La Boheme--Scene Design

Curtain Call with Proscenium

La Boheme, an opera in four acts was composed by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the novel Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger was produced in Winter Semester, 2015 In the Snow Drama Theatre at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

Synopsis
Act I:  The Garrett Apartment
Rodolfo, Marcello, Colline and Schaunard are young, struggling Bohemians who share a flat in the Montmartre District in Paris during the Art Nouveau period.  Rodolfo is burning the pages of his manuscript in the stove for warmth.  Schaunard arrives with money because he has just received a commission from a rich eccentric who paid him to play his violin until his parrot died.

Benoit, the landlord arrives and demands the rent.  As they prepare to pay him the rent, the Bohemians ply him with wine and get him drunk.  Benoit becomes talkative in his tipsy state and talks about his mistress and then admits he is married.  The boys, in mock indignation blackmail him for the rent money and threaten to tell his wife about the mistress.  Benoit leaves in humiliation and defeat.

Schaunard suggests that they all use the rent money to join him at Cafe Momus to celebrate their good fortune.  All leave except Rodolfo.  As he is preparing to leave, he hears a knock at the door and Mimi, a girl who also lives in the building it there.  Her candle has gone out and she has no matches.  He helps her and they both realize they have fallen in love.

Act II:  Cafe Momus in the Montmartre District
The scene starts out on the street in front of Cafe Momus where a great crowd has gathered.  Everybody is buying and selling and watching street performers.  Our gang enters Cafe Momus and orders food.  Musetta, Marcello's ex-girlfriend arrives with her Sugar Daddy who is a government minister.  It is clear she is tired of her wealthy boyfriend.  She torments the boyfriend by singing a very risque song in front of the crowd.  On the one hand, she is tormenting her lover and on the other, she is trying to get Marcello's attention.

After the song, she gets rid of Alcindoro, the sugar daddy, by telling him her shoe is too tight and asks him to take it to the shoemaker to have it stretched a bit.  He leaves and she joins up with Marcello and the gang.

When they are ready to leave, Schaunard discovers that his purse is gone and they have no way to pay for the meal.  Such is the life for young Bohemians.  Musetta hatches a plan and tells the head waiter to give the bill to Alcindoro when he returns.  They leave, Alcindoro returns, the head waiter hands him the bill, he pays it and sits down, dejected.

Act III:  At the City Gate
Mimi finds Marcello.  She is very ill.  She tells him that Rodolfo left her the night before because of his terrible jealousy.  Marcello tells her that Rodolfo is asleep inside the tavern.  Rodolfo comes out of the tavern and Mimi hides.

Marcello confronts him about leaving Mimi and Rodolfo at first lies and says she is too flirtatious and he is jealous.  But then he finally tells the truth and tells Marcello that Mimi is very sick and he thinks it is consumption.  Because he is a poor starving artist, he cannot care for her and he thought if he were mean to her she would leave and find a rich man who was better able to care for her.  He was mean to her because of his great love for her.  Understand that this was written during the Romantic Period.

Mimi is revealed by her coughing and weeping.  Rodolfo and Mimi agree to stay together until spring.

Act IV:  The Garrett Apartment
In the spring, both Musetta and Mimi have left their lovers to find wealthier gentlemen to take care of them.  Mimi has found a Viscount.  Musetta suddenly appears and tells of Mimi's condition, which is worse.  She found Mimi earlier that day and Mimi asked her to take her to Rodolfo.  Mimi is assisted to a bed where everyone tries to comfort her.

Knowing that Rodolfo and Mimi would like to be alone, everyone else leaves and they sing love songs to each other.  The others return and bring a fur muff for Mimi's hands.  She thanks them.  Things happen and after awhile, Musetta discovers that Mimi has died.  The curtain closes with Rodolfo crying out her name in distress, because Melodrama.

Concept
Richard Clifford, the director suggested at the very first that the designers should look to the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for inspiration.

Lautrec was an artist, printmaker, caricaturist and illustrator in the Montmartre District in Paris during it's impressionistic heyday.  He was a contemporary with Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin.  He is famous for his posters made for the Moulin-Rouge.

As I studied Toulouse-Lautrec's work I came to see that the subject matter in his paintings and posters and illustrations were almost always depicted with great detail, and as the painting moved away from the subject matter, the focus softened and the detail faded to the edges of the composition where it devolved into pencil lines.

