Progress on more little things...

This past week, I have been spending more time focusing on small details for the set.

Last Thursday, I finished the gas pump for the Barrow Filling Station.  After the glue dried on the styrofoam, I smoothed off the edges and base coated it with the same deep red-brown that I used for the rims on the car.  In real life, the pump would have been bright red, but in keeping with my washed out and muted colors, this deep red-brown is much more sepia.  On Saturday,  Gary added rust and grime.  I topped it off with an original Texaco decal, a printed reproduction of the gage dial, and a plastic reproduction of the original glass globes that used to don the tops of gas pumps well into the 1950's.  The finishing touch was an original aluminum nozzle from an antique pump...an eBay find.






Then my attention turned to a prop that Scott specifically requested for the opening scene where Bonnie fantasizes about Clara Bow.  Scott requested a vintage Hollywood movie camera on a rolling tripod.  I certainly wasn't going to buy one, so to make it, I started by laying out the basic shape of the two reel canisters and the camera body on a piece of luan. I then built up the thickness of the body using 1x4s and a second piece of luan.  The reel canisters were layers of styrofoam glued up and formed into shape.  Meanwhile, Melanie fabricated the tripod. Finally the lenses and viewfinder were made of PVC plumbing fittings and pipe.  The whole camera and tripod painted in gray, with the legs of the tripod dry-brushed like wood.  Gary added a few silver accents to pop out key features.








Finally, to establish the bank facade,  Melanie and I developed an old-fashioned brass clock, like the kind that used to hang on the corner of banks as early as the turn of the century.  Using luan and 2x2s, we created two sides of what would normally be a four-sided clock cabinet.  We only need two sides facing the audience to show three-dimensionality.  After a base coat of gold paint, I created the clock faces and "stained glass" bank sign in Photoshop and printed them on the color printer.  With lights inside the cabinet, they will glow lightly and a little dusty looking, being paper and not painted glass.


This morning, Larry, Glenn Saltamachia and I picked up the panels that I made for the brownstone for Funny Girl at Stray Dog. We dropped at the theater, those panels along with the gas pump, movie camera and a vintage hair dryer that I picked up outside Hannibal on Sunday.

Gary, Sharon and I will repaint the panels along with the brick-work from RENT and repurpose them as pieces of building facades floating in our B&C dream locations.

I will wrap up the clock and whip together the bars for the jail cell and the fence for the car scenes. I am stalling on the gas station while the exact form mulls in my head.  By the weekend, I should be cranking on it.

Until next time...
R

Bonnie and Clyde set progresses...

After adding a little purchased bling, the car is mostly behind me now.

It has all of it's chrome and sparkle.  I think that I won't do anymore to it until I move it into the theater and reassemble it.  

I have to figure out a way to hold the hubcaps on after I mount the wheels on.  The hubcaps that I found are from a real 1934 Ford. The steel wheels are from a late-model trailer.  The two do not exactly fit together and snap in.  But, from off-stage, they should look cool.

For the jail, I will repurpose the brick walls from RENT with a new door and fresh "old" paint. Then add jail bars. The bank facade and another piece have been salvaged from another show that I recently did and will get reworked.  For the bank, I will add a lit bank clock.  For the other piece, a barber pole and perhaps a general store sign.  These will give me some of the character of the places that we are representing.  Fortunately, by repurposing previously built pieces, I can limit how much I have to build.

That leaves me with one fairly large component that needs to be made yet.  I need to tackle the Barrow Star Filling Station.  It was a Texaco franchise and a very typical, 1930's Route 66 type of structure; single room building with a tin-roof canopy and old-fashioned gas pump.  For my production of Grapes of Wrath in 2010, one of the cast members made an old pump but no one knows what happened to it. So, my next task was to set about building another.  

