All quiet on the western front. Not a lot has been happening here for a while has it? I wish I could say it was because I was too busy with endless artistic endeavors, but the truth is I just went home and sat on a couch for 2 weeks. Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. I did get some good work done on the set for The Taming of the Shrew. Did I not mention, I offered to do the set? Well, I had some preliminary designs based on drapery and painted fabric banners. I showed my sketches to my Dad and he and I worked out some of the kinks. We finally rested on a very simple but effective design that will be easy to build and inexpensive (pray to the Theatre God’s that I don’t end up retracting those words). I’m particularly glad that I decided to scrap the painting aspect of my designed since that was going to prove extremely time consuming and expensive.
The set will consist of two drapery doorways on stage right and stage left. Each curtain rod can be removed and either flipped around or replaced with another rod and set of curtains to change the location on stage. The standards and curtain rods have already been built (thanks to my wonderful Dad), so all that is left to do is scrounge up masses of fabric and sew the curtains. I’ve included a basic drawing of my idea.
So far I plan to make three sets of curtains. One for the interior/exterior of Bapstista’s villa (Kate’s father), one for the interior/exterior Pertruchio’s house and one for outdoor locations. I think finer location details will be connoted with things like large pots of flowers, pillow and fabric strewn couches and other small things like that. I don’t want the set changes to be too frequent or too cumbersome and labour intensive. I just want people to be able to run on, toss up a new curtain rod, switch out a flower pot and be done. The fast and more seamless the show the better it will be.
At some point I’ll draw up a more thorough picture of my design in the performance space and give you all a better sense of my vision. But there’s not much more I can do until I know what colours and patterns of fabrics I have to work with. I’m hoping to go for a rich colour with gold or silvery embellishments. I’ve also got some great ideas for the outdoor curtains. Think “creeping vines”.
Oh how I wish I could just have a shopping spree in Fabricland for this. I can just imagine how much fun that would be if I could afford to buy anything I wanted for this set. Sadly, because of the lack of any real budget for the show, I’m going to have to find my material from free or really really low budget sources. I’ll probably work from what my friends and various contacts can donate. So, here’s my general call. If you have very large, curtain size pieces of fabric lying around, please let me know.
Well, that’s a good update for now. Shrew rehearsals are going well and we had a crew meeting this evening, so everything is on track for a wonderful show.