Here are some examples linked from the Wikipedia page on Toulouse-Lautrec

The Englishman at the Moulin-Rouge  

Wadsworth Antheneum

Jane Avril

Divan Japonais

Quadrille

Each of these, and hundreds more, show the quality I was looking for in the Toulouse-Lautrec paintings.  The subject in focus and the focus becoming softer as the work got further and further away from it.  Ultimately ending in just pencil lines.

The Design:
Camilla Martinez assisted me on this scene design.  I tasked her with creating a design for the false proscenium which was to be reminiscent of Art Nouveau styling.  We used the green because of the green metro station entrances in Paris.  Camilla assisted on the rest of the design as well.

There were three locations we needed to design.  The garret apartment, Montmartre and the Cafe Momus, and the city gate.  For Act IV they came back to the garret.

Since the whole show is situated around Montmartre, I decided to paint a drop with the Sacre Coeur Basilica on the hill in the background.  Richard Clifford, the director asked if we could paint it translucently with a sunrise effect that would light up at the end of Act III.  I assured him we could.

A garret is an apartment basically created in the attic of a building.  For the garret I imagined they were living in a room in the corner of a building with a mansard roof.  Because of that, the back wall and the side wall sloped inward.  This gave us a sense of the cramped conditions these young men were living in.  On the Snow Drama Theatre stage, there are two trap doors in the floor and we used one of them to create the illusion that we were up on the top floor of a building.  Benoit and several others entered from that location.  I found a couple of thumbnails for Acts I and IV which will be shown below.

Garret apartment with Sacre Coeur in the background.  Note the bent walls stage right and rear

Garret apartment with translucent back

I also designed some modular wagon pieces that could be reconfigured for each act.  They were part of the hallway and stairs in the building in Act I and IV, they were the promenade for Act II and they became part of the stairs and wall for Act III.

Act II is challenging to design.  It takes place simultaneously inside and outside.  The promenade where the businesses are and the interior of Cafe Momus.  I also designed the exterior of Cafe Momus which then flew out as they entered.  Cafe Momus was stage right and the promenade was stage left.  I will describe each of these in greater detail and the choices that were made and why a little later in this post.  Here is a thumbnail of Act II.

Exterior of Cafe Momus with the promenade on stage left

Act III needed a tavern and the city gate.  This was also the act that would have the sunrise effect on the scenic backdrop.

With each of these locations, thinking of the Toulouse-Latrec artwork, I decided that like his work, where the subject was I would place the most detail.  The further away from the subject it would lose focus and ultimately devolve into 'pencil lines.'  In the area on each wall that was closest to the actors, I designed solid walls made of luan.  The walls were cutaway and above the cutaway I designed a layer of taupe gauze over scrim.  The gauze layer cutaway and at the top was just the scrim layer.  The luan was painted fairly tight and realistically.  The gauze less so and the scrim was painted with just Van Dyke Brown to appear like pencil or charcoal lines.  I found some of my paint elevations that illustrate this effect.

Bar for Cafe Momus.  The base coat on the left with just linework was chosen to replicate the paper Toulouse-Latrec used to draw and paint on.

City walls and promenade platforms

Garret floor

City gate

Cafe Momus.  The part at the bottom is luan where the most detail is.  Where the washy paint
line is just below the Cafe Momus sign is represents the gauze.  Everything above that line
was painted on scrim.

Acts I and IV:  The Garret
In the garret, in the areas closest to the actors we used a stencil for wallpaper and painted it fairly tightly.  As we moved up the wall into the gauze, the stencil was painted more loosely and at the top of the gauze we introduced the Van Dyke Brown to represent pencil lines.  The wallpaper stencil gave way and the Van Dyke Brown was hand painted in a loose style until it reached the top of the walls.  The floor and the stairs had a similar treatment where they were painted with detail closest to the action and less detail the further away from the action.

Act I, garret apartment.  

Another view with Sacre Coeur in the background

Detail that shows the progression of pencil lines

I put this photo in because my good friend played Benoit and I wanted a picture of him in this post.  He is a music faculty member.  I haven't asked his permission to use his name, so if it comes to that I may edit it in to this blog post.

This details the paint job on the windows which were purposely non-realistic

I figured we needed at least one picture from Act IV.  This one also shows how the paint runs out on the steps away from the action.  One might look at Toulose-Lautrec's work and say it was all unfinished.  But because he painted in this way so often it is obvious to me that it was intentional.  As it was with our show.

Act II:  Cafe Momus and the Promenade
The act started out with the exterior of Cafe Momus flown in stage right.  It was only on for a few moments to establish the location.  It flew out to reveal the interior.  Since this was written during the impressionistic time period, I didn't feel compelled to have a hard boundary between the interior space and the exterior space.  Ray Versluys, the lighting designer saw to that.  Both the interior and the exterior were designed and painted with the same convention.  Closest to the people it was more realistic and the further away from people the less focused it became, finally terminating in 'pencil line.'

