I rather abruptly left off my last post after the synopsis.
My apologies… the story is complicated enough and the tech has been busy enough
that I’ve had little time to sit and write.
Moving forward…
I feel there needs to be a bit of a disclaimer here… The
process of this design was…. a little…out of the ordinary, shall we say. I
started working on it in late March, after I had accepted the new teaching
position here at Ithaca College. So, I was starting this design a little blind…
not really knowing the people, or the space, or much about the show. I was also
doing it long-distance… while we did have one face-to-face meeting (while I was
out visiting looking for a place to rent), the rest of the initial process
happened over phone/e-mail. This is (I feel, regrettably) becoming more common
in this biz, and regularly has to be worked around.
This is also a BIG show. I’ve regularly done musicals, and
they’re something I really do enjoy working on from time to time, however, this
one is particularly challenging. It has 23 locations, spread out over 28 scenes.
And there are some songs that move to multiple locations WITHIN the song,
meaning that the transitions between locations have very specific timings that
have to be taken into account. This show also has two parade sequences, and 4
scenes that require having dogs onstage….. actual live dogs…. Yes…. I know…
Kinda crazy, eh? There’s also a cast of 30, and somewhere near 130 costumes. Logistically it’s very challenging, and
in some ways, I feel like we’ve been designing for the transitions as much as
for the actual SCENES, which feels so antithetical to what design is really
about as a reaction to the needs of the moment and to finding an aesthetic
gesture to support the story.
Anyhow, to the design…
THE DESIGN
The director was very keen to point out that the WAY in
which the story is told has a great deal of broad comedy, but the TRUTH of the
story is grounded in reality… a girl get dumped, wants to win her ex back, and
in-so-doing, finds her path to success. There’s a very earnest “life-path”
story here, and it has to be honored, but that doesn’t mean that we have can’t
have a tongue-in-cheek angle from which to view this story. Because of the
practical concern of getting scenery on and offstage, we decided to use a “wing
and drop” method of scenery to allow for quick paths for actors and stuff to
enter and exit. A “wing and drop” is typically a series of arches or legs, the
ones most downstage are larger and they get smaller as they move upstage to
allow a perspective to be used. This method was popularized in the late middle
ages to give the illusion of greater depth, and because it allowed them to faux
paint elements and therefore make scenery as cheap as can be.
In thinking about what these arches could LOOK like for
Blonde. I looked at a lot of research about fashion (as it’s an aspect of
Elle’s character) and thought about what could be iconic and also have an edge
or comedic bend. In a early research image there was a model holding a Louis
Vuitton bag… and that kinda stuck with me. It’s a pattern that’s primarily
brown, with a tight, off-set pattern of flowers and diamonds with Louis’ initials
scattered within. This pattern is rather iconic, and so we appropriated ti
(excising the LV and replacing it with an EW – for Elle Woods), and instead of
the typical brown circle at the center of the diamonds in the pattern, we put
small lightbulbs that could light in sequence. The floor is an ombre (a fancy
word meaning a color fade) from brown (upstage) to a medium grayed pink
(downstage). The amalgamation of
brown arches and a pink floor was a bit dicey, but fortunately the Lighting
Designer (Clay Harding) did a really lovely job of choosing colors for the
lights that worked quite beautifully with the scheme.
the classroom
with two of the arches lit up, for the finale
The rest of the set amounts to pieces that slide or fly in
(sometimes both at the same time). These sliding WAGONS held everything from a
restaurant table and chairs, to Elle’s daybed to a hair and nail salon to the
trailer where Paulette’s ex-boyfriend lives with their dog, Rufus. All in all
there are 25 scenes, and 21 locations. As previously stated, we had to be
careful in choreographing the moving pieces in time with the music, but safely,
to allow the 32 cast members, and 10 backstage crew to maneuver, make costume,
scenic and prop changes.
full-stage with the salon
(note that this pic was taken partway thru tech, a TON of carpentry and set
dressing happened to this unit afterwards)
close up of salon
graduation scene at the end of the show
I think my personal favorite look was right at the top of
the show. The first scene takes place in the Delta Nu Sorority at UCLA. It’s a
bright white, medium lavender, and pink confection with a Marilyn Monroe quote
scrawled across it, “Give a girl the right pair of shoes, and she can conquer
the world”. For me this was, both crazily appropriate for this
fashion-conscious group of girls, but prescient for what happens in the third
scene where Elle gets dumped by Warner, telling her he needs “someone serious/
less of a Marilyn, more of a Jackie”. I doubt many in the audience caught the
irony of the gesture, but I enjoy finding ways to layer ideas together, even if
in subtle ways.
the sorority unit