With some 12" sonotube concrete forms, it is a pretty easy task.  Tuesday evening, Melanie and I fit plywood discs into the ends of a 4' length of tube and a 16" length of tube.  A cap of 2" styrofoam on top and a 6" diameter disc of foam for the dial form the geometry of the pump.  I added a modified 2-liter soda bottle for the fuel filter and a piece of sump pump hose for the hose.  I will paint it on Thursday and then add the finishing touches.  On eBay, I found a plastic reproduction of the lit globe that used to go on top of the old pumps. I also found a self-adhesive decal for the front of the pump and an aluminum nozzle that is old enough that most people won't know the difference. 

The next part is to create the front "canopy" of the gas station.  I will spend a little time over the next day or two deciding what to build and designing the details.  Scott has already asked if we could  have the Coca Cola sign on the roof.  


I'll put together a design and then Melanie and I can tackle the gas station on Thursday and this weekend.
R

First piece done...mostly

We had quite a productive week in the scenic shop.  I decided to tackle Clyde's 1934 Ford as my first project for a couple of reasons.  First off, it is probably the most complicated piece of the set that I had to build, and second, I had the old truck from Grapes of Wrath to use as a base.  If I did the car first, then the old truck is out of my way for subsequent work.





Wednesday
My father and I built the original truck in 2010 in his garage in Beckemeyer, IL.  Since we, together, figured it out then, I thought that it might be nice to have him help me give it a significant facelift.  He got to the shop about 10AM.  We removed the old body and disassembled it into a couple of smaller pieces that would fit into the storage loft.  That way, if it ever needs to become a truck again (unlikely), the pieces are there to redo it.  The Ford Deluxe had a very narrow, sloping grille, so we started by making the grille and getting it fixed in place, between the fenders.  We then built back with luan and 2x2's to create the hood.  A sheet of chipboard formed the radiused top.

Next, we cut down the frame, making the car only 80 inches long.  That way it can stand on the back of the seat and fit through a standard door.  After re-attaching the rear legs and wheels, we constructed the seat and "doors".  Melanie got to the shop around 4 and she and I finished things up when dad headed home.

Thursday

Sharon was in the office Thursday, so after we got things caught up for U-Studios, she and I headed to the shop and painted.  First the grille and chrome accents.  Then the fenders got a warm, dark gray.  After an hour of drying time, we returned to the shop, blacked out any new wood underneath and then coated the body with a lighter, green-gray that is reminiscent of the gray that Ford used on their cars in the mid 1930's.

I reused the wheels and tires from the old Grapes truck as well.  They were trailer tires that had been scrapped by a local trailer and camper store.  I painted the metal rims a dark red and used white latex house trim paint to turn them into white-walls because every good gangster car from the 30's has white-walls.  These will bolt on to the end of the front axle after the car is in the theater and doesn't need to move around anymore.  Otherwise...too heavy.

The running greyhound hood ornament from an actual 1934 Ford came in the mail on Wednesday. So the last thing that I did was to mount it with some construction adhesive on to the radiator cap at the nose of the car... nice touch.







Saturday
I picked up a foam rubber mattress pad and grabbed an old roll of white vinyl material that has been in my basement since I reupholstered an old boat 10 years ago.

At the shop, I upholstered the "interior" of the car so that it looks like white leather.  Then focused my attention on adding mirrors and headlights.  Finally, I worked out the front bumper and the windshield and got those painted silver and installed.  The last thing on the to-do list for Saturday was to make a 1934 Texas license plate. Bonnie and Clyde were in Texas when they stole what was reported to be a brand new gray Ford Deluxe V8 because Clyde thought that it was the fastest car made at the time. It got them out of a lot of sticky situations, easily outrunning the police cars of the day. Ultimately, it would be the same car that they were ambushed in and shot to death.

There are still a few chrome pieces to to add when they get here: fog lights on the front, chrome hub caps, a self-adhesive FORD logo below the hood ornament, and a large, old-fashioned steering wheel.

I did take a little bit of artistic license with the car. First off, it is 2/3 scale...one full-size vehicle on stage this year is enough!  I stylized it a bit because Scott and I agreed that the whole show is a dream or a flash-back. So the front end slopes back a little more than a real 1934 Ford so that it looks faster and sleeker, because that was how Clyde saw it in his mind.  Finally, I made it a convertible.  The car that Clyde stole was a 4-door sedan.  But the roof on these was low and the windows narrow.  If I put a hard top on it, the audience would never see Bonnie and Clyde sitting in the car.