The Promenade followed the same convention with the exception that we didn't use gauze or scrim since they were foundational pieces that needed to be walked and danced upon.  For the balustrade on the promenade, I designed full round balusters for the middle section where most of the action would take place, and then replaced them with flat profile cut out balusters away from the action.  The round balusters were painted realistically and the flat ones emphasized the 'pencil line' convention we had established.

The only photo I have of the exterior of Cafe Momus.  Sad because it was painted very well.

Detail of the balustrade.  Note the balusters upstage of the stairs are full round but the balusters downstage of the stairs are
flat, cut-out profiles painted with 'pencil lines'

There were "businesses" shown along the promenade.  Flown flats covered in gauze and scrim.  The boutique is shown here

Musetta singing on the bar.  'Pencil line' woodgrain above her head

Cafe Momus side of the stage

Act III:  The City Gate
The most important part about this scene was the backdrop sunrise.  Most of the scene takes place during a snowstorm in the very early morning.  The snow ends and the sun rises and the lovers are triumphant.

The paint job on the fence that surrounds the city was green, except at the very top, it faded to the same colors as the paper Toulouse-Lautrec painted and sketched on.  To keep with the motif that the closer to the subjects the more in focus the scenery and the further away from the people the less focused it became.

The city gate.  As with everything else, focus shifts the further away from the people it gets.  Environmental effect with snow.  Try singing opera with that!

This image shows the paint job on the backdrop

Sunbeams through the Sacre Coeur

This scene design consisted of wagons and flown pieces, often working together.  That meant every scene change had to be perfect in order for the flown pieces to line up with the wagons.  This was especially true in Act III when a flown piece with a door had to sandwich between two wagons.

I didn't always like working on opera.  I have had a few colleagues over the years, including Richard Clifford and Jon Linford who have introduced me to the possibilities of opera as an artform.  I quite like working on opera now.  This one was a pleasure to design.

Production Details
Director:  Richard Clifford
Musical Director:  David Olsen
Conductor:  David Olsen
Scene Designer:  Gary Benson
Assistant Scene Designer:  Camilla Martinez
Costume Designer:  Kathie Schmid
Lighting Designer:  Ray Versluys
Sound Designer:  Antonia Clifford
Technical Director:  Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director:  Patty Randall

Children of Eden--Scene Design

Children of Eden show button

Children of Eden, music and lyrics by Steven Schwartz and book by John Caird was produced winter semester, 2010 in the Snow Drama Theatre on the campus of Brigham Young University-Idaho.

Synopsis
Children of Eden is a musical in two acts based on the Book of Genesis from the Holy Bible.

Act I:
Act I chronicles the lives of Adam and Eve, and their two sons Cain and Abel.  It begins with the creation of the world by the character, Father.  He then creates Adam and Eve and introduces them into the Garden of Eden.  As in Genesis, Eve is enticed by the serpent and eats the forbidden fruit.  Adam then eats and they are expelled from the garden and away from Father's presence.

They create a life for themselves outside the garden with hard work.  They sacrifice to Father.  They have two sons, Cain and Abel.  The boys grow up and Cain has the wanderlust.  He wants to find the way back to Eden.  In his travels he stumbles upon a ring of stones and realizes there might be other people.  He tells Adam and Eve who forbid him to go back.  They fight and Cain tries to kill Adam but Abel steps in the way and is killed.  Father puts a mark on Cain and his descendants.  Cain runs away.

At the end of her life, Eve talks about her family, Cain's departure from the family, her son Seth has grown to manhood and has children of his own.  The act ends with Eve's death and her ascension into Father's presence.

Act II:
Act II is the story of Noah and his family.  It starts out chronicling the generations of Cain and Seth all the way to Noah.  Noah has three sons, Ham, Shem and Japeth.  Ham and Shem have wives but Japeth does not.  He is in love with the servant girl, Yonah.  The problem is, she is a descendant of Cain and bears the mark.  Noah forbids him to marry her.  The act begins with them building an ark against the coming storm.  Father has told Noah that the storm will come and a flood will cover the earth.  

Noah and his family will be saved along with two of each specie of animal, male and female.  Just like the Bible.  Japeth decides to sneak Yonah on board the ark.  The storm comes and rages.  The storm continues and the family believes they are doomed.  They discover Yonah and want to throw her overboard so Father will calm the storm.

