... and the other one....

is a new adaptation of the seven extant plays of the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles.
They've been adapted by Sean Graney, a Chicago-local director with whom I've had the pleasure of working several times in the past few years. He's got an amazing ability to adapt classical texts in a way that's visually and thematically fascinating to a modern audience. I love working with Sean, in part because he pushes me outside my comfort zone as a designer. I appreciate getting pushed like that.

anyhow to the basics...

SOPHOCLES: SEVEN SICKNESSES
for The Hypocrites - Chicago at the CHopin Theatre Basement
adapted and directed by Sean Graney
Scenic Design by yours truly and Maria DaFabo
Costume Design by Alison Siple
Lighting Design by Jared Moore
Music Adaptor - Kevin O'Donnell
Sound Design by Steven Ptacek


THE STORY
The whole production intertwines 7 greek plays into an evening of bloody and dirty deeds. It includes Sophocles' takes on the three OEDIPUS-family stories (REX,  AT COLONUS, and finally ANTIGONE), as well as those that dealt with the HERAKLES and Trojan War (PHILOKTETES, IN TRACHIS, and AJAX).  It roughly follows the fall of Thebes, and the Greek's belabored mid-Trojan-War stasis, before the tide of war turned their way. The show runs over 4 hours long and includes 2 intermissions, and the cost of dinner with you tickets. At its' base it's a story about love, loss, and the vagarities of a war that some feel not worth fighting... in other words it has a prescience that is rather apropos to today.

The oddities of this show for me are that, aside from the rough run I saw last night. I won't get to see it again until after an audience is there... i.e. I will not be present for pretty much ALL of tech. When I was approached to design it, I was already contracted for SPUNK at Court, and as much as I love working with Sean I couldn't pass up the project that I was already working on. so The Hypocrites were kind enough to agree to let me design it ALONGSIDE the wonderful Maria DaFabo, who's been the prop guru on several shows I've done with them over the last few years. She's great! and for some reason thought it a fun chance to also sit in the designer's seat. So we've been in close contact all along, but she's the one actually see the show through "on the ground" as it were.

 The other oddity is that we're doing it in the basement space at the Chopin Theatre. It's a ... challenging space to work in for many reasons... It has a set of 6 columns in the space that break it up and are NOT removeable, forcing interesting staging choices be made. The ceiling of the space slopes from about 10 feet at the entrance to closer to 8' at the back of the space. The floor is concrete and cannot be painted... let's just say there are a lot of restrictions.

In our discussions, Sean wanted a space that evoked a hospital as there are two nurses that are "thru-lines" by being present in all 7 plays. and he wanted a space where the audience was ENVELOPED in the action, not just separate viewers... so to that end. we created a space where the audience will enter in thru the flipping double doors that are used throughout the show... they'll have to go up a couple steps and thru the doors before going down a couple steps into the "house" on either side of the 14'-side walkway that is the main playing area that runs the full length of the room. Instead of chairs, the audience will be seated on padded benches that are tiled in a  similar way to the way the walls of the "hospital" are.  The colors are the blue, white and red that were common in American hospitals in the 1950s. There are traps in the floor that allow access to action and characters unseen.

here's what the audience will see when they walk in thru the doors....

and here's looking across the playing space. you can see the columns and even the director in the middle left of the pic.

the set's still under construction... but note that the lighting designer has put fluorescent lights all over the stage space

and here's the main entrance wall... you see the double doors the audience enters thru.

I'll take some panoramic shots at  some point to share....

up next ? Two shows at once!!

but I'll post separately about them...

Coming right off the fun of "going home" to Actors Theatre of Louisville, I walked right into tech for SPUNK at Court Theatre Chicago.... which is on the campus of University of Chicago where I teach... so in some ways, I was immediately "coming home" a second time...
I'm a huge fan of Court Theatre and their mission to breathe new life into the classics. Their seasons are always thought-provoking, and fascinating for how different ideas are paired off with each other.

For this show it required less of a reworking, as it has been a new investigation into a fascinating writer Zora Neale Hurston, who just happens to be my wife's favorite author.

So here we go....

