American Idiot...only part two

Boy, I lied last time when I said that I would have another post in a couple of days.  Here we are, past load in and I am only writing my second post.

In my last post, I talked about the set concept as it related to our three heroes.  This time, I want to talk about the actual set itself and why we've done what we have.  American Idiot does have a plot woven through it, but its identity lies in the Green Day score and the punk culture of the early 2000's.

The whole pop aesthetic of that time, already 15 years ago, was driven the emerging saturation of the media.  The rise of technology and the Internet in the 90's forced digital media into every nook and cranny of our world.  Music videos were already a generation old and MTV had already reinvented itself at the time of our story, replaced by YouTube.  The Internet and YouTube allowed anyone who could produce a video to become a star on their own music channel.

Likewise, the news media pervaded our daily world unlike anytime ever before.  When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, most Americans didn't find out until the next day.  When terrorists hijacked three airliners in 2001, we watched on live TV as the second one impacted the World Trade Center. For days, every channel, every media outlet was a constant stream of live broadcasts from "ground zero".  So, where am I going with all of this???

For American Idiot's original designers as for me, that media is the backdrop for our show. Actually, and metaphorically, the media is what saturates our heroes. The original set had TVs all over it as well as video projection that washed the entire stage. The walls of the original stage were plastered with posters from punk bands of the day. We do not have the budget for that kind of video media nor the people to produce it, install it and run in.  What we decided to do instead, was to plaster our wall with newspaper, to represent that media saturation.  Interspersed are a few band posters, chosen to reflect the cynicism in that music art form.

Executing this posed a problem in our little black box. Building walls 12' high and 50' long was cost prohibitive, but in the solution, I think that I added yet another layer to the metaphor. To solve it, I chose to use a 9'x12' canvas drop cloth and a 15'x12' canvas drop cloth as my base and wallpaper them with newspaper and band posters.  These hang on the back wall, bubbling, peeling and lifting. They are NOT concrete, just like the world that they represent.  They are imperfect, fluid, and fragile...just like our heroes.















In the original staging, the centerpiece of the set was a multi-story steel fire escape, which served as multiple levels for the roof of the Seven-11, the fire escape on which Johnny first sees Whats-Her_Name, and a variety of other staging.  After discussion, Scott and I felt that we too needed some vertical element on the set to pull off some of these above and below staging requirements.  What I did, while a similar function, is distinctly different in its appearance.  It is more industrial, more gritty.  It can be a building, fire escape, or ruins in war.  It is not as one-dimensional in looking like a fire escape as the original design was.


Yesterday was the big load in day.  We managed to get the seating risers all rearranged and the chairs on them in stacks...out of the way.  We then built our structure and hung the smaller of the two media drops.





On Sunday afternoon, I finished wall papering the large drop, so sometime this week, we can get it installed in the theater.

I'll likely squeeze out one more post after addressing the paint treatment for the floor.
R

OK, so I'm a little behind...

The title says it all, at least about my blogging.  I know that I have been remiss in documenting my process this time.  The truth is, I have really struggled with what to say about my process for American Idiot.

Scott and I laid out the basic staging months ago, while Heathers was still on stage.  The original staging for American Idiot makes a ton of sense.  After the opening few minutes of the show, our three "heroes" each take separate, parallel journeys.  The show is written that these stories happen simultaneously, yet interwoven within the lyrics of each number.  For the most part, there are not defined, individual scenes with blackouts in between for scene changes.  The focus of the action shifts, often mid-song from one to the other. Or, with a small bridge.

This implied that we need to have three distinct playing areas that we can separate the action and clearly shift between them.  In a black box, we have a lot of flexibility to pull this off.  Scott and I decided to lay out the stage along the long wall of the theater, making it 50 feet long.  I laid out a seating plan with the seats on risers tiered along the lobby wall so that the audience walks in, down a short vom and is facing the stage, in traditional proscenium fashion. (See the plan above)

To define the three playing areas, we decided to use very similar vocabulary to the original production.  A single piece of furniture in the middle of a pool of light would tell us where we are and with which hero our story is unfolding.

For Johnny, we'll use a bed...a mattress only really...stained and shabby.  This is his journey icon for when he leaves suburbia for the big city and ends up in a shabby apartment somewhere, caught in the drug culture.


For Will, a small shabby couch...the couch in suburbia that he never leaves, that he is tied to by his mistakes and his choices.

For Tunny, his changes.  He starts with a recliner, but his recliner, a suburban device, is really a metaphor for what is to come.  Pretty quickly, he sees glory in the life of a soldier and signs up, being shipped off to war.  His recliner is replaced by a gurney... his "new recliner" after being permanently disfigured in combat.













All three furniture devices (four really with the gurney) are on wheels so that they can move around as needed to free space for the action that is required in one of the other guys worlds.  This allows me to expand and contract each of their worlds as the story shifts from one to the other without ever allowing them to overlap.

There are a few fixed components to the set that I have to address, but more about those in the next post.
R