"Miracle" Set Dressing

Miracle on South Division Street, is set in a Buffalo, New York kitchen. The largest part of my job was set dressing. We needed this kitchen to feel lived in. Like it was a part of a home that these characters had lived in their whole lives.

There aren't a lot of specific projects to show you here, but I wanted to share the pictures with you. Partially to show the level of detail that should be considered to make set dressing feel real, and partially because I'm really proud of it and want to show it off. 

The majority of the food in the pantry was donated by members of the company. We placed boxes out in multiple locations for people to put things in, and my intern collected them daily and cleaned out things that needed to be cleaned.

 The sideboard was found on craigslist. It was filled with nice china from stock, the cookbooks were from the thrift store, and the strawberry jars were filled with real rice, sugar and flour. 

 The photo wall in the hallway was a combination of stock photos, images sent to us by the actors of them as children, and of their families, and pictures of the designers and their families to fill in the blanks.
We ended up needing to hang the photos three times. Once my assistant did it, but it looked pretty sloppy. Then I did it, and thought I was doing a much better job making the spacing even finally we did it together and created this arrangement. It turns out it was very important to continually have someone stepping back to look at the larger picture, which was impossible to do with one person, standing up close, holding the frames and screwing them in.

 I included this other shot of the same wall mostly just to show the little glade plug-in in the wall outlet.

 The photos on the outside of the fridge were also of the cast, designer, director and our families. Some of the magnets were purchased, some were found at thrift stores, and some were created by searching stock and craft bins and attaching anything small and interesting to a magnet with hot glue.

 Any cabinet that was opened during the action of the show had to be fully dressed. The audience saw very little of what was inside as the cabinet only opened for a moment, but it was important that the moment felt as natural as possible.

 The costume designer helped me pull a couple jackets and coats from stock that could have believably belonged to the characters.

 We added Buffalo Sabers and Bills "stickers" to the window on the back door.

 Most of the containers inside the fridge were also donated. The jam jars were just ball jars filled with scrap fabric and water. I also used casserole dishes and a bowl covered with tin foil to fill space.

 The butter in the previous image is just a slice of upholstery foam tucked into the butter dish

 My favorite pieces on this shelf are the recipe box and junk bowl (filled with keys, some buttons, a few screws and bolts, tic tacs and nail polish) on the top shelf

 Other than the herbs and the curtains in this photo, notice the windchime outside the window

 The cookie jar is part of a subtle strawberry theme in the kitchen. I find it helpful to pick a theme like this to help direct my set dressing purchases, and to give a set some personality.

 When set dressing, I think there should always be some pens (this time in a jar with the american flag), and a pad of paper or two by the phone.

Slice-able Cheese and Sausage

For Miracle on South Division Street, the characters were supposed to be preparing a small lunch of pepperoni and cheese, and fruit salad. The actors ended up eating parts of the fruit salad, which I will explain in another post, but the cheese and sausage just needed to be sliced up and look real.

To achieve this effect, without the giant cost of providing a new block of  cheese and a new pepperoni nightly, we used clay

. I purchased nice, plastalina modeling clay from Blick for the project. Plastilina brand plasticine is advertised as never drying out. I wanted to make sure that our clay was in no danger of drying out or getting crusty during a 40 performance run.
  I took two colors of yellow and two colors of brown.

I ripped the clay into small pieces and then pressed the pieces back together to get a mottled more natural color/texture

Of course, the packaging is what sells so many pieces of fake food.
We wrapped the clay in plastic wrap, and secured it with sticker labels that we printed to be used nightly. We had enough labels to use one per performance, so the actor did not have to worry about ripping them, and the stickers were able to hide and secure the loose ends of the plastic wrap, making the wrap look much more professional.

On stage, the actors were able to unwrap both pieces easily, place them on their respective trays, and slice into them with standard kitchen knives. 

After the show each night, the run crew can just press the clay back together and smooth out the seams before adding more plastic wrap and another sticker. 

Fake Chicken Carcass

This prop was for a production of Miracle on South Division Street, at Peninsula Players Theatre in Door County, Wisconsin.
For the epilogue of the show, the characters are in the kitchen, and the script indicates that there are bits of cooking mess around to indicate the main character is in the middle of making soup. The director wanted a chicken carcass, draining in a colander, over the stock pot; as if she had just finished boiling the carcass for a homemade chicken stock.

Here is the carcass I made

And here is how I made it:

I started with a basic skeleton made from a couple pieces of lauan and dowel rods. I looked up some basic images of chicken skeletons to give me a basic guide. 