SPUNK - Court Theatre Chicago, Sept 2, 2011
by George C Wolfe, adapted from short stories by Zora Neale Hurston
Directed by Seret Scott
Music Direction/orchestrations by Kelvyn Bell
Scenic Design by yours truly
Costume Design by Janice Pytel
Lighting Design by Marc Stubblefield
Sound Design by Josh Horvath

THE STORY
This is a hard one to encapsulate as there are a group of 5 actors and a musician, who are acting out three different short stories by Hurston, an African-American female writer of the Harlem Renaissance. These stories are knitted together by music performed by Guitar Man, and often accompanying Blues Speak Woman. These stories are about the human condition but "told in the key of the blues". the first one SWEAT deals with a downtrodden wife, Delia, who is terribly abused by her husband, Sykes. He's taken up with another woman and tries to drive Delia away from the home her sweat has paid for, by leaving a rattlesnake in her midst. The tables are turned, and through the snake she fears, Delia gains freedom. In the second tale, HARLEM SLANG, two male hustlers try to out-talk each other, and talk-up a young lady out for a stroll. She knowingly puts them in their place. In the last, THE GILDED SIX BITS, a young poor married couple cross paths with an opportunistic swindler. Their vows are shaken, but the strength of forgiveness and family are their personal salvation. All three make great use of language. All are written in the vernacular speak of the world from which they come. As a sociologist and cultural anthropologist, Hurston was uniquely adept at capturing the voices and the language of those she interviewed and talked to.

From a design point of view, this show is a little bit of a challenge in that there are two main, but very different geographic locations.... the first and third tales ostensibly take place near Eatonville, Florida, a rural, predominantly black township, while the second takes place along a streetcorner in Harlem in the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance (i.e. the mid 1930s- early 1940s). So the visual research for these two worlds is VERY different---Harlem during this time was upscale, filled with the aristocracy of the African American populace, whereas Eatonville, was a very rural backwater. Artwork that was created about and in these two locations was VASTLY different... Harlem was sleek, colorful, cool, Eatonville, rough, natural, warm.

After much discussion with our director, Seret Scott, we felt that keeping to the world of Hurston's upbringing was the best... that of Eatonville, and especially since those locales begin and end the show... it made sense. We looked at lots of images of barns, houses, and structures that populated Eatonville in the 1920s- 40s. The Great Depression... photographers from the Federal Works Progress Administration. It was fun to look back into the era.
But we didnt' need a REAL location, but an abstraction of it... so we created space-shapes where the scenes and stories could play out, and then used the research to pull real textures from.... The reality of dirt, underfoot and the REAL quality of the faded barnwood were interesting to us. see below...

In looking at the space we'd created, it felt a little bland still... so we added the names of black townships, and the lighting designer highlights the places we are in the appropriate tales... (you can see HARLEM lit up in the picture just above.

The IMPORTANCE of a LIGHTING DESIGNER

As the SENSE tech has moved on, I've been particularly impressed by how the lighting designer, Brian Lillienthal has managed to eke out such distinctive and meaningful looks and feelings for the multitude of locations. As stated previously, there are over 50 scenes in this adaptation, and a number of them involve people walking out of doors. Brian has been quite masterful as giving such an array of colors and feelings to the world, here are a few of my favorite shots that explicate his arsenal...

The necessity for flexibility of time/mood/location with lighting is one of the reasons that we worked hard to create a set that had a degree of subtlety to the color... the grays and ecrus, and lavenders that make up the rather subtle paint treatment. Had we gone with bolder color choices, Brian would have been hard-pressed to create such an array. I try really hard to think about how a lighting designer's needs fit into the equation. In this project it was difficult, as Actors Theatre wanted me to simply adapt my Northlight design for their space, which cut out a lot of the process conversation that normally happens. Brian was constantly playing catch-up to the rest of us who had done the show together before... in many ways it put him in a difficult spot, but I'm so glad and impressed that he came through with such stunning work.

Coming back to ATL has been a pleasure and an honor. I'd NEVER thought that I'd ever really design on the mainstage here, much less be designing for Jon Jory doing the first big show of the season. I'm a lucky designer (and even luckier that my wife puts up with the insanity that has been my professional world this summer)! I'll let the final image of SENSE end this post....