There is a fight between Noah and Japeth that resembles the fight between Adam and Cain from Act I and before anyone gets killed, Yonah intervenes and stops it.  She throws herself between them and stops the fight.  Mrs. Noah asks Noah if Father talks to him anymore and he admits that He does not.  She tells him he has to be the father now and Noah decides to marry Yonah to Japeth.  The storm ceases, the floods recede and the family all go their separate ways.

Concept
The concept for our production of Children of Eden evolved over time.  Like all good concepts, it started out much larger than it ended up being.  We originally were going to build large set pieces for every scene.  There was a garden set, a wasteland set, a Stonehenge set, a set outside the ark, a set inside the ark etc...  It was going to be huge.

The first evolution of the design went modular.  The idea was to create modular wagons that would be configured into different shapes and then the fronts covered with muslin painted to look like the rocks or the garden or the ark etc...  We were going to fix the muslin to the wagons with industrial strength Velcro.  Stonehenge was going to be created by fixing a pin into the turntable and when the turntable turned, it would drag the stones into place.  The stones being really tall wagons.

As we worked through some of this, it was clear the concept needed to shift one last time.  The painted muslin was too heavy and unwieldy, and took forever to attach to the wagons.  Building and dragging huge stones onto the turntable was going to prove way too expensive.

At some point, the idea of using fabric in an abstract way was brought up.  The costume designer, Richard Clifford was already going to use fabric to create the tree of knowledge abstractly.  We decided to expand that to different elements of storytelling in the scene design.  As far as the covering of the wagons went, we cut that entirely.  The modular wagons became more about shapes and configurations and began to look kind of like a jungle gym.  It was a good solution.

We also decided to use the four foot extension over the orchestra pit and our stock platform that goes in front of the pit.  There were times we wanted the action right in the laps of the audience.

Quick sketch of the modular wagons

Idea for a wagon configuration

And another

Execution
The proscenium of the Snow Drama Theatre is 41'-4" wide.  First of all, for the continental seating we have in that room, that measurement is several feet too wide.  That makes the Snow Drama Theatre very difficult to mask.  Through the years, where appropriate, I've opted to use portals for masking.  Basically, the portals are picture frames that fly where the normal masking would be.  At the end of the portal on each side, I add an eight foot wide black leg.  A leg is the floor to ceiling black drape that lives on the edge of the stage.  Essentially, what that does is allows me an extra six feet of masking at each position.  It also means I have to decorate the portals

I wanted the portals to be painted chronologically from back to front with images from the great ages of European man.  Starting with images from Lascaux France and the cave art there.  The next one would be Ancient Egypt, then Ancient Greece, followed by Ancient Rome and finally the Renaissance.  Hyrum Conrad, the director liked the idea, but he did not want to limit it to European man.  He felt that this is a play for all people on all continents and wanted the portals to reflect that.

I still designed them chronologically but followed what Hyrum had asked for.  The rear portal was painted with images found on rocks in Africa, primitive, prehistoric rock art.  Then second to the last portal was painted with images from Mesopotamia in the Middle East.  The third portal was painted with images from Mesoamerica.  The last portal was painted with images from Classical China.  Finally the proscenium was flanked with two large paintings that were copies of prophets from Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel.

Portals and show button

Stage right portals

Stage left portals

Closeup

Act I:  
In the Beginning
The show began with a bare stage and dancers with light.  We added the star drop and actors carried large gator-board stars and planets during the creation song, "Let There Be."  The planets and stars were painted with luminescent paint and a blacklight was used in this number.

Let There Be.  Bare stage

Star drop added, Father on the pit surround

The Garden
I wanted all of the scene changes to be fluid.  So while the action was taking place at the end of the first scene, stagehands began moving the modular units in place for the garden scene.  All of the action and light was on the forestage as the wagons moved out.  We used just about every silk plant we had in storage to create the garden scene.  The first part of the scene change involved getting the wagons into place.  The second step was to place all of the plants.  I instructed the stagehands and prop wranglers to work as fast as they could, but if they sensed the lights coming on into the scene, they should slow down and act like God's gardeners, finish the job and leisurely exit the stage.  It helped that the chorus actors were in contemporary clothes for the first part.

We needed a waterfall in that first scene, so we used about ten yards of blue silk, manipulated by the chorus actors.

