Braining Yourself

Happy New Year! It’s now design crunch time in Follies Land. (Kinda reminds you of Candy Land, doesn’t it?) Brains are working overtime.

Technical artists are hovered over their desks. They are drafting set drawings and footprints, makeup plots for each actor, costume drawings of Dresden dolls, 18^th century French romantic cavaliers and Marie-Antoinette-ish models of love’s idylls. And showgirls and ghosts, of course, are in the design mix – headdresses too. Property and set dressing inventories are being created and scouring for these items will start. Drawing the line between what’s part of the set build and what belongs to set dressing, what’s a personal prop vs. part of a costume, and where hair ends, makeup begins, and headdresses continue is all being worked out and worked on.

It’s the time when ideas are finally crystallized and the formation of creative thoughts and dreams gets set into cold reality. It’s also the time when communication among artists is really important. The members of a design team – and right now it’s this one – have to avoid ‘silo-ing’ themselves. That can be hard. The artist wants to create without outside constraint and yet the very nature of theater and putting all the design elements together requires collaboration. And collaborating may lead to compromise on some things. Ideally, designs will be great and they will hang together without effort. I’ve not seen that happen. They hang together because of inspired work, communication and collaboration.

How many times have we seen an incredibly built and designed realistic set that is not at all used by director in the staging of the show? Or a lighting design that is murky and dark in a light-hearted comedy. I’m not saying these can’t work if there is theme or message that needs to be stressed, but these things often happen because designers leading the production have not talked or agreed on a common direction. Collaborating is tough and requires communication.

So I met with Jared, the set designer, and Hal, the lighting designer, this past week to look at the current draft of the set design. Jared is really creative and has conceptualized some really cool ideas – a couple of them are ‘scathingly brilliant.’ He went in a direction on few ideas that were different from where I am, so I’m relooking at the entire blocking/choreography of the show this weekend and seeing how it would work. We’re meeting again next week to walk through the show and to look at the current set design’s strengths and weaknesses. With this in mind, we’ll determine what the next iteration should be. This is a lot of work for me this weekend and I’ve cleared my schedule to do this. Jared’s drawn several pictures of the set – it looks really cool, as well as crafting a scale model. I’ll post the pictures when we’ve fleshed the concept out more, if it’s ok with him.

The set of Follies focuses on two major looks – the broken down theater for most of the show and the ‘Loveland’ sequence where the theater comes back to life to present the ‘follies’ of Buddy, Ben, Phyllis, and Sally. Creating a real look of a broken down theater sounds like a simple thing to do, but doing that so that the theater mess looks haphazard (and yet isn’t), that there is a reunion party taking place, ghosts and memories because of their nature can come and go pretty much anywhere, intimate conversations in the middle of the party can be felt and heard, and party dancing can morph into productions numbers is a multi-dimensional challenge. Having the broken down theater transform in 16 bars of music into a quality vaudeville set of yesteryear that fills the stage, and then, after Ben’s breakdown, having it deconstruct to what it was is quite a challenge. On top of that, the vaudeville look from set and painting to costumes to lights must meld into that musical theater, polished look. Creativity and collaboration for these designers must occur to make this happen.

Kevin, the costume designer, is focused like a laser on the look, having drawn and re-drawn sketches for the chorus girls in “Who’s that Woman?” and the showgirls (who get to wear incredible feather headdresses) to make them look just the way he envisions them, judiciously selecting fabric and cut. Of course, Kevin got most of the cast measurements in December so knowing those details will help move the design and build forward. Digital pictures of the actors are serving as the basis for Bette, and Avery to create the makeup and hair design. The day is coming where we’ll be using computer-aided design software to morph the look of an actor, applying different makeup foundation, highlights and hair design and wigs. Right now, it’s by hand.

Kate, props and set dressing designer, and I meet this weekend to pound out details. Real food props are in this show, among other things. Sam and Linda are tasked with a special blocking assignment that focuses on the party-goers in the first act. J. Michael, Leah, and I need to work out the discrepancy between the score and script in the scene where chaos ensues after Ben’s breakdown. Funny how the score does one thing while the script does another – how many times have I seen that with older scores and scripts…. (Don’t ever look at the script, vocal parts, and score to Peter Pan unless you want a migraine.)

Besides that, I’m working my brain, too, during these days before rehearsal starts. I’m re-working choreography to fit the skills of the cast. The biggest brain challenge, however, is taking this sizable cast and its conflicts, and working them into a schedule that 1) allots the necessary amount of time to stage a scene or numbers, 2) minimizes the impact of absences of actors to fellow actors, 3) makes certain that actors who must develop relationships have the time in rehearsal to do this, 4) does not short change teaching the music, dance, or drama in a scene, and 5) ensures that show is built in a way that allows it to be stitched together so it gets up in the fastest time possible.

I think it’s like playing three-dimensional chess – every time you make a move, it impacts other moves on multiple layers. I’ve been knocking around rehearsal rescheduling for a few weeks and still am not satisfied with the revised schedule. This is one of those things that is not much fun that a director (or in some cases, the stage manager) must do in order to do their job. It’s the equivalent to practicing scales in music or doing plies in dance. They are not fun, but they are necessary to do in order to move on to the more enjoyable tasks. If you do it incorrectly, you’ll suffer the consequences.

Even after a revised schedule is finally determined, I’ve never led a production that did not have to have the entire schedule revamped about half way through anyway. Certain things take longer to do, others take shorter time, and new obstacles appear that could not have been known that affect the timeline and schedule.

Time – it’s our enemy now. Tick-tock, tick-tock until April 17.

For additional information about the production itself, go to The Arlington Players website: www.thearlingtonplayers.org.

If you have questions for the director, feel free to respond to the blog or email him at folliesdirector@gmail.com. Responses to the blog may be posted publicly; email correspondence will be private.