Tom in tech: Leanring frmo yoru msitakes [sic]

OH GASTRONOMY!

By Michael Golamco, Carson Kreitzer, Steve Moulds Matt Schatz, and Tanya Saracho

Based on a concept by Amy Attaway and Sarah Lunnie

Actors Theatre of Louisville

Humana Festival of New American Plays 2012

Directed by Amy Attaway

Scenic Design by yours truly

Costume Design by Lindsay Chamberlain

Lighting Design by Brian Lillienthal

Sound Design/Composition by Peter Doyle

THE PLAY

Well… it’s hard to describe, as it’s more of a series of theatrical sketches and songs, rather than an actual STORY, however, there are several stories that play out over multiple scenes. It’s all knit together based around the conceit of FOOD… how it’s grown, harvested, manipulated and the community that creates it and how we respond to it in different ways. The cast is the acting apprentice company… so it’s 25/26 20-something young actors. The project exists as a showcase for them during the big “professionals weekends” of the festival, when directors from all over the country come to see shows. There are a lot of really neat, and lovely pieces within this… Matt Schatz’ musical bits are hilarious and poignant, especially his TASTES LIKE HOME song. Tanya Saracho’s IN THE LINE is a powerful piece on the economics of privilege. Michael Golamco’s ORDERING series is ridiculously funny, especially the second scene with a waiter who explains in EXACTING DETAIL where the food comes from (“Your ribs come from a cow named Betsy who had wide set brown eyes that trusted deeply….”) Steven Mould’s FAMILY FEAST two-parter is a lovely summation on family, food and forgiveness. And Kreitzer’s TOMATOES juxtaposes a family farmer, a suburban backyard farmer and a city-dwelling roof-top gardener, and speaks beautifully to the spiritual aspects of growing food.

OUR PRODUCTION

I was fortunate in that I got to attend a workshop for the show back in December at Actors. It was a FASCINATING experience to be around the table with the actors and all the writers, while they were still writing and rewriting the show. That’s typically not the case. I rarely get that kind of time with the writers. And it was really useful to understand their own aesthetics and how to find a way to bridge their different voices and ideas.

Due to what this is (a showcase for the actors) and because there are a lot of practical and technical and budgetary limitations, it took some figuring out. The limitations were that the show performs REALLY late nights (11pm) after the evening’s primary Humana Festival shows. The set has to strike/load-in in a very tight timeframe (less than 45 minutes), and has to fit the TONE of the show without necessarily being the “perfect thing” for any one of the 30+ pieces. It’s also in the Bingham Theatre at Actors, which is an arena theatre… so there’s really only a FLOOR to deal with… which is both good and a challenge….

shot showing the theatre and the stage pretty nicely.

We went through a lot of ideas for the floor… different graphics, different color patterns and schemes…. Trying to figure out what would support the WHOLE show the best. We wanted something that spoke to the overarching theme, but nothing that would be so graphically exact as to be visually distracting in a space where the floor is such a STRONG visual element. Because of the notions of eco-friendli-ness, I kept being drawn to sage-y natural subtle green colors, and wanted the content of the image to be suggestive without being OBVIOUS. So what I did was take a photograph of a flatware set (specifically a knife, fork, and spoon) and cropped and manipulated it in Photoshop, so that it had a much more subtle presentation. Apparently the cast, after loading the set in for the first time, had no idea what it was from standing on it… but as soon as they went up the audience aisles and looked back, they understood it. I kinda like that.

Having said that, there’s one major issue I have with what I created….

When we started working on it, we knew that it had to sit on top of one of the main Humana Bingham shows, and at the time we only had information on two of the three shows. EAT YOUR HEART OUT (of which the floor of the set was a series of brown carpet tiles) and HOW WE GOT ON (which is asset of concrete-looking floortiles with various other textures stretching into the voms. The other Humana Bingham show, THE VERIZON PLAY, was still in a great deal of flux as to what it was going to need. OF the two options before us, HEART made the most sense.. it was to be brown carpet tiles, with a slight pattern framing the space… but overall, nice and neutral. Since we couldn’t get RID of the brown, my thought was to have our set/floor simply sit on TOP of this, and let the brown act as a frame. So we went with HEART as our base. However, right before the set was going into the shop to be built, the TD (technical director) realized that due to fire egress laws, we had to cut the overall size of the floor by a couple feet along the length. This made practical sense at the time… however, when loaded in, there was more of the carpeting visible, and more of the variants of the carpet pattern were more visible than I realized it would be. I really hate that. I SHOULD have realized that would be the case, and it’s a point that I simply missed. The fault of this one lies firmly in my camp, and that annoys the bejeezus out of me. What I wish I’d done, is instead of CUTTING it back, EXTENDING the two sides all the way to the north and south audience platform lines. It would have solved the fire-egress issue, while giving the set-floor more room to expand, and keep the awkward level change out of play. oh we.. live and learn.