PUPPET HEAD ASSEMBLY

 Based on my initial sketch, I did these working technical drawings to scale. Sort of a Puppet Head Blueprint to work from so that everything fits together. I did a similar puppet character of Toulouse Lautrec for the Hip Pocket production of  VAN GOGH / GAUGUIN  in 1987, and although I'm using the same assembly techniques here, these puppets are in a slighly different scale and look. Basically I'm making the patterns up as I go along; adjusting and refining the fittings as they are being put together. ( So Far, So Good!)

 Here is the completed Head Assembly for the CARROT TOP puppet laid atop the technical drawing. The Eye Units shown in my last post have been securely epoxied to the upper head block and the lower mouth block is hinged with strong leather underneath.

The wooden ball will support the shoulder block allowing the head to rotate with a natural movement ( the Eye & Mouth strings pass through small holes drilled through this ball keeping them free to be operated without kinking ).

The wire armature built up around the eye unit will both protect the animation and serve as a support for the facial structure which will be added next in the construction. Looks a bit like a robot at this point, but you can see the personalitiy of the character begining to show up.

I use a 1/4" black bungee cord run through holes just behind the teeth to keep the mouth closed. I slight pressure of the thumb on the left side opens and closes the mouth. The finished lower lip will cover the teeth when the mouth is closed. Only a very small movement of the mouth is needed to give the illusion that the puppet is talking.

Standard black cord elastic is secured to the back bar between the eyes, keeping them in the open position. the right string pushed outward by the forefinger causes the eyes to close. This can be rehearsed to make very subtle shifts in the eyes for a natural look as the puppet speaks. I run the stringing through small plastic pipes for comfort on the puppeteer's fingers.

The puppeteer's hand operates just under the shoulder block and with subtle movements of the wrist the head can nod forward or swing side to side or tip backward while the body remains stationary. I think the simplest and most intuitive control mechanism is always best.

The stringing here is 15 pound test black nylon fishing line for the eyes and 25 pound vinyl coated tip up line for the mouth. The vinyl coating is best for strength as the mouth will be in almost constant movement. The Eyes move more smoothly with the standard fishing line.These strings are doubled and run through screw eyes mounted on the central support dowel. It is important to align these strings so that they encounter the least amount of friction as they are pushed and pulled during manipulation. All knots are tied multiple times and dotted with Duco Cement to prevent them unraveling.

This stringing and elastic should last a good long time. The eventual Head Back will be hinged to open so that the entire mechanism can be reached for easy repair if needed.

 [ NOTE: Always remember to design this ease of access to any working parts of your puppet. With strong initial construction it may never be needed, but if it isn't there you will be faced with having to rip open your lovely creation if you do need an eventual repair job. Any puppet designed for theatrical production must be able to be repaired inside and out as quickly and easily as possible without altering the appearance of the puppet in any way. I usually pick one puppeteer to be "Show Captain" which means that he or she is responsible for making sure the puppets are ready to go before the performance and are properly stored and repaired if necessary in between shows.]

Puppet Eye Mountings

So, with the wooden bases cut and in work, the eye mountings need to be prepared. I use coat hanger wire, mainly because it is what I have always used. Not so easy to come by in this modern age, though, so I am drawing from my stash. One thing every puppeteer learns pretty quickly is to SAVE everything that might even remotely be useful in building your puppets. I have been guilty of this for at least 40 years and some of my "stash" is that old, traveling with me from place to place and inevitably right there when I need it. ( if only I had had the forsight to hoard away some "Celastic" from back in the day, now that it is no longer available!)

Anyway, based on the concept sketch I bend and shape the wire to house the Eyes, using 1/4" plastic beads as spacers. The Up/Down eye animation requires a strong base which will be epoxy bonded to the wooden mouth base piece. The Side/Side animation has an "S" base with plastic tubing for height spacing, which will also be epoxied to the base. DON'T use Hot Glue for this...only 2 part Epoxy will be strong enough to bond the eye frames down to the wooden base so that they never shift or come loose. It is messy and smelly but totally worth the strength of the bond.

