OK.. so I'm human... and yes, SEX sells....

This entry SHOULD have been posted over a month ago.  In my defense, as I was designing set, lights AND sound, and thus was rather actively BUSY during tech, I think I could be forgiven for not posting AS IT WAS HAPPENING, but as there’s been over a month since…  I have little recourse but to flog myself with the nearest wet noodle.

This one was an interesting show, and one of the strongest I’ve seen here at University of Chicago where I teach. It’s…

SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO by David Mamet

Directed by Audrey Francis

Set, lights and sound by Yours Truly

Costumes by Nate Rohr

THE STORY: Told in very quick rapid-fire-dialogue scenes (there are 37 scenes and the show is less than 80 minutes long), and set in Chicago in 1976, a young office-worker guy who has a misogynistic alpha-type co-worker, meets, falls in love, moves in with, fights with and ultimately splits from a nice young independent girl who has an equally caustic friend of her own. Depending on how you choose to stage it, it can be an indictment of “sleep with them first, ask questions later” mentality of the younger generation before the AIDS scare changed the social landscape, or it can be a simple story of two who begin to find love only to be driven apart by the negativity of those around them. There are a myriad other legitimate interpretations, but that’s how I choose to read it. The show was revolutionary when it premiered as it uses a lot of  “bad language” and talks about sex, a LOT, and it was early in Mamet’s rapid-fire dialogue that has since made him famous.

THE DESIGN: since there are so many scenes, and the shows keeps coming back around to a bar and a bed, we stripped away any of the architectural necessities and decided to stage it IN THE ROUND (otherwise known as an ARENA arrangement, meaning that the audience is on all four sides of the playing space, and that actors. This necessitates that there be no doors/walls/windows and that space is defined by lighting, sound and the usage of the stage by the director and actors. In other words, simplicity rules.

As I was doing so much myself, it was necessary to keep things simple as well. The hardest thing on this show for me was painting the floor, which took about 3 days and nearly 2000 running feet of masking tape. By using the color scheme that was prevalent in the 70s. it gives  a FEELING of the time of the play without being slavish. The design in based, somewhat, on a painting by Sol LeWitt, a fairly well known artist that came of age in the POP Art movement of the 60’s.  In an arena set-up, the FLOOR becomes incredibly important as its’ the major architectural force that the audience has to help them visually. The furniture was designed to withstand abuse, and to be used around the department for years to come… it’s purposely skeletal and basic. The lighting, too was fairly straightforward, with only small tonal shifts at key moments.

Sound was particularly fun to work on as I got to go back in the mid 70s and dig up all kinds of things that were popular then… getting to discern the real difference between funk and soul, look at the differences between early punk and glam rock, was a lot of fun to explore.  And as a scenic designer, it was exciting to see how sound could help sculpt the space and the world of the play. The muzak rendition of GIRL FROM IMPANEMA during the department store scene, made the crew and cast burst out laughing the first time they heard it during tech… in part because it was simply so WRONG and yet so RIGHT. The bar, the office,  and perhaps everyone’s  favorite sound cue… the porn movie the two guys sit through one night. It was built of several different parts in Pro-tools (a computerized sound editing program), including a very instrumental heavy cover of  Kool and the Gang’s JUNGLE BOOGIE, setting a bass line for the heavy breathing and … dare I say it…. Sex noises….

Sometime’s it’s fun to step outside your “norm” and stretch….

... and the other one....

is a new adaptation of the seven extant plays of the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles.
They've been adapted by Sean Graney, a Chicago-local director with whom I've had the pleasure of working several times in the past few years. He's got an amazing ability to adapt classical texts in a way that's visually and thematically fascinating to a modern audience. I love working with Sean, in part because he pushes me outside my comfort zone as a designer. I appreciate getting pushed like that.

anyhow to the basics...

SOPHOCLES: SEVEN SICKNESSES
for The Hypocrites - Chicago at the CHopin Theatre Basement
adapted and directed by Sean Graney
Scenic Design by yours truly and Maria DaFabo
Costume Design by Alison Siple
Lighting Design by Jared Moore
Music Adaptor - Kevin O'Donnell
Sound Design by Steven Ptacek


THE STORY
The whole production intertwines 7 greek plays into an evening of bloody and dirty deeds. It includes Sophocles' takes on the three OEDIPUS-family stories (REX,  AT COLONUS, and finally ANTIGONE), as well as those that dealt with the HERAKLES and Trojan War (PHILOKTETES, IN TRACHIS, and AJAX).  It roughly follows the fall of Thebes, and the Greek's belabored mid-Trojan-War stasis, before the tide of war turned their way. The show runs over 4 hours long and includes 2 intermissions, and the cost of dinner with you tickets. At its' base it's a story about love, loss, and the vagarities of a war that some feel not worth fighting... in other words it has a prescience that is rather apropos to today.

