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...

a step forward and a step backward, so to speak...

Gary and I finished the painting treatment on the cellar and he striped the bead board, making it ready for dry brushing.

I think that the cellar looks creepy enough.  After we install on stage, I may add some webs on the wiring and drain pipe.

So, the light that is on the wall of the cellar was originally on the ceiling of the scenic shop.  I, like a total klutz, managed to fall off of the ladder getting down after removing it from the ceiling.  Banged up my foot pretty badly. Don't think it is broken but I am sure not moving as fast as I'd like. I cannot afford downtime. Load-in is just over a month away and I have a lot of details to finish up.

Tomorrow, we will break this section down and store it. Then set up all of the walls to get stenciled wallpaper.  That along with fabbing the ceiling for the upstairs is the next item on our agenda.  

Scrim was ordered on 8/14.  Should arrive on Monday. We will lay it out on the floor on top of brown craft paper and paint it to match the living room walls.  That way, when installing on stage, it just needs to be stapled into place.  

Start of painting

We have started painting and have the foundation coats on the cellar and living room walls as well as the door and window units done...at least for now.  I am sure that, after we load in and everything together, we will add more detail...

Over the next couple of days, Gary and I will add mildew, rust and water stains to the cellar walls and then some physical details like a rusty, leaky drain pipe, old light and wires, and a hand rail.  In the living room, we need to add vertical striping in the bead board wainscot and then dry brush over all of the butter color with white...the result will be a whitewashed finish.

The front door is done except to "frost out" the window so you don't see zombies and then add a roller shade or sheer curtain to catch light and show shadows of zombies outside the door...

More as the details get applied.

Lighting and paint

So, I found this old Depression-ear wallpaper that I though looked very "little old lady farmhouse"

and I searched for and found stencils that I can use to make the pattern....Martha Stewart Crafts "Tendrils" and "Blossoms"  So, that part will be easy enough. 

So, Gary and I picked a darker color that I would use as the base color, knowing that I intend to then mix white with that color and use a natural sponge texture roller to put a lighter layer on top.  I need to make the walls somehow blend with the scrim covered sections that hide the band. Starting with a dark color then add a lighter tone of the same color over the top will create the inconsistency of texture that you get when you try to paint scrim. So we just dye the scrim with the lighter color and it "should" blend OK. 

Thank god I didn't run out and just buy the paint that we initially chose!

I started to think about lighting again.  This takes place at night in a darkened house with moonlight coming in the windows.  The go-to gels for night and moonlight are blues and Rosco 51 "surprise pink".  The paint color that we chose was a greenish blue, and my instinct told me that something was wrong with that.

So, we set up our little LED RGB flood light and DMX controller, dialed in the approximate color for surprise pink and put the color chip in the light...HOLY CRAP! It was iridescent blue! Yup...instinct was right. So we spread out the Sherwin Williams fan deck, looking for something that didn't glow under blue and purple lights...and found the family of olive greens starting with "rosemary"  These colors grayed out when hit with blue and purple lights...PERFECT!  

On closer comparison to the wallpaper sample, I think that this will make a very suitable, dingy base color for my plaster walls.

More furnishings and next on the agenda

Yesterday, I received the TV and the calendar...both very cool!  More furniture acquired...

the kitchen table and chairs...right out of the 1950's!

and an old wooden rocking chair...doesn't it look like you would find it in an old lady's farmhouse?

Tonight, we start painting. The stone is carved into the walls of the cellar. Now I need to work a little painting "magic". Start with a base coat of medium to dark warm gray, then dry brush and dab a couple of more colors on for depth and hilight.  Then I will use a little drywall compound to feather in the edges where the luan is cut away and paint the wall surfaces to look like mildewed and cracked plaster with rust running down from an old pipe protruding from the wall.  

For the walls in the living room, we have chosen a fairly dark olive as the base, that gets texture rolled with a much lighter tint of the same color. Sherwin Williams SW6187 "Rosemary" to be exact. This combination should help to disguise the wall surface that is scrim to allow the band to see out.