A glued rigid cross-piece between the Up/Down eyes keeps them level and able to animate. A loosely bent wire cross-piece between screw eyes on the Side/ Side eyes allows them to shift easily.

Next the whole Head Assembly comes together with Eyes that move and mouth's that talk!

Puppet Head Assembly with Patterns

 Once the eyes for the puppets have been prepared, the construction of a head assembly to house the eye and mouth animations, connected to a control device, must be accomplished. Sounds complicated and it is to a degree. This is the simplest and least labor intensive method I have been able to come up with.
Several parts must be cut from lightweight pine, glued and fastened together with through-holes drilled to allow the controlling cables to run smoothly. I mill my own wooden pieces to thickness using an ordinary table saw and then cut out the individual parts with the use of a fine electric scroll saw. (TIP: Don't skimp on good quality blades for the scroll saw and change the blade OFTEN. The tighter and sharper the blade, the truer the cuts, especially circles and rounded back cuts. Spend a bit more money and a bit more time and save yourself a lot of heartache!)

 Here is where a good set of preliminary sketches really pay off. Done correctly they act as blueprints to guide you through the process of creating patterns. I use a medium weight card and draw out each pattern, cutting this out with Xacto knife and scissors and checking for fit against the sketches before starting to cut any of the wooden parts.

 Here the control handle with central support dowel and lateral finger-control dowel is shown. The controller must fit naturally within the palm of the hand to give support to the head while both thumb and forefinger are free to control the animations without hinderance. I spent a good deal of time with this handle pattern to include grooves for the three fingers gripping it. The puppeteer will be able to slip their hand inside the back of the puppet and grasp the controller with ease, ready in a moment to perform.
Remember that no matter how beautiful your finished puppet may be, if the puppeteer has trouble operating it because you neglected to fit the controls to their hands it will never perform as beautifully as it should.

These preliminary patterns underwent some revision as the assembly process went forward. This is natural and should not lead to frustration for the puppet builder. This process is organic and must work for each puppet you make. What works for one won't necessarily work for the next. All four of these puppets, since they will appear together on stage, are based on the same model, and yet each character is distinct with it's own look and mannerisms. My next post will show how the eye animations are constructed and the final assembly of all these patterns into a working puppet head armature.

PUPPETS - The Eyes Have IT!

 When I first design a puppet, I begin with the eyes. The eyes must convey a wide range of emotions, either fixed or with animation. The Puppets for LILI all have some form of eye animation, so the eyes must be produced individually with that function in mind. Above is a preliminary sketch of what CARROT TOP might look like. The finished puppet may look nothing like this, but to establish scale and measurements I must first make a preliminary sketch....

 Here we see the eight "eyes' for the four needed puppets, drilled and gessoed & ready for painting. CARROT TOP and MARGUERITTE will have open / close eye animation. Much like a doll, their eyes will be able to open and close with a flick of the puppeteers finger. REYNARDO, the fox and GOLO, the giant will have side to side animation. Their eyes will be able to shift  back and forth with the same slight movement of the puppeteer. The base for the eyes are 1 & 1/4" diameter wooden drawer pulls from the hardware store. These are slightly flattened at the back with a 1/8" hole pre-drilled. I drill another 1/8" hole perpendicular to the pre-drilled one which will either allow the eyes to swing up and down or side to side on a wire base

My style for eye painting is something I have perfected over the years. It must be remembered that these puppets will be at least 30 feet from the audience, so texture is very important in conveying the overall look and "feel" of the characters. Realistic or "plastic" doll eyes would not "read" at that distance, so the painting must be done with bold strokes which look very rough close up. Here I lay out the basic eye color and shape using a round foam brush. I will later fill in the shapes by hand with finer and finer paint brushes, adding the white and black elements of my stylized eye...

