Pardon the long delay in ROCKLAND post #2.. quixotic internet access at the Rozsa Center and life intervening got in the way, hopefully I'll catch up while here in Louisville...

I'm finally including pictures of the ROCKLAND set in this post. yippee!

The set: There are a number of locations required in the text… outside the mine, in town, at the temperance hall, in churches, a couple homes, and the mine office, etcetera. So in early conversations with the director, we decided on a UNIT-SET* approach.

·      - a UNIT-SET is one where the space is designed in such a way that it can be used as different locations easily with changes in lighting and props/furniture, and directorial usage. Typically it includes multiple entrance possibilities, and often includes different platform levels. Shakespeare plays are often done on unit sets, as there are always multiple shifts in location. From a producer’s perspective, they’re also useful as they can be cheaper than trying to detail multiple realistic locations that would require lots of mechanics to shift scenery on and offstage. From my point of view, these are often fun to design, as they require me think a little more abstractly about space.

For this show, Jussi, the director, and I looked at  a lot of mine-related architecture, including a lot of pictures of the original Rockland mine, which has now been completely dismantled and of which no remnants remain.

There are two predominant visual textures in the set, patinated copper and rough-hewn, aged wood, (in this cast most of it is pine pulled from a 75-year old demolished barn about 30 miles from Houghton, MI, where we were doing the show). Thematically, these two materials are incredibly important and speak to the time and story. The COPPER is what was being mined, and as such the center of the greedy businessmen who ran the mine with little thought for the workers, and the wood was used to hold the beams and create the support structure that keep the mines nominally safe. In the design we used these "real" textures in abstract ways...i.e. the COPPER was used to delineate the hills/mountains into which the workers bored to obtain it. These "mountains" are made to resemble copper plates riveted together, and then painted so that the plates appear to have aged in differing stages... the "deeper" the plate, the more corroded and patinated with verdant green, the "more recently added" plates are less patinated. Jussi and I really loved the way that copper, as it ages and gathers patina, grows greener and more vibrant.

The ROUGH-HEWN WOOD was used to frame the mine entrance into the mountainside as well as for the silhouette of the mine-shaft building upstage left, and the false-proscenium (that regrettably doesn't photograph very well in my pictures from the show). 

scene 2  - the party at the White Rose Temperance Hall

scene 8 - at Johanna's dinner table

act 2 scene 1 - the local saloon

in these three pictures, I hope you can see the difference that a UNIT SET can utilize to help tell a story. simply by moving people about in different traffic patterns, adding (or subtracting tables, chairs and stools), and different lighting, the focus changes and the FEELING of the space is different... the Temperance Hall is bright and airy, Johanna's dining room feels small and confined, and the sallon has a different energy about it.