As we have now been packing (for what seems like ages), I had no choice but to look back through tons of old drawings/draftings, and decide what to keep and what to toss -- a process that ended up being MUCH easier than I initially thought. A veritable TON of old drafting is not making the move, and sketches so old and tentative (artistically speaking) that I literally CRINGED when thinking about how proud I was then... and how choices and decisions I made then seem so naive to me now by comparison. What really caught my emotionally close though, was getting rid of old models...
As shows opened and models came back home to me, I took many of them into school (at University of Chicago) to use as teaching tools -- and also because I had a big-honking closet off of my office in the Reynolds Club. it was dusty, but dry, but over my 7 years here they piled up. When time came for the move to the Logan Center for the Arts, I realized it was time to downsize and keep only the ones that were especially nice, or especially well built, and in this personally gut-wrenching decision process, I had no choice but to walk down Memory Lane a touch...
This was a grad school project I did for Naomi Iizuka's 36 VIEWS, a play that I really adore, in part for it's indictment of trafficking in ancient art,a s much for it's personality of a mystery wrapped in a kimono. I've never seen this play produced, though it's a show I'd KILL to work on.
This is the model for the adaptation of Dorothy Sayer's STRONG POISON that I did at Lifeline Theatre... gosh... probably 2005 or maybe 2006. The walls were all overflowing Victorian filing cabinets. I received my first After Dark Award for this design. Throwing this one away hurt, because of how much I dearly love Lifeline as a company.
These are from the first abridgement that I did at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. This was David Bell's adaptation of COMEDY OF ERRORS (2005), that toured to regional schools. When it was performed at CSTit had to fit on top of the set for MEASURE FOR MEASURE, who's set was designed by Neil Patel. Our COMEDY was a 1920's set WPA-style theatre troupe and the conceit was that only part of the troupe had made it to the theatre in time to perform, and that COMEDY was the only show they had the right people for. It was 75-minutes of laugh-riot and heart ache... I never understood how David was able to turn this play into such a cathartic reunion at the end.... during tech I openly wept at the brother's reunion, it was so touching. This was also one of the shows I did while Lucy was a baby and Janna was back at work at the Goodman. Lucy came to tech with me, and even started to take some tentative steps holding onto my fingers on the rugs that made up the floor of the set. Lucy is now 8 years old.... my God, how time flies!
Pegasus Player's production of Sondheim's THE FROGS... yes, that's an Olympic sized swimming pool... yes it was insane... yes it was a lot of fun. Audience was seated around the perimeter of the pool (which you can see better in the bottom pic), and the cast performed on a floating platform that bobbed in the middle of the stage...er...pool. The band was located under the gallery upstage. And the cast frolicked, swam, danced, dove, scampered about all around. The craziest thing about this one was that the set had to break apart into pieces because a college swim team met there during the day.... ah, the madness of Chicago storefront theatre....
William Inge's THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS
at American Theatre Company, Damon Kiely, director (2008, I think)
It was an odd abstraction of space, and it looks a little awkward in the model, but I thought it fit into the theatre rather nicely.
THE BOYS ARE COMING HOME a new musical loosely based on Much Ado About Nothing
directed by Gary Griffin for the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University
It was SUCH a beautiful show, and it's had such an unfortunate tenure since. The plot of Much Ado is front and center, but it's set at the end of the second world war, and the music fit right along that beautiful and gorgeous big-band line of broad, bluesy and wholly Americana. the design is based on USO clubs and factory architecture from the period. After our production it received a workshop in New York, and was optioned by the Goodman, who was set to rework the piece, but the music writer/lyricist and the new book-writer didn't get along and the project (very sadly) fell apart.
That brouhaha, oddly enough led to.....
Brett Neveu's GAS FOR LESS at the Goodman Theatre, Dexter Bullard, director
When BOYS ARE COMING HOME was cut from the Goodman season, they moved a Second-stage production of AINT MISBEHAVING into their MainStage season, thus creating a hole in their second stage (the Owen), that they quickly filled with GAS FOR LESS. As I had just designed a show for the Horton Foote Festival, they knew I was around town and available and they offered me this show... the caveat being that I only had 2 weeks to complete a design.. that's how far behind their schedule had gotten. It was set at a very specific gas station only 10 blocks from our apartment in Lincoln Square, and getting to do first-hand research at that station was AMAZING. we recreated (and made some artistic adjustments) it pretty much wholesale. It's one of my designs of which I'm most proud.
All of these models are no more, but the sadness of leaving them behind is tempered with the gratification and excitement of what I've accomplished here in Chicago.
There is one other project that I'll be leaving behind... the fall production of David Auburn's PROOF that will be the inaugural event of the grand opening of the LOGAN CENTER FOR THE ARTS. I've designed the set (and even painted parts of it), but I will be ensconced in Ithaca when it gets loaded in, teched and opened. While part of me would love to be here, there's something RIGHT about the newbies here taking it on and moving forward... here's some of the drawings/bits for it....
groundplan
quick sketch
computer-doctored sketch
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