Daisy Journal: Set Design - Get Ready, Get Set...
Gotta get some sleep. It's 7:15 AM and the only reason I'm even conscious is because my wife called me from the road (on her way to work) to wake me up. My brother John, Jeff Cantor, and I were at the theatre until around 3 AM building the Driving Miss Daisy set. (I then went home, finished the Daisy program, emailed it to John, and hit the sack by about 4). It's Wednesday morning, the show opens on Friday evening and there are about three days of work remaining on the set. As usual, it will be a race to the finish line.
"What was that", you ask? "How much work could there be for the Driving Miss Daisy set," you wonder? "Isn't that the set where the car is only two stools and some good wishes," you begin to recall?
Well, yes and no. In our production, the set if far more. And no, it's not a matter of the OnStage team overdoing the production values, as we are sometimes accused. (Though I have to wonder how people can argue that we over produce community theatre. If you work in community theatre, you know that statement is an oxymoron. But that's for another posting.) No, what's going on here is a matter of translation -- the translation of a show from one venue to another. Let me explain.
There were many challenges that we faced in producing Driving Miss Daisy and the set design was a big one. People will recall that the original production was a very simple affair in which the settings were barely suggested. The car was two stools, Daisy's house was a chair and a telephone, Boolie's office was a desk, and that was about it. The result was a small, personal, intimate story. The reason the original production team went in this direct was more out of necessity than artistic choice. When it was originally done Off-Broadway in 1987 by Playwrights Horizons, Daisy was produced as a Black Box production. The theatre sat about 70 people (mostly Alfred Uhry's family in the beginning.) In a venue like that, you have to "be creative with less" because "more" just won't fit in the theatre.
The challenge we faced was two-fold. First, how to translate the show to a 400 seat venue like Kelsey theatre and not lose the story's intimacy and emotional impact. Second, we needed to meet the expectation of the folks who typically patronize the Kelsey Theatre, and they are always looking to get a lot for their money. Only in places like New York, Chicago and L.A. can you find theatre-goers happy to plunk down $60, $80 or $100 for a ticket to a show where two people sit on stools in the dark and pretend. At Kelsey Theatre, where most people come to this show by way off the Academy Award-winning movie, they expect a hell of a lot more -- and for only $12!
To meet these challenges, set designer John Maurer decided to bring everything as far down stage and close to the audience as possible to ensure intimacy. Then after many discussions together, we opted for a design that blends both realistic and abstract styles. The few indoor locations would be realistic, the many outdoor locations and the car would be slightly abstract allowing us more flexibility. So Daisy's living room, Boolie's Office and home, and the nursing home were constructed on a series of platforms with walls and furniture.
To accomplish this, John physically changed the layout of Kelsey Theatre. The Kelsey has a faux proscenium with a thrust stage. The proscenium (the frame around the front of the stage) and the stage right and left wings are actually created with a series of curtains. John (with permission of the Kelsey staff) lifted all the curtains in the theatre, and stored them in the catwalks above. Then he brought the set pieces down stage and spread them out. In the end, Daisy's living room abuts the physical wall of the theatre where the stage right wing was, and Boolie's office and house and nursing home are on the opposite side of the stage, where the stage left wing was, abutting that wall of the building.
So everything came vertically down stage closer the audience and got spread out horizontally, and even even slightly wrapped around the first few rows of the audience. As a result, the first few rows of the theatre actually feel like they are thrust forward into the playing area. There are seats in the theatre where audience members can reach out and nearly touch the actors. People in those seats feel like they are sitting in Daisy's living room while the action is taking place. It doesn't get more intimate than that.
Then there's the car, which sits center stage and is surrounded by the abstract locations. Continuing the hybrid realistic/abstract style, John designed the car with apolstered bench seats, a real steering wheel, and just enough beyond that to suggest a hood and a boot. Then he placed it on a rotating circular platform. The car is built to rotate during and in between scenes to suggest motion or to help reflect a change in location. The car is maneuvered by an operator hidden behind a wooden plank fence that runs horizontally across the stage and ties all the set pieces together.