Finally I cut fine grooves into the eyes of CARROT TOP  & MARGUERITTE in order to fit slim trunk-fiber eyelashes into the wooden balls ( eyelids for REYNARDO & GOLO  will be built up over the shiting eyes as the face is constucted later). A small clear rhinestone is cemented in place within the pupil of each eye. These will glisten under stage lighting to impart an extra measure of "life" to the characters eyes. The last step is a wash of polyurethane varnish over the eye to create that wet texture that all true eyes have. Here from bottom to top are CARROT TOP's eyes (green), MARGUERITTE's eyes ( blue), REYNARDO's eyes ( brown ) and GOLO's eyes ( black ).

Once the eyes are ready the woodwork involved in making the controllers for these rod puppets can be started. That will be coming up next week.....

LILI on the Hip Pocket Theatre stage

 Before I began writing the script for my adaption of "LILI" for the stage, I built this scaled model of the theatre and peopled it with 3" tall cutouts of characters from the film. By moving these around I was able to make sure that my ideas for staging the show would work in the space. As I worked, my concept for the movable set pieces took shape, as well as the overall look of the show. Everything will start with a bare stage...

 The "Magic Act" at the center of the first part of the play will be performed as Black Theatre with the props appearing, moving and disappearing with the aid of black hooded puppeteers against a black curtain. The banners and balloons will be brought out and placed onstage by the actors as they "set up" the Carnival, just as they would in real life. Small tables and folding wooden chairs will be moved in and out to represent audience seating as well as physical aspects of the two Wagons where the Magician and his assistant and the Puppeteers and Lili live.

The puppet booth will likewise be brought in and assembled in front of the audience by the actors. The puppets will be operated by the same black hooded puppeteers against the darkness behind this central platform. This will allow the puppets to make swift entrances and exits by being simply moved backward out of the light with the puppeteer's body masking them as they turn around. The actor playing the puppeteer PAUL will stand to the side behind the curtains and voice all the characters. Not having him actually work the puppets will free him to phsically play his onstage role without having to change costume and makeup quickly.

These photos only document my thoughts on the staging and do not represent my final designs for the set. I have already made changes and upgraded my ideas for the final design which I will share later.

First, Those puppets...

My Return to the Hip Pocket Theatre

 Through a strange series of events this past year, I have been reunited with the HIP POCKET THEATRE in Fort Worth, Texas, for whom I worked designing and acting in several productions from the mid 1970's until the late 1980's. This past October the Theatre hosted a "Film Fest" featuring videotaped versions of shows in which I happened to appear in 1985 and 1986. As an added introduction PEGGY BOTT KIRBY and I appeared on the current Hip Pocket stage as characters we had last played 30 years ago! Here in the photo are Ms. Bott-Kirby and myself as Meema and her nephew Arthur Clinton Bostick. The first showing of the three night festival was...

ADVENTURES WITH JUNE & SCOTTY from 1985. In which she and I first played these two characters, members of an extremely strange extended family, based on playwright JOHNNY SIMONS' own boyhood growing up around Lake Worth in north Fort Worth. We staged this play Upstairs at the White Elephant, a space above the historic saloon in the heart of old cowtown in Fort Worth. It was my first production as designer up there, a room about 50 feet square that I have blogged about before as being "painfully intimate". Johnny surprised me by bringing out this rendering of the set for the show...I had completely forgotten I had even done it!

The Film Fest was a great success, helping to showcase the archives of recorded plays, music, design artwork and printed programs and photographs, as well as physical props and costumes which still survive from 40 years of a local theatrical institution that has been THE HIP POCKET THEATRE.

Our aim is to digitize all of this vast array and make our work available to every theatre artist via the internet for study. An immense task, to say the least. I am doing my small part here, but there is So Much More!

Beginning next week...after 30 years, I am going to document here my designs and building of a production for the Hip Pocket's 39th season in 2015. The play is a staged version of the Classic and Acadamy Award winning 1953 film "LILI".

 I had wanted to do this back in the 1980's, but it never came to fruition. Now I've been given a second chance and I have re-imagined the story with a more modern sensibility. Not a by-the-numbers staging of the film, but a very unique play based on the material. My script has been approved and we open next August 14th  under the stars out at the new HPT location.

The first step for me is the design and construction of  4  Very Special Puppets,  as anyone familiar with the original work will understand. I began work on these three weeks ago, and I will be blogging about every step of their construction in the next few weeks...

