.

The colors needed to be consistent with the rest of the farmhouse but lighter and more textured.  This helps to visually anchor these much smaller spaces against the large living room.  Also by going a little lighter than the living room walls, it pushes the living room farther upstage, forcing the perspective and helping to separate it from the the other parts of the house.

Also because it is scenery and not a real wall, the colors needed to be brighter so that the detail carries to the last row.

This morning, we assembled the front door and window flats with the kitchen wall and painted it all together.  With a little furniture in front, it starts to pull together.

The wallpaper for the kitchen wall wraps the corner, the pattern disappears and the colors get darker.  Accentuates the corner and makes it clear that they are two different areas, yet visually consistent.

So, when it was all done and before we quit for the day, Patrick had to finish his breakfast on set...  No matter what he says, he still prefers to perform. :)

The scrim is due to arrive tomorrow, so Monday or Tuesday evening, we will paint the two sections of wall that run up the back of the stairs and then stretch the scrim out on the floor and paint it.  Then it can lay there flat and dry so that it doesn't deform or stretch.  

We are closing in on finishing all that we can do before loading in on Sept 21.  This is probably good as Melanie's schedule is picking up on Les Mis and one of these days I need to do some architecture...