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.
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