(Above) The Life of Galileo (2005); James Wolk design.  The "fun part" of executing show floors for the Shakes was that for the first years I wasn't always possible to put all the needed sheet goods on the paint deck.  This one just barely fit, which was good, 'cause scribing a lot of concentric circles needs to be done all at once.{2}

     (Below) The Cherry Orchard (2005); Marion Williams design.  This was done with -- well I don't recall any longer how many hand-twisted cherry blossoms were estimated, but it was thousands.  No, that wasn't my problem to deal with (though I did twist up a few just, y'know, out of solidarity or something).  They were applied to real branches in a series of foot deep portals, with an independent set upstage {2}.

     If this looks vaguely familiar, a photo call image from this production appeared on the cover of American Theatre for a feature story about the company's artistic director, Bonnie Monte.

     Utilizing the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid!) for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (2006) Michael Schweikardt design (above and at left).  Well, relatively simple, anyway.  It's just a stage floor and some footlights, right?  Yeah, except that the flooring wanted to look worn out, so I applied fire (burn-and-brush) to age it and the footlights had to be built.  Also, the barrels had to be built to incorporate a hatch on the bottom to the trap room so they could do a "clown car" gag of a lot of characters emerging from them.  They were made of foam on a plywood structure then wrapped in muslin.

     The nice thing about the burn-'n'-brush on the wood floor was all I needed to do to it after was seal it.  Schweikardt really liked the finished effect.  The best note from a designer?  "Yeah,  I like that, that's good."  Go home! {2}

     A Christmas Carol (2007); James Wolk design (above and at right).  A "brick" portal, a half-dozen tall hanging "shop fronts" to track back and forth, and several independent units that just slid across vinyl dance flooring, made for a variety of locations in a small stage space.  The shop front flats (as above) were low-dimensional, some with window boxes dressed to indicate what sort of retailer purveyed wares therein,  like toys, sweets, or meats.  Their tracking allowed them to appear in different locations to show different streets.  The pieces that made up Scrooge's house (at right) were two-sided, to reveal interior or exterior depending on the need of the scene.

     The Christmas Carol "deep dive" page has more concerning parts of this show.

     The Time of Your Life (2007); James Wolk design (above and following).  Set in a bar in San Francisco, circa 1937, it was a lot of work but wound up being one of my favorite shows to have done, and also to sit and watch.  The most frustrating part of the build was "that hotel room" portion of the set, which would, the stage manager told us, be used for a scene that lasted four minutes, thirty-two seconds.  What?!

Well, as it happened, it worked pretty well.  The center of the main set -- the bar and back bar -- was on a revolve which was spun about to reveal the hotel room (below).

     As so often happens, the wallpaper pattern desired was not something one could just purchase -- oh no! -- so it was generated with a very large stencil through which I applied the pattern color with a Binks type paint sprayer.  I also supplied the framed NRA Eagle artwork, something I had done on a whim years before.  That's the National Recovery Administration, if you're wondering.

     Budget concerns had the TD looking for low-cost alternatives for the wall covering, and he found that he could buy more than enough large format printer paper by the roll for very little money.  Looking at the width of the paper versus the width of the flats, I advised that the paper be left loose where it would bridge between wall joints, rather than cut along the edge of a flat.  After the walls were assembled for load-in, the loose paper was only then glued down, which effectively masked all the joints.

     That did mean we had to pay attention to how we loaded the flats on the truck.

     The Play's The Thing (2007); Jesse Dreikosen design. (above and at right {3} ).  The drop, I thought, really was just "O.K." when I finished it and hung it up over the paint deck for the above photo.  But installed and under lights, everyone just loved it!  So I guess it turned out?  Though not evident in these images, many of the windows in the town's buildings were left translucent so they could be illuminated during night time scenes.