 Next I added a layer of Crayola model magic clay to give the chicken some meat and muscle. 

 Third, I soaked strips of muslin in elmers glue and wrapped them around parts of the chicken. The idea was that this would provide some different surfaces for the next, liquid latex step, to stick to. I am a little unsure of whether this step made any difference to the end product, or whether it could have skipped. 

Finally the chicken was coated with 6 coats of liquid latex (full disclosure, my intern, Ross, did this step while I was out shopping one day). 

 The latexed chicken was dusted with some Design Master, glossy wood tone spray, which, if you've read many posts on this blog, you know is the best way to give something that oven-baked look.

 Finally, I took a knife, and began to cut into the chicken, using my fingers to tear away at several of the cuts.

 Each cut exposed the layers underneath the latex skin,

 and slowly began to give them impression of a baked chicken, that had been picked clean of most of it's meat, and then boiled.

"Do their notes first"

This lesson/rule comes from Sarah Hughey, a friend and fantastic lighting designer who I have worked with on numerous productions.

The rule is simple; When you are working on a show, especially during tech, you will likely have a long list of notes you would like to complete. On that list, you will have notes that you took yourself for things that you would like to work on/improve, and notes from the director, actors, and maybe other designers and collaborators. When it comes time to start crossing the notes off your list, always take care of notes given to you by others before the notes you took on your own.

The reason for the rule should be obvious. If a director or other designer sees the same problem several nights in a row, after a note has been given, it begins to make you look bad. People can get a bad impression regardless of how many other notes have been completed. You want to be the person who completes notes quickly and efficiently, and who never has to be asked twice.

As obvious as the rule seems when typed out, I was terrible at this before Sarah explicitly explained it as one of her personal rules. It can be very easy, especially when the notes others give you are small or simple, to push them to the bottom of the list in favor of larger or more complex notes that will take more focus.

Now, I have begun to employ the rule (sometimes needing to say it out loud to remind myself).  I take care of the notes from others first, especially if they are simple. And when I am unable to complete the notes from others by the next rehearsal, I make a point to let them know how progress stands on that specific task, and when they should expect to see it completed (often this involves waiting on shipping, or waiting for the weekend until a store is open on Monday).

High School Tech Portfolios

While looking for another email, I recently stumbled across a conversation I had with a friend who is a high school drama teacher. He had two students who were looking to present tech portfolios for colleges and wanted to know if I had any tips. After re-reading the conversation, I decided that it might be worth sharing more widely.

Some of this I learned by creating my own portfolio during college, some of it I learned while working in the theatre recruitment office as a work study position. Please feel free to pass this along to any high school tech student you know, and please feel free to comment below or email me directly if you have any questions. 

Adam: hey - do you have any quick and dirty tips for a portfolio presentation for college?

 me: what kind?

  lighting?

  set?Stage management?

 

 Adam: Lizzie wants to SM, Zoe wants to do Lights

2:20 PM those are the only tech folks this go around

 me: They want to see progress as much as finished product

2:21 PM so if you have research images, sketches etc, include as many as you can with the pictures from the production.

  For Lizzie (SM), she should divide her paperwork into two books

2:22 PM one is a rehearsal book that contains blocking notes and anything else she used in rehearsal

  the other is a show binder that contains the script neatly marked for calling the show

2:23 PM The show binder should be so neatly and cleanly marked that any other stage manager could pick it up and call the show without having to ask any questions.

  The more samples of clean, easy to understand paperwork Lizzie can provide (that she created) the better. Contact sheets, schedules, rehearsal reports for example.

2:25 PM For both of them, it is more what you have to say about what is in the portfolio than what is physically included, so practice talking about it.

  What were your challenges on this show and how did you overcome them?

  What did you learn from working in this way?Remember, all high schools do not work in the same way. You should not assume that if you tell a college rep that you were the lighting designer, or the SM or the props master that they know what that means. You need to tell them what that meant at your high school. What exactly were your responsibilities in that position. 

2:26 PM Also from a asthetic standpoint...the pages should be easy to look at, not too cluttered (this is mostly for designers) 3-5 images per page depending on the size of the pages.

2:27 PM No cutesy creative fonts, just clear and easy to read.The photos should be straight on the page with a simple clean border around each photo (no overlapping photos or tipped artsy angles). Resist the temptation to turn this into a scrap book.