Model Photography

After 30 years retired from design work, I have finished adapting and designing a new show for the HIP POCKET THEATRE'S upcoming 39th Season. This photo shows my set design in model form as I was photographing it for submission to Artistic director JOHNNY SIMONS.

But WHAT is the Show, you ask?

I'm traveling back to Fort Worth, Texas next weekend, October 24, 25, 26 for the HIP FILM FEST. This will be the first public screening of three of the classic HPT productions of the 1980's, in all of which I just happen to appear and to have designed the sets for. The original videotapes have been rescued and digitally restored for the archives, and for this one fun weekend of showings. If you happen to find yourself in Fort Worth on those dates it would be well worth your time to check it out. I hope to see you there.

Anyway, I take my script and design presentation to Mr. Simons that week. I think we're set to go with the production, but his word will make it final and then my friends I will not only Tell you what I'm going to do...I will Show you the entire process from begining to end on this blog. Inspiration to final designs to fully produced stage show. It will be a very busy year for me and I'll post it all right here. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

I've had pretty good success with my adaptations for HPT in the past, so I'm optimistic!

Stay Tuned.....

I finished the script for my proposed   HIP POCKET THEATRE   2015   project today!
Writing anything is a bit like giving birth, without having to lose the weight afterward.
I'm both excited and terrified, as this is my first theatrical show in 27 years!!!

The script goes to the printer tomorrow and then on to the Artistic Director for his approval. With that, the show is a go for next season and my work will REALLY begin.

As promised, I will document the design process on this blog soon. Sets, Costumes, Puppets and Masks...the whole package!

Stay tuned!

Modeling a Theatre 3

I Love this space. Just like the OAK ACRES stage that I helped to build up in the 1970's - 1980's,  it has evolved as needed through the seasons since that time, but in another place.

In HPT parlance, this is my "Given". I've been assured that It can be re-configured into anything that I want it to be, for my show...but I like it just as it is....

Modeling a Theatre 2

The purpose of this model is to afford me a practical space in which to stage my proposed production.

It doesn't need to be in perfect scale for this ( although the actual photos and my model seem to be pretty close in scale ), just enough so that I can move my imaginary actors, props ands set pieces in and out, and to determine if my concept for the show will play in this space.

I actually set each scene up and move little 2 1/2" figures around to make sure I am on track. (More about that soon ). Once I can visualize the action of each scene, I am able to write it, allowing for the ebb and flow of the characters on and off the stage, as well as how props and set pieces will enter and exit the space...

[ Incidently, this model is built to an aproximate 1/2" to 1' scale. This yields a model of about  30" X 24" which can fit on a tabletop, as this one can for ease of viewing and working ]

Modeling a Theatre 1

I will be the first to admit that this is not the way to go about this process. Detailed measurements are always a good idea when making a working model of...well, anything!

Here, however, I used photographs that   JOHNNY SIMONS   sent to me late last year. I had never even seen this space at that time. By studying the pictures ( counting the boards in the stage and estimating their width at some points ) I was able to estimate the dimensions of the stage.....

On the Subject of Maquettes

As I've said, a Maquette is French for a working model. I've made dozens of them in my career, some quite detailed. Usually to sell a project to a Producer or a Director who's imagination was...well, let's say... Limited.

Not so this one. This is a not-to-scale model I've constucted out of bits of wood and cardboard to approximate the stage area of the current venue of the  HIP POCKET THEATRE.

In order to write and subsequently stage the production I will attempt for them next season, I made this model so I could envision sightlines and settings. I am, after all, 600 miles away from the source....

Work Begins for 2015

Today in my workshop:

Constructed a Mask Maquette from plaster of paris.

I Utilized an ordinary plastic "blank face" mask ( from PartyCity by the way...). I Built up the forehead with thin cardboard and duck tape ( also covering the holes in the mask ) for added strength. Then rubbed petroleum jelly thinly inside the "mold" all around. I placed the finished mold upside down in a cardboard box, just bigger than the edges of the mold and filled with styrofoam packing peanuts for support. And finally I filled the mold with  the plaster mixture ( 4 cups cool water with 8 cups plaster powder added slowly and mixed until thick and soupy ). After about 4 hours, I very gently tipped the box and mold upside down on an old terry towel and wiggled the plaster out of the mold. Placed face up on two dowels so air can circulate, this will need to fully dry for another 24 to 48 hours.