In the mean time, I am gearing up for the next pieces to build.  I have some old set pieces that I intend to repurpose.  I hope to move those to the theater later this week since it is empty for the month of August.  Anything that I can get out of the shop, just gives me more room.  I will just spread them out on the stage floor and paint them there before installing them.



Next to make on my agenda will be the gas station, complete with an old-time gas pump.  That should be a fun one.  Looking forward to it.  :)






Until next time, go see a show somewhere.  The artists appreciate it...
R

Time to start talking about the next season...

It is hard to believe that, for me, summer is over.  In just over a month, it will be time to load in the set and lights for Bonnie and Clyde.  I still haven't moved the Nissan truck on to its new home and already, the next show is looming.

I spent a good part of the summer researching for the next show, but not really designing.  Some things that I looked at were Bonnie and Clyde specific.  There were a couple of great documentaries.  But I also spent a lot of time trying to come up with what the towns looked like that they ravaged in Texas, Louisiana, Missouri and other states.



In 2010, I directed a production of Frank Galati's adaptation of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" for a local theater company and got myself neck-deep in the Depression-era dust bowl.  There is definitely an aesthetic to that period and place in American history that is distinctive.  A show about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow HAS to reflect that look.

Then, pouring through the script and discussions with Scott, I came to realize that this show is constructed in a very interesting way.  

First, the show really focuses on Clyde's obsession with the fame of Al Capone. And Bonnie is fixated on the glamorous movie star life of Clara Bow.  So, it seemed that it would be interesting for the show to look and feel like an old newsreel or series of black and white photos, yellowed with age.

The show opens with a barrage of machine gun fire and the lights come up on B & C dead in the seat of their stolen 1934 Ford Deluxe.  Then the show jumps back a few years and follows their fall into a life of crime. Scott mentioned that it is almost as though the show is their lives flashing before their eyes as they die.

Scott and I agreed that the whole show should almost have a dream-like feel to it.  Not a bunch of concrete locations, but just perceptions of places, distorted by memory and time.  More images of a place and time than real places and times.


Armed with this concept and a ton of imagery of the places and people of that time, I began designing the set.  I quickly settled on the idea that I would create a series of pieces that represented many different places.  Not whole sets, rooms, buildings, and such.  Just elements.  A part of a bank facade, a part of a 30's gas station, telephone poles, an old brick jail and of course, the 1934 Ford Deluxe V8.

The idea is that these elements float in space against black, composed in a manner that makes no sense to the conscious mind, but are more of just a composition, an image of the time.  For each scene, one element would be highlighted with light, leaving the rest as ghosts in the background.  This would allow me to leave almost everything on stage the whole time.  Then to establish the interiors for all of the places that the gang ends up throughout the story, we would just bring out two or three small pieces of furniture and set the scene way downstage in a pool of light, with the archetype hovering visually in the background.

In order to capture the flavor of the old photos and newsreels, I think that we will paint everything in sepia tones.  No colors, but all shades of brown, yellow, warm gray, and cream.  That should adequately give the impression of an old movie.


My first order of business will be the car.  There is a reason for this.  I still have the truck from The Grapes of Wrath sitting in the corner of the scenic shop, collecting dust.  It is a 2/3 scale, stylized and generic representation of a 1930's vehicle.  If I use it as the basis for the Ford, half of the work is done.  The Ford Deluxe had a bit of a distinctive grille and front bumper, so if I recreate those parts and reuse the frame, fenders, wheels and cab, all they will need is a paint job to match my sepia color scheme.  The car that Clyde stole was gray, so that can work.








I said that I wouldn't do another vehicle on stage, but...  this one will be much more stylized, not so realistic and certainly not a full car.  Plus, I have a good start on it.  If I do the car first, I can get the old truck out of my way and have more room.

As usual, I'll post pictures as things get finished...
R