Later in the garden scene, Eve goes off and encounters the serpent and the Tree.  We made Adam and Eve's hut out of lodgepole pine timbers and draped fabric.  The tree was a giant costume piece made of draped fabric.  We arranged the modular set units in a different configuration so Eve would have to climb to the tree to get the fruit.  The tree costume was worn by several actors and the trunk and roots dangled down to the floor

The garden

The silk waterfall

Adam and Eve's hut in the garden

The serpent and the tree

The platform units were all modular and on wheels.  For every scene we just reconfigured the wagons to create a different stage picture.  There were two hexagonal platforms and several ramped platforms that made all of this possible.

Expulsion From the Garden
Once Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, we reconfigured the modular pieces into a dreary wasteland.  We created a similar but larger hut for them since their family was growing.  We also moved a ramp and the shorter hexagonal platform to stage right and placed an altar on it.  To make the wasteland, we purposely placed the ramped platforms in a position where they didn't go anywhere.  They went nowhere.  I designed this configuration to be purposely disaffected.  If someone were to try to move from one place to another on the platforms, it was supposed to be difficult.  Nothing matched up.

Adam and Eve's hut in the wasteland

The altar

The fragmented configuration of the modular set pieces

Stonehenge
We stuck to the idea of fabric for Stonehenge.  As part of the choreographed movement, the stage cleared of all the modular scenery pieces and actors brought out six bundles of fabric.  Each of the bundles had a frame of 1/2" square steel tubing, about four feet by two feet I think.  There was rigging hardware attached to the steel frame and as part of the choreography we flew lines down to attach to the stones.  At a particular moment in the song, the stones grew from the stage.  The stones were made of muslin, painted to look like stone.  In order to make the stone look fragmented, I used hot glue to engineer creases and folds into them.  I think it looked cool.

Bundles of fabric

Stonehenge grows

The scene takes place

Eve's Death and Father's Platform
We struck Stonehenge and reconfigured the wagon units to the next scene.  Eve's death.  We used the ramps to get Eve up to the top of Father's platform.  I need to say this about Father's platform.  It was round while all the other platforms were polygonal.  It was the tallest platform symbolizing both heaven and the fact that it was just out of reach for the players on stage.  It was painted sky blue or heavenly blue while all the rest were painted brown.  In other words I wanted it to be different in every way from the regular wagon units.  There was also a circular staircase going up the interior of the platform.  It was the only wagon with it's own staircase.

When Eve passed away, she lay on the stage and the players placed a piece of white silk over her.  the two players kneeling at her head secured the fabric to the floor and Eve sat up under the fabric, stood up and walked out.  All of the players on stage, her family focused on the fabric while she sang her last goodbye and ascended the ramps up to the heaven, or Father's platform.  It was quite stunning, visually.

Father on his platform

Eve under the shroud

Eve's spirit leaving her body

Leaving more

Almost there

There

Act II:
Noah
Act II begins with Noah and his family, the ark well underway.  We added one piece that was the prow of the ship.  It was an abstract piece but was the right shape and when it was placed in the ark configuration it was very evident what it was.  The first configuration was of the ark in progress.  The second configuration was of the ark finished and ready for the animals to enter.  We placed a ramp up into the side of the boat for that to happen.

The ark in progress

Dinner with the Noah's

The ark finished

Inside the Ark, During the Flood
We removed the prow piece for the interior of the ark scenes.  We reconfigured the modular set pieces and created different chambers for the animals and Yonah to be in and hide in.  Of course the ramps and hexagons were used to make everything work.

I need to give a shout out to my friends at Brigham Young University in Provo Utah.  They had created animal heads in thermoplastic mesh that we were able to borrow for our production.  They were wonderful pieces and more importantly it saved us a great deal of money to be able to borrow them.

Inside the ark

Some of the great animal masks

End of the Play.  The Ark Comes to Rest
We moved the prow of the ark to stage left and reconfigured the modular platforms to create the top of Mount Ararat.  The family emerges from the ark and each of the boys and their families say goodbye to Noah and Mrs. Noah.  Each family goes their own way.  We had wooden handcarts full of possessions for this scene.  Noah and Mrs. Noah become empty nesters.  We brought Father's platform in for this scene as well, although this time we didn't have any other platforms connect to it.

The end of the play.  The ark comes to rest, everyone says goodbye.

I really enjoyed working on this play.  I loved the story, the concept, all of the designs, working with my colleagues, the music, the actors, the technicians.  It was a true pleasure to be involved with this work.  I think it turned out well.

Production Details
Directed by Hyrum Conrad
Scene Design by Gary Benson
Costume Design by Richard Clifford
Lighting Design by Richard Clifford
Sound Design by Antonia Clifford
Technical Director:  Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director Patty Randall