The oddities of this show for me are that, aside from the rough run I saw last night. I won't get to see it again until after an audience is there... i.e. I will not be present for pretty much ALL of tech. When I was approached to design it, I was already contracted for SPUNK at Court, and as much as I love working with Sean I couldn't pass up the project that I was already working on. so The Hypocrites were kind enough to agree to let me design it ALONGSIDE the wonderful Maria DaFabo, who's been the prop guru on several shows I've done with them over the last few years. She's great! and for some reason thought it a fun chance to also sit in the designer's seat. So we've been in close contact all along, but she's the one actually see the show through "on the ground" as it were.

 The other oddity is that we're doing it in the basement space at the Chopin Theatre. It's a ... challenging space to work in for many reasons... It has a set of 6 columns in the space that break it up and are NOT removeable, forcing interesting staging choices be made. The ceiling of the space slopes from about 10 feet at the entrance to closer to 8' at the back of the space. The floor is concrete and cannot be painted... let's just say there are a lot of restrictions.

In our discussions, Sean wanted a space that evoked a hospital as there are two nurses that are "thru-lines" by being present in all 7 plays. and he wanted a space where the audience was ENVELOPED in the action, not just separate viewers... so to that end. we created a space where the audience will enter in thru the flipping double doors that are used throughout the show... they'll have to go up a couple steps and thru the doors before going down a couple steps into the "house" on either side of the 14'-side walkway that is the main playing area that runs the full length of the room. Instead of chairs, the audience will be seated on padded benches that are tiled in a  similar way to the way the walls of the "hospital" are.  The colors are the blue, white and red that were common in American hospitals in the 1950s. There are traps in the floor that allow access to action and characters unseen.

here's what the audience will see when they walk in thru the doors....

and here's looking across the playing space. you can see the columns and even the director in the middle left of the pic.

the set's still under construction... but note that the lighting designer has put fluorescent lights all over the stage space

and here's the main entrance wall... you see the double doors the audience enters thru.

I'll take some panoramic shots at  some point to share....

up next ? Two shows at once!!

but I'll post separately about them...

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.

The IMPORTANCE of a LIGHTING DESIGNER

As the SENSE tech has moved on, I've been particularly impressed by how the lighting designer, Brian Lillienthal has managed to eke out such distinctive and meaningful looks and feelings for the multitude of locations. As stated previously, there are over 50 scenes in this adaptation, and a number of them involve people walking out of doors. Brian has been quite masterful as giving such an array of colors and feelings to the world, here are a few of my favorite shots that explicate his arsenal...

The necessity for flexibility of time/mood/location with lighting is one of the reasons that we worked hard to create a set that had a degree of subtlety to the color... the grays and ecrus, and lavenders that make up the rather subtle paint treatment. Had we gone with bolder color choices, Brian would have been hard-pressed to create such an array. I try really hard to think about how a lighting designer's needs fit into the equation. In this project it was difficult, as Actors Theatre wanted me to simply adapt my Northlight design for their space, which cut out a lot of the process conversation that normally happens. Brian was constantly playing catch-up to the rest of us who had done the show together before... in many ways it put him in a difficult spot, but I'm so glad and impressed that he came through with such stunning work.

Coming back to ATL has been a pleasure and an honor. I'd NEVER thought that I'd ever really design on the mainstage here, much less be designing for Jon Jory doing the first big show of the season. I'm a lucky designer (and even luckier that my wife puts up with the insanity that has been my professional world this summer)! I'll let the final image of SENSE end this post....