2:28 PM Make sure you can easily read the name of the show, author, director and perhaps the names of the costume and set designers (whose work will also be pictured in the lighting design photos)

  keep your shows on either two or four pages, never one or three

2:29 PM In other words, I want to open to a page and have everything I see belong to the same show.

 

2:37 PM Also, shows do not need to be in chronological order

2:38 PM take your three most impressive pieces and put #1 first, #2 in the middle of your portfolio and #3 at the end. Fill in with your other shows in between.

2:39 PM Those top three don't need to be the ones with the prettiest pictures, they may just be the things that are most unique, that set you apart

2:40 PM Anything that might be different than what the college reps have been looking at all day.  

 

Adam: does Lizzie (SM) want to include any pictures in her portfolio?

2:50 PM me: If she does, not many

2:51 PM They can give her something to talk about "getting all the cast organized for these vignettes and in and out and up and down the ladders and the stairs was one of my big challenges and this is how I did it"

2:52 PM "As you can see by the costumes, I had a lot of work coordinating X with the designer and the wardrobe crew"

  Her pictures should be limited, a small portfolio of pictures (could be binder sized) to go with her beautiful books of paperwork

 Adam: Should Zoe include old lighting plots that were created on Word before she knew what she was doing?

  

 me: yes she should, put them later in the book.

2:54 PM They will be interesting to the college reps because they show a desire to learn and, when shown with the better, later ones, an ability to self teach and improvise when she doesn't have all the skills yet. When she shows them she should present them in that light

  "this is where I was three years ago, I knew what I needed before I had been taught how specifically to do it, and this is the way I found to get things done"Remember that you are in high school and the colleges don't need you to know everything coming in. They want someone who is excited to learn and able to be taught. They want someone who is passionate about theatre, driven, ambitious, and willing to work hard. They want someone who is collaborative, and cooperative, responsible and respectful. Emphasis those qualities, regardless of the quality of the photos you are able to show, and you will have success. 

Letters

It was important to me, that the three letters we needed in Twelfth Night at Oak Park Festival be distinguishable from each other. 

The first, a fake love letter, was printed on this cloud and rainbow paper I had leftover from another project. 

The paper was not wild, but just unique and silly enough to make it distinctive (and recognizable the next time it appeared). The text was printed on the plain back side so that the interesting side was more visible to the audience while the actor was reading it.

I decided the second letter would be written on a cocktail napkin. As opposed to tearing napkins and writing that same note over and over I printed out the copies of the note on thin printer paper, 

 Then I cut them out and used modge podge to attach them to the napkins. 

They were still floppy like napkins, but sturdy enough to hold up while being a bit abused during a humid outdoor performance. 

The third letter was printed on a sheets of yellow legal tablet paper. 

Did you know that you can carefully tear a sheet off of one of these pads along the top perforations, and feed it directly through a printer?

You can!

The girl at the print shop at Office Max was super surprised

And if you use a handwriting font (I usually download them from dafont.com), it looks authentically handwritten even very close up. 

Quick-Rig Drapes

The beginning of Invasion at Silk Road Rising is supposed to look like an Arabian Nights Arab cliche. We're talking draped colorful fabric, palm trees, and maybe lush fringed cushions. We also needed everything to disappear quickly as the illusion is shattered. For palm trees and cushions that is easy. For draped fabric that needs to be re-rigged by the run crew each night before the show, and torn down during the show by "angry" actors, it was a bit of a puzzle. 

Our awesome and easy solution was this,

That picture, if you can't tell, is a standard wooden clothespin, pressed onto a sticky Command Strip. 

In case you somehow have never used these, they're amazing. I use the hooks all the time to add places backstage for actors to hang a prop or costume quickly. And they work exactly as advertised, pull down on the strip to stretch and remove and it leaves no residue. Be sure to check the label when you buy. Different strips are rated for different weights

The clothespins easily clip onto the ends of the fabric and hold them in place, but the hold is loose enough, that a slight tug down releases the fabric from the clothespins and allows it to be quickly removed and dragged offstage. 

We have had problems with some of the clothespins twisting and breaking (because the pins were cheaply made) but the rig is so easy to take down and redo, the best solution was just to give the run crew plenty of spare pins and command strips. If one breaks our ASM is easily able to replace it while rigging the fabric up the next night. 

As a side note, this beautiful fabric is actually Indian sari fabric, purchased at an Indian fabric store in the Devon neighborhood in Chicago. The woman at the store was incredibly helpful, but the pricing can be confusing. The sari fabrics are on rolls mostly, but the pricing is by sari. Each sari is roughly 6 yards long. The more you know...