Below the chair rail, will start with a putty color, then brush the "bead board" texture in off white.  Same technique on the window and door frames, 1x4 base, crown, and chair rail. Should look whitewashed when it is done.

Door leafs will start with a dark cherry brown, then dry brushed with blood red for grain.

For the "wallpaper" upstairs and in the kitchen, we will start with the same plaster wall technique with the two tones of green, then add a pair of vertical stripes every 10" or so in a pale pink. Then between the stripes, stencil on tendrils in green and large roses in red, pink and salmon. 

That should be enough to keep us busy for a few work sessions... pix to follow.

8/9/13 progress

As of yesterday evening, we finished fabricating all of the major pieces.  I still have some details to address like base, chair rail and crown molding, stair railings...etc.  But building all of the big stuff  is complete.

So, we started to fit things together, creating the beveled filler strips to form the corners, and taping seams.

These are the wall sections for the cellar and the living room along the stairs.

Of course, Patrick and Melanie have to have a little fun with it. :) Melanie washing the window with no glass in it. And Patrick supervising..."Aren't you about done yet!?"

Will post some pix after some of this is painted.

With the set coming together and lights mulling in the back of my mind, I have started pulling together the furnishings.  The show takes place in an old farmhouse in 1968, occupied by an old lady who is recently deceased. So the furnishings and finishes are probably a mismatch of Depression era, 1940's and 1950's. The search began.  Some of the things that we need are a couch, table and chairs, radio, TV. Here's what I have secured so far.

couch

1940's Philco radio...need to make the dial glow

and the TV! it even still works!

We also have a great chrome and vinyl table and chairs right out of the 50's but I need to get it in my hands so that I can take a pic. Also have an old wooden rocking chair. 

Now, the show takes place in the summer of 1968, in a farmhouse in rural PA. So, what should be on the kitchen wall? A 1968 calendar from a farm supply company.

I still need to find 2-3 small accent tables and a small chest. I will hang some pictures on the wall and some nic nacs here and there to make it feel lived in. 

Fabrication progress pix...

Here are a few progress pix from the scenic shop... 

Window module, ready for paint...the bottom sash even opens

Stair units, ready for paint

Door units waiting for hardware

The stairs leading "upstairs"

Initial lighting ideas and details

As flats are assembled and doors get their knobs installed, my thoughts turn to lighting and the little details.

This realistic set needs to have the right lighting to get the audience to buy into what is going on.  I want it to be dark and shadowy.  It isn't a musical comedy...no need for the bright colors and lots of changes. Broken light, patterns and sharp angles seem in order.  I think that I will use blues, purples, a little magenta, with 51 Surprise pink as my primary flesh tones.

Moonlight coming in thru the window and front door.  Maybe some coming from above the upstairs ceiling, catching the edges of the roof boards and creating streaks down the wall.

There are incandescent lights in the farmhouse...hotspots of straw in the areas where the lamps would be casting their glow.

We have a window with curtains on it. The window is a single hung and the bottom sash opens.  Maybe I should open the show with the sash up and a small fan outside, causing the curtains to move as if by a breeze coming in.  With moonlight shining in and maybe a window gobo cast across the floor, the set has a bit of kinetics before the show. A little movement adds to the believe-ability.

The bare-bulb porcelain socket light fixture in the cellar needs to light...maybe a faint glow. with some kind of sharp, broken pattern cast across the broken plaster wall with foundation stone exposed.

What to do upstairs? There should be some kind of light up there...a bare bulb with a pull string? Hmmm... got to let that mull a little bit. It IS an old farmhouse.

And so we begin...

With Scott and I on the same page with the design, we are set for construction.  At least I have a scenic shop attached to my office where I can pre-build almost everything well before load-in.  In fact, I can pre-fit many pieces and paint ahead of time.