RETURNING HOME

SENSE AND SENSIILITY August 28, 2011

THE STORY

Based on the novel by Jane Austen, SENSE is the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Their father has recently died, which makes their situation dire, as his estate must pass to their elder half-brother, John, leaving them virtually penniless. Before they leave Norland Park, Elinor meets Edward Ferrars, brother to her sister-in law, and they take a fancy to each other. A “situation” is found for the Dashwood family far away at Barton Park, the estate of a distant relation, the Middletons. Here, Marianne finds two suitors, the more reserved Col. Brandon and the impulsive Mr. Willoughby, to whom she’s particularly attracted due to his energy and evident passion for life. A friend, Mrs. Jennings, take the sisters to London for a visit, where it becomes known in a confidence to Elinor, that Edward is already secretly engaged. Meanwhile, at a society ball, Marianne discovers the inconstancy of her love, Mr. Willoughby. From Col. Brandon, Elinor learns that Willoughby is even more of a cad than was previously known. The downtrodden Marianne takes the news hard, and begins to become sick. News comes that Edward is being pressured by his family to forego his secret engagement in favor of a far wealthier woman, he refuses and is cut off from his family.  Col. Braondon knowing this offers him a position at a parsonage, which he accepts. Their visit ended, they begin the journey from London back to Barton, where Marianne falls dangerously ill and takes to bed. Col. Brandon aids at her bedside, and Marianne slowly recovers. Being somewhat humbled by the news of her Willoughby, and touched by the care he gave her during her illness, a new love begins to blossom between Marianne and Brandon. Finally, Edward reappears to meet Elinor. His engagement broken he is free to offer his hand to Elinor, who rapturously accepts. Thus Elinor’s SENSE prevails, and Marianne’s SENSIBILITY finds a sturdier base, with two couples about to be wed.

THE TEAM

Jane Austen’s SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Adapted and directed by Jon Jory

Scenic Design: yours truly

Costume Design: Rachel Laritz

Lighting Design: Brian Lillienthal

Composer/Sound Design: Joe Cerqua

I originally designed this show at Northlight Theatre in Chicago back in March of this year. It was picked-up by Actors Theatre of Louisville to begin their new season. It’s been interesting and exciting for a number of reasons… First, to get another stab at a show is somewhat of a rarity… It allowed me the chance to fix a few things that I wasn’t happy with about the Northlight production… small things, actually, things probably completely unseen by other people, but things I’m glad to correct, nonetheless. Secondly, it gave me a chance to “go home” to Louisville, where I worked for 4 years in the late 90s as the Resident Assistant Scenic Designer under Paul Owen, who was a major influence on the designer I’ve become. There’s something just downright EXCITING about coming back here and designing a show on the mainstage, with Jon Jory directing, of all people. Makes me feel like a grown-up!

The design of the show is somewhat abstract, and I would even call it a “colorist” approach. Colorism being a phase of stage design history particularly popular in the 70s and 80s, which began in Europe, in which a limited color palette was utilized for a large space, allowing lighting and usage of the stage space to delineate location and time.

Jon and I went through nearly 30 (ad I’m not hyperbolizing here) different initial sketches for the Northlight production. Playing with different themes, ideas and spatial usage.  Here are some of the rejected VERY rough sketches…

We kept coming back to some elements (like the benches and the door) and those ended up in the final design, but in different locations/perspectives than in these. We also had to deal with the very REAL limitations of the Northlight space and budget, which also weeded out some ideas. The design contains a large, tall wall with an off-center hole, an “inner circle” which contains a doorway and two small ottomans and an “outer ring” which contains three long benches.  

Within the abstraction though, there is meaning. The circle motif runs throughout… the hole in the wall, the inner circle on the floor, the curved crown molding overhead… for me they represent the movement of the piece… there are over 50 scenes, some of which are no longer than a handful of lines, and while we couldn’t possibly REALISTICALLY represent each one, each is made individual by how the space is used, how the lighting bring the scope of the scene IN or OUT, and what parts of the PERMANENT set are used… furniture glides in and out by actors carrying things on and off, and it gives the whole performance a feeling of being a circular dance, or gavotte.  More later!

but first, here's a quick pic of the LOUISVILLE production in tech...

a shout out to the crew

THE STUDENT PRINCE - August 16, 2011

THE STORY

In The Student Prince, a young affable prince has been betrothed since childhood for a politically-sensitive marriage to a young Princess not of his choosing. But at the top of the show he is on his way to college for a year at Heidelberg, where his old tutor/favorite friend went. Of course, he immediately falls in love with a virtuous and beautiful barmaid at the inn where he is staying. Thus ends act 1. In act 2, his studies (and love life) are interrupted with news that the king has taken ill, and he must return home to the castle at Karlsberg immediately. He wants to elope with Kathe, but realizes that his duty is to country and he, regretful, returns home, promising to write her daily. In the first scene of act 3, the formal betrothal ceremony takes place, but just prior, he realizes that his 'handlers' have interrupted all his letters to Kathe, and hers to him. After the ceremony his reverie about his time in Heidelberg causes his to run away to see Kathe again. The final scene is back outside the inn, the Princess arrives to meet Kathe, and they realize that they are not such different people.  The Prince finds Kathe and explains how they've been misled, but Kathe is resolute that they are of two separate worlds, but is heartened by the fact that their time together did indeed mean as much to him as it did to her. Kathe takes her tearful leave of her Prince, and the curtain falls as the Princess and the Prince take each others' hands and begin walking away from the Inn, toward their new life as the King and Queen.