A bit of carving and sanding will yield a perfect base on which to use plasticine clay to sculpt  character masks. These can then be rendered in several layers of paper mache for a perfect fit on the actors who will wear them.

Thus ends today's lesson.

Why am I doing this you ask?     Stay tuned......

PS: "Maquette" is French for a working model. Good thing I used plaster of "Paris", huh?

STAY TUNED - More to Come!

For many years my world was a stage...many different stages throughout my career!
 [ seen here is a newspaper photo promoting UNDERNEATH THE TOP DOWN for which I designed and manipulated the large scale puppets which have been a trademark of mine, especially in my work for Fort Worth's HIP POCKET THEATRE]

I retired from theatrical design work in the 1990's with no real desire to take it up again....

But......I have been invited back to THE HIP POCKET THEATRE to adapt, design and direct a new production for their 39th season in 2015!

I've chosen a property which I had on the planning board back in 1988 but it was never produced. Now I've been given a chance to stage this show and I've decided to give it one more try. I can't tell you what the show will be as yet. I must wait for JOHNNY SIMONS to make the formal announcment after the close of this years season. What I will be doing in the coming months is something I never imagined I would do when I started this blog. I will be documenting the design of a production as I create it, sharing with you the work in progress as it happens! I'm very excited about this. Yes there will be puppetry involved as well as both Set and Costume designs. I will also be posting about the process of adapting a film into a stage production which has always been interesting for me in the past with such shows as FREAKS and THE LADY VANISHES.

 I am writing the script now based on my notes from 25 years ago, but also with the added insight that 25 years can bring to the material. When this is approved and the announcement has been made I will begin posting my designs! Stay tuned....

THE HIP POCKET THEATRE COLORING BOOK - 1985

 While my work on the next book in my puppetry series continues, I though i would keep this blog alive with some miscellaneous posts which don't fit into a particual show or category.

Up first is THE HIP POCKET THEATRE COLORING BOOK. Diane Simons and I designed the concept for this little souvenir item to go along with the T Shirts and other things sold from the box office before and after the shows. The artwork was done by Adrian Martinez.

 Cliff Conklin was a local area actor who worked with us at CASA MANANA and during the original seasons at HWY 80 in Fort Worth. He was also the son of famed comic CHESTER CONKLIN, one of the original KEYSTONE KOPS in silent films.

Jimmy Joe Steenbergen rode his own motorcycle in this and other productions.

PINOCCHIO COMMEDIA will open the theatre's 38th Season outdoors on June 6th!

KEROUAC : A REMEMBRANCE - Final

Here are a few more frame grabs from the video of KEROUAC, showing the use of slides and banners as backdrop for the various vignettes of monologue and dialogue.

 The big backdrop seen behind Me ( yes that's me with John Murphy during the show),is supposed to be a brick wall with "Kerouac" grafitti, and was created for the publicity photo shoot done about a month prior to the production. Here I used it as both a backdrop and a way to conceal the actor's dressing area just off stage.

 I love the juxtaposition of the slide of Kerouac standing before a neon sign, and John Murphy portraying him in front of my banner with the neon "Beatific slogan". Totally unintentional, and yet so perfectly apt.

This was a limited engagement running only two weekends, although it was popular enough to have been a month long run. The Hip Pocket Theatre was evolving in the mid-eighties after a decade of producing cutting edge shows and classic plays with that "Hip Pocket" touch that many found irresistible back then.

Things have changed a great deal since those days, and not really for the better in this age of mass celebrity worship and faux "Reality".

