Sidewalk Nuts

So much depends on nuts in the sidewalk . . .

Last Friday I was in Houston for business. I passed a patch of sidewalk full of nuts and bolts—literally. Embedded in the cement. (Picture shows only a small portion.)

Why? Don't know. How? Couldn't say. Purposeful or random? Not sure. Interesting? Definitely.

Aida Time

rendering (with swatches) for guard

shirt prototype—love seeing the vision take shape

Well, it's time I started posting more things about Aida, the 2014 monster opera I'm working on. This project is huge, and I've already been designing costumes for about a year.

Progress is being made, however. Lots of fabric was bought last summer (lots but not all; stay tuned—another fabric buying trip to come!), and now several prototypes and actual garments are being draped. Great work being down by our costume department!

Saturday AM Mossy Wall

Saw this stone wall while out on a Saturday Morning Stegall Family Fun Run (our first but hopefully not our last). Loved the greens and greys and blues as well as the mosses and all of the irregularly shaped stones. Notice the small fern-like plants poking through some of the crevices.

Nifty Fifties

kitchen/living room—plastic plant, linoleum, perfect!

kitchen—enjoyed picking wallpaper, coffee pot, toaster,
breadbox, kitschy knick-knacks, etc.

living room—note the working 50s television

These are set shots for a show I'm directing entitled Break the Knot. The play is set in 1959. I did the scene design about 6 years ago, and I still like it. (Note the ghosted image of the year on the cabinets—we're working on getting that tweaked and onto the stage right cabinets.) The pictures don't do the 50s aqua colored cabinets and frig justice. I searched flea markets and antique shops from Greenville to St. Louis. My kids still talk about a road trip on which we packed nearly every square inch of our SUV with kitschy stuff—frames, vases, telephone, lamps, dishes, canisters, pictures, a vintage typewrite, etc., etc. I don't do semi-realism often, but when I do, it sure satisfies my junk itch.

The show is tonight (1/31/13) at 7:00 and 8:30. It runs just under an hour with no intermission.

Who Knew?

Who knew that teabags could make such a great visual? Saw this display at an Anthropology store a while back and decided to post for inspiration. Style on the cheap. This could be done even on a schoolteacher's budget.

Imagine a garment out of these. . . .

But don't even think about where they've been. They're all unused and perfectly sterile, I'm sure.

Chevrons

—a wall of chevroned frame samples at a local frame shop

—chevrons in various architectural applications: arches, floors, doors, walls (those are thin, stacked stones, I think), streets/sidewalks

Maybe I'll look into this further as I continue to do research for the 2014 Aida I'm working on.

Design Everywhere

A really great grate

Grate close-up

I'm always on the lookout for design inspiration. In fact, I drive my wife crazy asking her to take pictures  with her iPhone of moss, rocks, tree bark, gates, fences, and brick everywhere we go.

I love the verdegris patina on this grate set in cement against a cement/plaster wall. The dirt/mold patterns are interesting, too, and are good references for when something on a set needs to be "grunged." Grit is so interesting.

Grand Design

Jackson Forrest Eoute

My dear friends Philip (Edward IV and Richmond in the recent production of Richard III: The Terrible Reign) and Nikki Eoute had a baby boy on Sunday night. His name is Jackson Forrest. (Now, that's a name you can yell out the back door when it's supper time.) I've enjoyed pointing out that his monogrammed initials can spell "JEF," after me, no doubt. And, who knows, Jackson might  end up playing the dane in my not-so-upcoming 2042 production of Hamlet. (Lord willing, I'll turn a mere 80 that year.)

Jackson's birth got me thinking about what a great God we have. Talk about great design! What a miracle a baby is!

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13)

Divided York and Lancaster

Richmond (Philip Eoute), our hero, prays before battle.

We're using a lot of plastic in this production—another way in which I'm trying to bring a modern element to Richard's world. I've already posted about the grey "corrugated" plastic sheets that I chose for some of the doors on the set. (See "Enter KING RICHARD" post from September 26.)

There's also a fair amount of white-ish opaque plastic sheeting used. Here's the thought: Richard is such a bloody person that he needs his surroundings to be able to be cleaned easily and frequently. The plastic is so clinical, sterile (in the sense of barren/unfruitful), slick, cheap, fake—all words that describe Richard and his reign.

The curtains/dividers of plastic are drawn to create different locales of the play. In the previous (November 5 post), you can see an entire room of plastic behind the throne.

Here's another thing about plastic. It glows. Enough said.

Lights Burn Blue

Behind the curtain at the stage manager's
desk from which he calls the show

Today is all-day dry tech. That's theatrespeak for a technical rehearsal with no actors present. Basically, I sit at the director's desk about mid-way back in the house with the lighting designer (Rich Streeter) and the stage manager (Tim Endean), and together we set levels and timings (how long a sound or light fade will be, where it will come in the script, etc.) for the whole show. Rich (and later sound designer Bob Johansen) comes with his best ideas, and then I tweak/readjust/edit so that the show looks, sounds, and feels the way I think it should.

Richard III: The Terrible Reign is fairly tech-heavy. Lots of exact timings on lights, doors opening and closing, spooky music, clanging, and so on. There is give-and-take and lots of collaboration. It's a ton of stress (the first three scenes today took three hours), but it's the first time the show begins to really look like a show. I love it.

Deep-Revolving Witty Buckingham

Design Rule #1: Make your producer look good.

I am very happy to have as part of this year's (might I say epic?) cast the show's producer, Dr. Darren Lawson. You may know that Darren is the Dean of Fine Arts and Communication at Bob Jones University, but did you know that Darren and I shared an apartment in grad school in the 80s? We have that special bond that comes only from having had another apartment mate who occupied our common living room every Saturday afternoon watching WWF. (That's pro wrestling for you unsophisticated folks.) But I digress.

Darren is playing the part of the Duke of Buckingham (Richard III's cousin) in our production. He has been relentless (in a good way) about trying to nail down who his character is and how his character changes throughout the story. 

In real life, as a husband, father (of a Bruin soccer goalie), and dean, Darren wears many hats. I'm so glad he decided to put on Buckingham's hat for this production. 

(No, Barb, I'm not adding an extra hat.)

Made Glorious

One of Richard's costumes has this great golden shoulder guard.

Richard III's opening speech is wonderful example of Shakespeare's command of the blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) poetic form. Here's an example with some paraphrase from me in italics after both couplets.

    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

Finally! This horrible patch of tough luck the York family's had
Is turned around because my brother's [with a play on the homonyms sun/son] in control;

    And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

And all the bad stuff that's happened to us
Is far away and done with.

The speech goes on to explain that even though things are looking up for Richard, he's still not satisfied and will set his brothers Edward and Clarence against each other in order to seize the throne for himself. What a guy. He ends the 41-line speech with the following—

    Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.

And so the story begins. . . .

Look to See a Troublous World

Philip (center) gives instruction
to one of the camera operators.

My good friend Philip Eoute and a team from the video productions department is working on a trailer for the Richard III: The Terrible Reign project. I don't want to give too much away, but they did some filming today, and it is looking exciting—metal stairs, those great IKEA lights (see previous post), a huge sliding door, lots of fog and great camera angles. Can't wait to see the finished product, which may be available for viewing some time next week if all goes well.