My description doesn't do his work justice. In the end, John designed an environment that provides close proximity for the audience and affords several separate small spaces where three actors can play out very intimate scenes. Trust me. When it comes to maintaining intimacy and emotional impact, John's plan for migrating the show from a 70 seat venue to a 400 seat venue loses nothing in the translation.
Now, if we can only finish it on time.
"What was that", you ask? "How much work could there be for the Driving Miss Daisy set," you wonder? "Isn't that the set where the car is only two stools and some good wishes," you begin to recall?
Well, yes and no. In our production, the set if far more. And no, it's not a matter of the OnStage team overdoing the production values, as we are sometimes accused. (Though I have to wonder how people can argue that we over produce community theatre. If you work in community theatre, you know that statement is an oxymoron. But that's for another posting.) No, what's going on here is a matter of translation -- the translation of a show from one venue to another. Let me explain.
There were many challenges that we faced in producing Driving Miss Daisy and the set design was a big one. People will recall that the original production was a very simple affair in which the settings were barely suggested. The car was two stools, Daisy's house was a chair and a telephone, Boolie's office was a desk, and that was about it. The result was a small, personal, intimate story. The reason the original production team went in this direct was more out of necessity than artistic choice. When it was originally done Off-Broadway in 1987 by Playwrights Horizons, Daisy was produced as a Black Box production. The theatre sat about 70 people (mostly Alfred Uhry's family in the beginning.) In a venue like that, you have to "be creative with less" because "more" just won't fit in the theatre.
The challenge we faced was two-fold. First, how to translate the show to a 400 seat venue like Kelsey theatre and not lose the story's intimacy and emotional impact. Second, we needed to meet the expectation of the folks who typically patronize the Kelsey Theatre, and they are always looking to get a lot for their money. Only in places like New York, Chicago and L.A. can you find theatre-goers happy to plunk down $60, $80 or $100 for a ticket to a show where two people sit on stools in the dark and pretend. At Kelsey Theatre, where most people come to this show by way off the Academy Award-winning movie, they expect a hell of a lot more -- and for only $12!
To meet these challenges, set designer John Maurer decided to bring everything as far down stage and close to the audience as possible to ensure intimacy. Then after many discussions together, we opted for a design that blends both realistic and abstract styles. The few indoor locations would be realistic, the many outdoor locations and the car would be slightly abstract allowing us more flexibility. So Daisy's living room, Boolie's Office and home, and the nursing home were constructed on a series of platforms with walls and furniture.
To accomplish this, John physically changed the layout of Kelsey Theatre. The Kelsey has a faux proscenium with a thrust stage. The proscenium (the frame around the front of the stage) and the stage right and left wings are actually created with a series of curtains. John (with permission of the Kelsey staff) lifted all the curtains in the theatre, and stored them in the catwalks above. Then he brought the set pieces down stage and spread them out. In the end, Daisy's living room abuts the physical wall of the theatre where the stage right wing was, and Boolie's office and house and nursing home are on the opposite side of the stage, where the stage left wing was, abutting that wall of the building.
So everything came vertically down stage closer the audience and got spread out horizontally, and even even slightly wrapped around the first few rows of the audience. As a result, the first few rows of the theatre actually feel like they are thrust forward into the playing area. There are seats in the theatre where audience members can reach out and nearly touch the actors. People in those seats feel like they are sitting in Daisy's living room while the action is taking place. It doesn't get more intimate than that.
Then there's the car, which sits center stage and is surrounded by the abstract locations. Continuing the hybrid realistic/abstract style, John designed the car with apolstered bench seats, a real steering wheel, and just enough beyond that to suggest a hood and a boot. Then he placed it on a rotating circular platform. The car is built to rotate during and in between scenes to suggest motion or to help reflect a change in location. The car is maneuvered by an operator hidden behind a wooden plank fence that runs horizontally across the stage and ties all the set pieces together.
My description doesn't do his work justice. In the end, John designed an environment that provides close proximity for the audience and affords several separate small spaces where three actors can play out very intimate scenes. Trust me. When it comes to maintaining intimacy and emotional impact, John's plan for migrating the show from a 70 seat venue to a 400 seat venue loses nothing in the translation.
Now, if we can only finish it on time.
Labels: Daisy Journal, Driving Miss Daisy, Set Design
posted by Dan Maurer at
7:24 AM
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