I've had a great deal of fun producing this blog for the last year and I'm grateful to those of you who have tuned in and followed along. I'll be suspending my posts for the summer, not due to lack of material...there is Tons more...but I will be focusing on the production of my third book on the art of Puppetry during this season ( it should have come out this summer, but the recession finally hit out here in New Mexico last year and I am only now able to resume my work on it, with a hopeful release date of September 2014). In order to produce a text which I feel is publishable takes an enormous amount of effort ( the last two each took two years to produce, and are selling well).

So I will not be keeping up my usual pace here...however, there are a number of "Miscellaneous" little items which will be posted from time to time during the lull, so don't give up following...

KEROUAC _ Banners 5

 I couldn't figure out what these Xerox's were about until I lined up the "sketch" of the  Cafe Bizarre banner and realized that I had actually cut it out of the copy and converted it for the projector.

This was a  Banner of an actual Banner! It hung above the Jazz Ensemble ( quite appropriately ) duruing the production  as seen here with MICHAEL BODYCOMB on bass.

KEROUAC - Banners 4

 The other two individuals who figure into the story of Kerouac's life are NEAL & CAROLYN CASSIDY, and both were represented by banners which flanked the audience seating areas.

Again, this studio portrait of Carolyn Cassidy, with it's extreme light and shadow, offered a perfect illustration for the banner with only the need to re-align to fit the canvas as seen above.

 Neal Cassidy still stands as the mostly silent symbol of all that Kerouac and the Beat Generation were about, and of course his presense permeates  ON THE ROAD. The photo above of Cassidy behind the wheel spoke volumes and covered two banners as laid out in my sketches at right.

Since these banners were behind the audience seating, the video camera was never aimed at them and so I have no frame grabs to show them in performance.

 Above actress CINDY GRIFFIN, who spoke for Carolyn Cassidy within the play, is seen performing in front of a slide of Neal Cassidy.

( Note: The banner of Carolyn Cassidy seen above still exists and is in the possesion of the play's creator JOHN MURPHY.)

KEROUAC - Banners 3

 For the background of the "Critic's Corner" area of the KEROUAC set, there was no better subject than ALLEN GINSBERG.

At first I considered using the younger image of him seen at left above. When I found the older Ginsberg in the photo above ( with WILLIAM BURROUGHS) and started doodling my graphic design over it, I knew that this was the right choice. The finished sketch appears at right.

 Here the Ginsberg banner is seen backing the Critic's Corner ( BOB KALBFLIESH and MYSELF as the Critics). I took the companion banner "Le Sang Des Poetes" from this image I found in a book about Kerouac.

KEROUAC - Banners 2

 I thought this photo of Jack Kerouac, taken with his mother near the end of his life, was a nice counterpoint to the previous banner which showed him young and ambitious. Also the natural light and shadow immediately lent themselves to the kind of graphic representation I was going for.

I used slogans from the Beat Generation at clock-points around the room. Using ordinary Letraset Type I set up the "Beatific" lettering.

 All of the artwork for these banners was projected onto the pre-primed canvas and traced onto it with a charcoal pencil. I had to rent the Art-O-Graph at a cost of $75 a day, a whopping sum for me back then! So I had to work quickly, sketching each banner off and then on to the next, so that I could return the machine before the shop closed and not have to pay for another day.

Here JOHN MURPHY as Kerouac and MYSELF as a Critic play out a scene under the two banners sketched out above. The elder Jack loomed above the desk and typewriter of his alter-ego on stage, while the serene but somewhat larger image of Kerouac's mother dominated the scene. We are all our mothers in some ways, after all....

KEROUAC - The Banners 1

 I lined the bare walls of the space Upstairs at the White Elephant with a number of painted banners taken from contemorary photos of the principle characters in the story of KEROUAC. These averaged about 3 feet by 6 feet, like the one shown in my original sketch above. This young image of Jack Kerouac was a studio portrait.

 You can see on the xerox at left how I would doodle the outlines to try and find an acceptable graphic representation. I've even penciled in a demarcation line to show the edge of the banner and the realignment of the image. Below you see a frame grab from the video of the show featuring CINDY GRIFFIN performing in front of the finished banner.