     King Lear (2008); Marion Williams design (above). The impulse behind the design was  the setting  might have been set in a time in the remote past, or in some far-flung future, but when-ever it was (or was to be) it was blasted.  I felt blasted by the time it loaded in, and more-so by the time it opened.  It's a whole lot o' foam, plaster, Sculpt-Or-Coat, and lots of glazes.  The construction consideration was that much of it had to be "walkable," so all the way down to the venue floor at the front, up and down the steps on the hillock up right, out on the ledge, and back through the hill in a cave.  More about this on "the Season from Hell" page.

     Private Lives (2008); James Wolk design (above and at right).  This set was two-faced, literally.  At right are the balconies of a hotel in Paris.  The wall split in half, and the two parts not only rotated, but switched sides of the stage to become the interior of a Paris apartment, as seen above, with an additional unit carrying the large window and piano.  The first time this change was attempted, it took the stage hands almost forty-five minutes.  They got it down to eleven, which is damn impressive.  Just for the record: as noted I have done some carpentry projects at odd intervals, so I will direct your attention to the brackets under the balconies: they're "Jake Built," thank you very much.

     More about the drop is on "the Season from Hell" page.

     The Grapes of Wrath (2009); Marion Williams design (above).  Designer Williams remarked to me that when-ever she got a Depression-era play to design, she always did "barn wood" and dirt.  Well, we got that here, plus, though not visible in this shot, part of the show deck hinged back to reveal a river trough, which had a rain effect immediately above it, the water for both circulating.  What do you get when you mix water and dirt?  Mud.  It wasn't really on the stage, but under the show deck?  Wow!  The stinkiest strike ever, as seeped water combined with heat and dust to make for a noisome batch of decaying sheet goods.  

     The telephone poles were shop built of -- I don't remember from what --  in forced perspective, and I applied a thick texture treatment to mimic weather-beaten old pine.  I had several real power poles just outside the shop to look at for reference.

     More on "That Truck" on its own page.

     The School for Wives (2009); John Hobie design (above, at right and below).  In keeping with the era of its writing, the director wanted the production to have the feeling of an old wing-and-drop style setting.  The model shot at right shows nearly what was rendered as final, and indeed, the shop constructed a series of portals that were painted with a loose foliage effect.

     The treatment on the house flats were done with a feather duster, a painting technique that one summer intern remarked was "the silliest thing" she'd ever done in paint.  

     The interns and I spent a fair amount of time doing leafy-ness on those portals, some of which can be seen below.

     This was also one of the times (fortunately few in number) when what the designer wanted and what I thought he was indicating he wanted were kinda' two different things, so he wound up directing the painting of the lower flagstone effect himself.  Sorry John.

     Timon of Athens (2011); Brian Ruggaber design (above and at right).  With costumes and some set elements inspired by "Steampunk," and utilizing a lot of donated cardboard and newspaper, Timon wound up being effective, if a little strange.  As Timon finds his social status falling, all the pretty stuff disappears, and he's eventually surrounded by literal shreds of the stuff that a culture is built on.

     One afternoon at the shop, I and a crew of acting apprentices sprayed several hundreds of single, unfolded sheets of newspaper, spread all over the floor, with fire retardant.   I bought them ice cream after; seemed only fair.

     The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (2011); Michael Schweikardt design (above and following). Basically a box set, but with a few elements that change the setting from one floor of an office building to another.  Note the drop seen through the windows: a roll drop, it shifted the apparent perspective on a building nominally across the street, while file cabinets and other furniture pieces changed places for the scene shift.  The tile floor is also all just paint.  As much as we'd have wanted to do individual tiles pieces -- well, yeah, not so much.  Kudos to the interns who painted inside the lines on that one!

     Most of the drop (right) was executed by the interns that summer, too.  It turned out very nicely considering that none of them had done a drop like this before!  More applause.

     There's more on Timon on the Other Things page.

PURDUE THEATRE

Photos: R. Jake Wood and {2} Paul Bradley; {3} Jerry Goodstein