Short Attention Span Theatre!!!

THE HUMANA 10s

THE DUNGEONS AND THE DRAGONS by  Kyle John Schmidt directed by KJ Sanchez

HERO DAD by Laura Jacqmin directed by Sarah Rasmussen

THE BALLAD OF 423 AND 424 by Nicholas Pappas directed by Sarah Rasmussen

Actors Theatre of Louisville

Humana Festival of New American Plays 2012

Scenic Design by yours truly

Costume Design by Lindsay Chamberlain

Lighting Design by Nick Dent

Sound Design/Composition by Peter Doyle

THE PLAY

 This time there are three!

D&D is a really funny and heartfelt look at a group of outcast teens who bond by playing Dungeons and Dragons. It speaks to the relevance of fantasy as a means to bond and find a way through adversity… even puberty.

HERO DAD  takes a dramatic look at three different men and their relationships to women other than the mothers of their kids. Being a father in the 21^st century isn’t easy, especially if you have joint custody.

BALLAD is a heartwarming look at a reclusive writer who learns that opening his door to his neighbor can lead to beautiful relationship, but that taking that first step across the threshold can be difficult.

OUR PRODUCTION

These are always a lot of fun at Humana… at least they were when I was on staff here in the late 90s. The challenge is keeping the professionally produced, while simultaneously making them fit together AND not stress out the already-exhausted staff… AND it has to fit on top of the mainstage Humana festival sets, easy as pie, eh?

The set for D&D has to blur the line between fantasy and reality., and KJ (the director) and I went through a whole mess of different ideas. Because we NEED the fantasy to be visually  “real”, while at the same time, we also need reality to fade in and out. We were lucky in that the upstage wall. Is a scrim…. So what we ended up with was having “reality” be represented by the basement playroom they are playing in. it’s upstage of the scrim, and so when we need to bleed into reality, we simply make it appear in degrees, always incrementally. The fantasy world is all black and it anchored by a dungeonmaster’s stone-slab throne. Originally we wre going to have it glow in the dark, but we cut the idea when the lighting designer came up with an easier-to-effect fantasy world.

the dungeonmaster's throne

postscript - at the end of the first day of tech we CUT the upstage "basement playroom" set. because of sightlines to some extreme seats, the playwright was concerned that if EVERYONE didn't see it in it's totality, that it'd be confusing. SO we cut it from the show. I can't say I fully agree, but one of the aspects of being a designer is that you need to take into account the directors (and in the case of HUMANA festival, playwrights) wishes. I was sad to see it go, but I understand the concern that was raised.. c'est la vie!

For HERO DAD, we tried a couple ideas, but it really is a play that doesn’t need any visual support, and its only needful thing is a chair that looks like it belongs in a medical waiting room.

HERO DAD

BALLAD is far more exacting in its’ needs. It takes place in the hallway of an urban walk-up apartment building. We see the doorways to two apartments (423 and 424, respectively). And these doors are CONSTANTLY being opened and shut, slammed and creaked open. Over the span of 10 minutes, we see 9 months of hallway interactions between the two quirky neighbors. Sarah and I talked about what city it was, what kind of building it was/is. It’s level of deterioration, and such things. It was a really fun conversation. In placing it onstage in the Pamela Brown Auditorium,

we had to adjust to allow for the extreme sightlines that space has (see my postings on SENSE AND SENSIBILITY last fall….) 

BALLAD OF 423 AND 424