KEROUAC: A REMEMBRANCE - Groundplan

 I never actually drew up a groundplan for KEROUAC, Johnny Simons and I walked out the space Upstairs at the White Elephant and decided what would go where to facilitate the staging. Our aim was to recreate the atmosphere of a 1950's coffee house. The evolving performance piece would be played out in and among the actual audience, as if everyone present, both cast and patrons were a single collective unit. That "Painfully Intimate" Theatre I was so fond of ( the room above the famous Saloon downstairs was not quite 40 feet square!) Above is my recollection of how the space was laid out.

 JOHN MURPHY, who conceived this show played Jack Kerouac, holding court, as it were from the coffee house "stage". A collective group of his Friends and Critics sat at tables around the stage and moved among the audience when their specific narrative came up. The Critics Corner was a platform slightly "above it all" in the back of the house. The MICHAEL BODYCOMB Jazz Ensemble played live from a platform in another corner.

All the words spoken during the show were taken verbatim from published interviews and Kerouac's own writings.

Here DOLORAS HOGGARD, CINDY GRIFFIN and LYSTER CONNELL portray some of the many women in Kerouac's life as they listen to a Critic's words.

The real design elements in the space were a series of banners I painted which were taken directly from photos and images of the time. My next few posts will detail how I came up with these...

KEROUAC: A REMEMBRANCE - HPT - 1985

From the relative security of the WICHITA COMMUNITY THEATRE in 1984 ( a steady paycheck) I made the radical decision to depart and head down into a life untried, and totally unpredictable.

......Lean Years...of growing and expanding both my talent and my mind.

This Very Unpredictable Show, created by the very handsome fellow seen above  JOHN MURPHY
cemented that commitment.

 More to follow...

FIRST MONDAY IN OCTOBER - WCT - Groundcloth

 This sketch of the groundcloth painted for FIRST MONDAY was based on the Mall area in front of the Supreme Court building. This in conjunction with the Facade unit at the rear of the stage represented the Institution of the Court. The Columns, walls and Office Units which "floated" within this space contained the physical action of the play, with the Outer Institution looming...always as support ( the groundcloth) and tradition ( the facade).

The play as written takes place on fairly rudimentary stage "Sets" which represent the two offices. These were done on Broadway with the use of rolling wagons which held each stationary set. The intermediate scenes took place "before the curtain", which is the standard method of covering a major scene change going on "behind the curtain". That "4th Wall" stage mentality that I don't much go in for.

 Like THE NIGHT THOREAU SPENT IN JAIL and this production, I seem to have honed my style more toward Environmental Theatre. I like to create not a set, but an environment within which the characters can express themselves and perhaps also sometimes "Find" themselves.

( I used foam rubber stencils to lay out the stonework in this groundcloth painting. A square of ordinary foam rubber, cut to shape and carved out a bit to suggest stone was glued to a small piece of plywood screwed to an upright stick. A dab in the paint tray, dab off the excess, and impress on the cloth...over and over and over. Tedious, but much faster than hand painting the detail on such a large area. This technique was originally taught to me as a way to replicate wallpaper patterns on flats in college. If done correctly, it really works and saves so much time. I've used it thousands of time.)

I'm reminded now that this play, by the authors of INHERIT THE WIND, was Way ahead of it's time. When produced on Broadway and even in our production it was not held in high regard by the Critics ( mostly Male) who couldn't really grasp the reality that women were moving into not only the workplace, but into the politics which control all of our lives.

A footnote to all of this which I've never revealed:

 After the 1981 WCT Season which was my first with  MARY JANE TEALL, the Artistic Director, I found myself in a central position within the process. She and I spent many evenings together discussing the plays we liked and the current productions we admired. She very kindly asked my opinion as advice for the upcoming season. As I look back now I realize that the first two shows in the season, FIRST MONDAY IN OCTOBER  and SLEUTH were my personal suggestions to her. The last two, ARMS AND THE MAN and MORNINGS AT SEVEN were Hers to me. This was Our Season together, and I don't believe I've ever worked harder or admired more the work we Both put into this.

 If  MARY JANE was alive today and called me to come and work with her...in any capacity at all...I believe I would pack up and go.