Initial thoughts on Three Penny Opera

Not once in my crazy theater career dd I ever pay a bit of attention to Three Penny Opera.  I had heard of the title and knew "Mack the Knife", but that was about it.  My perception was "it's an old and out-of-date show" and I never gave it much thought.  Honestly, when Scott announced it as the closing show for the season, I groaned. "What happened to Zorba" ran thru my mind. Well, not every show can be the next cool funky show that nobody believes that we can pull off.  There will always be that one show of the season that you wish you didn't have to do.

Then you read it, and talk to Scott, and read it again, and talk some more. All of the sudden, a light bulb goes off and you get it...

Welcome to my world.

For the life of me, after the first read, I couldn't get past the "Oliver-like" setting.  How many more Victorian England shows am I going to have to do in my day?!?!  The way that Scott talks about his feelings for Rodgers and Hammerstein is the way that I feel about designing for these "golden-age" shows...I appreciate where they fall in the history of theater, but that era is the past. It is the foundation for a much more exciting and invigorating theater experience. We do not need shows with 10 canvas backdrops.  We have pixel mapping, video projection, and abstract imagery that can be much more rich,

There is a cardinal rule in doing theater (or any other art really.)  Everything that we do, every decision that we make is about the story. We do not create the story. That is the author's job. We TELL the story. If any idea, any element, and action...ANYTHING at all does not help in some way to clarify the story, then we should not do it.  No embellishment that we can do as an artist will improve the story. Every action and every decision will either further the story or distract from the story.  It is our job to make sure that the latter get filtered out before it hits the stage.

In that first conversation with Scott, he said two things that flipped the creative switch in my brain. First, he said that this show is about the 1930's and about today, it just happens to be set in 1830's Britain. As such, he intends to stage pieces of it in all three eras at once. Second, he mentioned a production that he saw a few years ago where the designer had piles of chairs on stage and the cast just grabbed chairs, used them, then threw them back on the pile.  P-ting! Out the door went the Dickens backdrop and I GOT IT!  Since this show isn't REALLY about the dawn of Victorian England, I didn't have to reproduce Victorian England.

Breaking down the Backdrop...

With that, there are really just a few "places" that we must go to move the story along. Peachum's Beggars Store, the Stable for the wedding, the prison.  But..  nothing says that we have to go IN these places, just be there or suggest that we are there. And nothing says that this story moves over great distances...its not like freakin' Les Mis.  In fact, Nothing says that it can't really happen all in one neighborhood, a beggar's neighborhood...a ghetto like place.

Armed with this insight, and three major locations, I composed the stage with 3 facades, ala Forum.  The whole thing is a composition of a street that faces the waterfront.  With the audience as the water.

OK, so it is set in 1837 on the eve of Victoria's coronation, so there should be something that gives it a flavor of the era.  The archetypal tudor structure would be heavy timber frames infilled with white plaster stucco.


But if we don't want to be literal, what if I eliminate the plaster.  An aesthetic of just heavy, dark timbers in patterns that reflect tudor structure. Storefronts tended to be a bit more refined with more detail. A stable would be bigger and heavier with less detail. A jail is a box with bars...

Now, there is a TON of crap that has to come and go for scene changes. We have no stage crew, no wings, and no place to go with it all.  Thus comes the second comment that Scott made.  If this really is the beggar's neighborhood, it isn't a pretty place. there is crap everywhere, piled in the corners. It is a ghetto.  Then the cast just grabs what they need for the scene out of the pile and puts it back in the pile after the scene is done.  No scene changes, No storage in the wings... just organized clutter.

So, that is how we proceed.  Time to start working out the real geometries and developing the details. Load-in is only 4 weeks away.  No more time to snooze!
R