THE TEAM

THE STUDENT PRINCE by Sigmund Romberg

Produced by Light Opera Works -- Evanston, IL

at Cahn Auditorium, campus of Northwestern University

Director/Choreographer: Rudy Hogenmiller

Scenic Design: yours truly

Costume Design: Jeff Hendry

Lighting Design: Andrew Meyers

A  CREW IS A WONDERFUL THING!

they are (typically, and HOPEFULLY) quick, quiet, exacting, and ideally COMPLETELY unseen by the audience, but without them we 'd be in SUCH trouble. Especially in a multi-locational operetta like STUDENT PRINCE.  Here's a pic to show what they are up to BEFORE the show to help get things set up.

 You'll note people milling about the cyc (that the sky-type piece of fabric at the back of the stage).

For this show there are some rather quick and exacting changes the set must make, and those are planned for and rehearsed during tech. For this show there are shifts of set pieces, flying pieces of scenery, furniture and properties that have to get placed. 

In designing such a set, it often takes a lot of time and LOTS of redrawing to figure out exactly where everything CAN fit together. For this show, there are several moving pieces of scenery backstage that have to fit offstage, AND fit properly in their place onstage. It can be a logistical challenge to put it all together, very much like the spatial-relationship puzzles we all did in grade school, but that's part of the challenge I love in this job... the technical marrying with the artistic. 

And here's a picture of "outside the Inn Of The Three Golden Apples" near the University of Heidelberg.

The other thing that is of interest, I think, in this design is the multiplicity of scenic usage. The exterior part of the Inn (seen in act 1 and act 3, scene 2) is built on castors and in revolving become part of the Princes upstairs suite of rooms for act 2 (pic below).  

Pardon the long delay in ROCKLAND post #2.. quixotic internet access at the Rozsa Center and life intervening got in the way, hopefully I'll catch up while here in Louisville...

I'm finally including pictures of the ROCKLAND set in this post. yippee!

The set: There are a number of locations required in the text… outside the mine, in town, at the temperance hall, in churches, a couple homes, and the mine office, etcetera. So in early conversations with the director, we decided on a UNIT-SET* approach.

·      - a UNIT-SET is one where the space is designed in such a way that it can be used as different locations easily with changes in lighting and props/furniture, and directorial usage. Typically it includes multiple entrance possibilities, and often includes different platform levels. Shakespeare plays are often done on unit sets, as there are always multiple shifts in location. From a producer’s perspective, they’re also useful as they can be cheaper than trying to detail multiple realistic locations that would require lots of mechanics to shift scenery on and offstage. From my point of view, these are often fun to design, as they require me think a little more abstractly about space.

For this show, Jussi, the director, and I looked at  a lot of mine-related architecture, including a lot of pictures of the original Rockland mine, which has now been completely dismantled and of which no remnants remain.

There are two predominant visual textures in the set, patinated copper and rough-hewn, aged wood, (in this cast most of it is pine pulled from a 75-year old demolished barn about 30 miles from Houghton, MI, where we were doing the show). Thematically, these two materials are incredibly important and speak to the time and story. The COPPER is what was being mined, and as such the center of the greedy businessmen who ran the mine with little thought for the workers, and the wood was used to hold the beams and create the support structure that keep the mines nominally safe. In the design we used these "real" textures in abstract ways...i.e. the COPPER was used to delineate the hills/mountains into which the workers bored to obtain it. These "mountains" are made to resemble copper plates riveted together, and then painted so that the plates appear to have aged in differing stages... the "deeper" the plate, the more corroded and patinated with verdant green, the "more recently added" plates are less patinated. Jussi and I really loved the way that copper, as it ages and gathers patina, grows greener and more vibrant.

The ROUGH-HEWN WOOD was used to frame the mine entrance into the mountainside as well as for the silhouette of the mine-shaft building upstage left, and the false-proscenium (that regrettably doesn't photograph very well in my pictures from the show). 

scene 2  - the party at the White Rose Temperance Hall

scene 8 - at Johanna's dinner table

act 2 scene 1 - the local saloon

in these three pictures, I hope you can see the difference that a UNIT SET can utilize to help tell a story. simply by moving people about in different traffic patterns, adding (or subtracting tables, chairs and stools), and different lighting, the focus changes and the FEELING of the space is different... the Temperance Hall is bright and airy, Johanna's dining room feels small and confined, and the sallon has a different energy about it.