Now, I have long subscribed to the philosophy of making things in standard, reusable modules or units. So, I can pre-build door units, window unit, stair units, platforms and even some flats for the walls.  Unfortunately, the shop is not big enough to assemble the entire set at one time, but I can get a lot of it together.

So, we began last Saturday, July 27 and got the stair units made and fit together.  Sunday July 28, we built door and window jambs and got them ready for sashes and leafs.

Tonight, we will begin making the 15 or so wall sections that it will take to enclose this set.  Of course, no two are identical...

Laying it out on stage

This is my first show at New Line and my design for the stage at Wash U South.  Saying that fitting anything on that stage is tricky is an understatement.  The pie-wedge shape is...interesting, to say the least.

After our first discussion, Scott and I agreed that the layout concept for the set seemed to be pretty straightforward.  We had three different levels in the house...

1. Most of the action takes place on the main level, the living room. The front door, the couch, exits to the "other levels" and the kitchen.  The living room takes up the majority of the stage. The kitchen is very secondary, with only one scene taking place there.
2. The upstairs doesn't require a lot of space. There are never more than a couple of people up there at once. But it does play a key part in the staging. They find the mutilated body of the old lady up there, they find the TV on which they receive the new updates and ultimately it is where Harry goes to toss Molotov cocktails to distract the zombies. I wanted it to connect directly to the lower level.  The actors start on the stairs in the living room and reach the top upstairs, the audience never losing sight of them.
3. Finally the cellar. The cellar is a funny place that is different from the rest of the house. It is about isolation. In the beginning, Harry, Helen and Karen are hiding down there. Karen remains down there, isolated from the adults, and ultimately it becomes the last safe place for Ben to hide until morning.  It needed to feel cold, musty and cramped. For this reason, actors exit the living room through a short door under the stairs and reappear on the cellar landing, descending into the cellar.

The initial idea was to put the band up on a platform behind the set...5 feet in the air, overlooking the action.This was a serious build and I am sure would make the musicians nervous. It also added a lot of cost to a design that was already expensive. I reconsidered and put them on the floor behind the set. Of course, this decision causes another problem, the band can't see the actors. So, the upstage wall will be a scrim, painted to match the plaster walls.

Realistic...really?

The design parameters for NOTLD weren't complicated. Like I said previously, it is a unit set...

1. One interior representing four different rooms in the farmhouse. 
2. Make the audience feel like they are trapped in the farmhouse with the actors.
3. Staged like a drama more than a musical.

How to draw the audience onstage and make them feel like they are in the farmhouse?
When I design for a drama, I have found that the fastest way to make an audience feel at home is to make the set feel comfortable and identifiable.  While this can be done abstractly, most people very quickly identify with a realist set.  They spend their whole pre-show time studying it for details. Human curiosity for where they are, exploring it with their eyes to try to understand who lives here, what has happened here?

The suspension of disbelief begins when the audience member first sits down, studies the set, reads the program, then studies some more.

Scott described the feeling that he wanted as claustrophobic.  So, I decided to completely wall the playing area in. Visually, the only way in or out was through the front door.  Of course, that isn't really true, but to the audience, that is the way it appears.  It adds to the feeling of being trapped.

Finally, upstairs, the ceiling is partially built and looks like the exposed underside of the roof with low walls and little headroom. Again, cramped and tight...

Scenic Concept?!?!

Night of the Living Dead isn't so much about zombies. It is about a group of people, trapped in a confined  space, fighting to stay alive against an uncertain foe...and against each other.  In some respects, this story has been told and retold...ala Anne Frank.  Sure, it's Nazis instead of zombies, but the result is the same...if caught, they're dead. So, this isn't like typical musical theater. It is more like a drama with musical numbers.

The script for the musical really is a single location, a unit set...one interior with three or four distinct playing areas, but all are rooms within the same farmhouse.

When Scott and I first talked about staging ideas for the show, a continuous theme seemed to weave through the discussion...feeling of being trapped, pull the audience onto the stage, make them feel like they are trapped in the farmhouse too.

This is a LOT more like designing a drama than designing a musical...