Right out of the gate, 2008 took the air.  The design for the first show was late, too big, too expensive, and waiting for revisions put the build too far behind.  We were loading in and painting while the LD was wandering around stage doing focus.  Thankfully, he was cool with it.  After that, the ball just kept on keeping on.  By the time we got to the third production, on STNJ's Outdoor Stage venue, the build had progressed to the point where the structures could load in -- but I hadn't painted them.  Scenic charge's nightmare?  Pretty much.

     The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged (2008); Charlie Calvert design (above, the paint job finally begins, and below, when I finally walked away from it).  It's not that I didn't like the look, but getting there?  While it was "up?"  Yikes.  The idea was it showed ol' Billy Shakespeare's desktop on some night when he got frustrated writing Hamlet, got drunk, passed out, and had bad dreams -- the dreams being the show the audience sees, while Billy is presumably sleeping it off on the floor.

     The book stack stage left was climbable, while four stage right were open-backed, allowing access to a "Laugh-In" style door in the third book in from the right.  The very large quill was movable.  As we were all busy with this right up until the last moment, or nearly, the carps didn't get to start on the next show until late -- so the ball kept rolling.  Oy vey did it.

    At right: the model for King Lear, the show that followed Complete Works in the shop.  Marion Williams had delivered the model while I was still working on the outdoor stage, and bless their hearts the carps had done their best before I got back, but still --

     The only upside to this was that I finally got to live up to the old maxim "Measure it with calipers, mark it with chalk, and cut it with a chainsaw: that's good enough for government work!"  

     After a little discussion about how this whole thing would fall out in the build schedule, the TD started bringing in overhire scenics.  By the third day of working, I was supervising three carpenters and dozen extra scenics, all jammed into my tiny paint area where the forestage construct was the first portion to get work (following).

     Part of the time was taken just building up high enough to start carving the contours and there were a lot of contours.  So it was a lot of foam.  We ran through the initial order of foam the first week, as well as 3M Spray 78 (78 right?  the stuff that doesn't eat foam) and Great Stuff, both of which products were ordered by 12 unit, case quantity from McMaster-Carr.  

     After the forestage was carved and coated (muslin dipped in carpenter's glue) we moved on to the unit that had been dubbed "Pride Rock" (above).  The director and the designer hated that name, but it stuck in the shop!  Anyway, we needed the levity, and imagining Simba up there roaring across the African Veldt was a good image.  This took another truck load of foam, and while there was a wooden substructure underneath, most of what you can see here is just foam.  A whole lotta' foam.  Too much foam!

     As noted on the main Shakespeare page, this, like the forestage pieces, needed to be walkable: steps were carved leading up to the platform from stage right, and back down on the stage left side, plus the platform itself was cantilevered to allow walking out to the end.

     Sawzalls, angle grinders with wire brushes, curry combs, knives, were all employed to achieve the proper contouring.  I think we went through 100 gallons of glue (I don't know how many yards of muslin) and a gross each of adhesive and Great Stuff.  Before we were done, we were assembling the last little bit of set from all those off-cuts, cementing them together with the Great Stuff, then carving into the "Frankenstein" conglomeration.

     Yes, that "piano lid" in the middle of the forestage was walkable, too, in fact figuring into the action when some character dropped things into a pool of water just below the tip at center.  

     When we got to load-in,  the carps and six of the scenics went along with the truck while we kept working on other things.  The forestage went in, followed by Pride Rock, then a bordering hummock that can be just glimpsed up stage and to stage left running behind the proscenium.

     Shortly after load-in, most of the overhire was left off (money anyone?) but a couple were kept while we kept on finishing and painting at night, even while rehearsals were happening during the day. Pride Rock and the forestage pieces were wedded to the the flat center floor with plaster ('cause it dried, while the Sculpt-Or-Coat just wouldn't), and the production manager had the house electrician set some old fashioned par cans pointed at the stage to literally throw heat on things while we worked.  It helped.

     If I remember right, we went from "wood" to "done" in 21 straight days, 21 very long days (Come early!  Stay late!  No days off!) though "done" was the night before opening night, and, yep, there were three of us still there on that last night, until about 4AM, putting the very last of the treatments on things -- like the table, and the gate at the cave mouth.

     The only thing I didn't have a hand on was the drop.  Someone asked early enough if the drop could be done in-house, and I said "No way.  It's too big and we won't have time."  So that got jobbed out.

                                                                Just for comparison: the model (at left) and the set (at right).

     Once upon a time I had a photo of me sitting on this set with the caption "I went to college for this?"  I also had photos of the shop after the show opened -- what a mess!  In spite of daily cleaning, there was just so much stuff that had floated around that getting all of it was impossible.  We all spent a couple of days just getting the shop back to a usable state, and then I spent another three days washing buckets.  Then we moved on to Private Lives.  Right? Yeah, that's right.  Right?

     Anyway: Private Lives!

     As previously noted, these walls did the "do-si-do" during intermission, switching from exterior hotel, to interior flat.  Up center fitted a unit that carried the steps, piano, and window (as seen above) as well as a door to a kitchen and a private elevator (below, on the stage right side of the window.)

     I didn't have to deal with the artwork on the walls -- that was a props problem (they printed them) -- but the floor, the walls, the doors -- yeah, everything else, that was mine.  After getting a low texture on the walls (we had Sculpt-Or-Coat left over from Lear) they got a Ralph Lauren red from Home Depot.

     Moving on to the drop was really a relief by the time I got 'round to it.  The shop was emptying out for load-in, and I had the place almost all to myself.  Certainly I had it to myself after 6PM.  But, hey! Drop!  I understand drop!  It just stays on the paint deck, and doesn't do anything!  No carving!  No foam dust!  No texture!  Just coffee, muslin, starch, and paint.  

     The desired effect was for the drop to act through day- and nighttime scenes (as illustrated in the respective renderings above) so the sky and several of the windows were wanted to remain translucent for backlighting.  The view over the roofs of Paris then was opaqued below the horizon, and sprayed above.

     Not too long before, someone had donated some old house paint, and I picked a likely color to base out the buildings.

                             All in all, I think it worked well.

     We finished with The Winter's Tale (yep "Exit, pursued by a bear"!), Brian Ruggaber design (above) {6}.  There was a little extra time, what with the Thanksgiving weekend in the schedule, Brian's design was on time, and it really wasn't all that much stuff to work on.  There were a few rigged elements that are not present in this image, but Brian was also a "good egg" and threw in on some of the work before tech.  Thanks Brian!  

     By the time we were building this, the carpentry staff had turned over, the props guy  had jumped for a gig in Manhattan and was replaced, but I was happy to not be "under the gun" any longer.  We even had one of those "team building" moments when the turntable chain slipped.  

     The disk just off center in the show deck had a chain drive from a motor located off-stage left, and one night during a preview something went wonky.  The carpenters, the production manager and his assistant,  the sound and lighting people, the props guy -- we all threw in on taking up the decking, pulling the platform, and then putting it all back when the chain was fixed.  Then we went home!  Yay!

     "Other Things" 

     Photos: R. Jake Wood and {6} Brian Ruggaber.