Design Portfolio
A chronological tour of one set designer's career.
Colours in the Dark
An American Theatre Festival entry, a world premiere of a play by a Canadian author that needed to go on the road. The entire set, less the side scaffolding, was contained in the big box the audience saw when entering the theatre.
Actors unpacking the set.
The set lent itself to interesting lighting effects. The projections we used were 35mm slides in Kodak Carousel projectors. State-of-the-art then and super low tech (non-existent tech?) today.
Almost my first set design. There was a one-act play -- If They Give You Lined Paper, Write the Other Way, that preceded it.
The Alaska Play
A grad student production at UC Davis, Jon Estrin wrote and directed this one-act about two men marooned in the Alaska wilderness after a plane crash. Sal Viscuso played the character in the orange jumpsuit. The name of the play escapes me, but I do recall the joy of visiting a junkyard to salvage a VW Beetle carcass and fun with welding torches.
The Trial of the Chicago Seven Minus Two Plus One
I did the costumes for a studio production of a play/trial transcript compilation by the department head, Ted Schenk. I was never a great one for patterns, cutting, and sewing. This may have been a cheat, but it was fun and worked well for the acting company that played many different roles.
The Nihilist
A big, cumbersome world premiere -- the first (and probably the last) production of a play centered on the early days of the Russian Revolution. I did sets and lights. Lots of scaffolding to give the director staging opportunities. The lighting was fun. We used projections again. Very theatrical (see the prison scene), but, hey, it was theatre.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival
Three plays, in repertory. The theatre featured an architectural stage so the primary work was set pieces and props. The ships wheel set piece for the storm scene is the only picture I saved from the ghastly production of The Tempest.
The director wanted a group of fiberglass rocks that illuminated for inside when the magical characters climbed on them. I tried to talk him out of it. I really, really tried. But we ended up with fiberglass rocks.
Henry IV Part 1
The props and bits and bobs for Henry were much more traditional and more satisfying
The Taming of the Shrew
The director wanted to make it a "play within a play" so the actors brought all the props and set pieces with them when they came on stage the first time. Simple boxes doubled as chairs and even, in a scene that the actors played to great comic effect every performance, horses.
The model for the set for Tommy.
Tommy
I'm pretty sure this was the very first, completely unlicensed, and otherwise illegal production of the rock opera Tommy. The director, Keith Leonard, had a falling out with colleagues and the administration at Hiram College, resigned, and was determined to go out with a bang. The show was driven by a pretty good rock band and featured front and rear projections using film and slides. It was a heckuva show for 50 years ago.
The set for Tommy under house lights.
I'm the gypsy, the acid queen.
See Me. Feel Me. Touch Me. Heal Me
The Caretaker
A box set. A boring set. And if a lack of any memory of it is meaningful, a kind of a boring play. The set was definitely at its best before the show started.
The Taming of the Shrew
Another visit with one of Shakespeare's more troublesome plays. And, as even a casual observer can see, I had a bit of a thing for scaffolding.
The model for Endgame
and the audience's first look at the setting.
Endgame
A desolate look for a desolate play.
Krapp's Last Tape
Another work by Samuel Beckett. Harvey Powers, the head of the Bucknell theatre program, performed quite wonderfully in this one-man show.
Indians
A play by Arthur Kopit that sought to de-mythologize the "wild west" and comment on the ongoing war in Vietnam. Strong stuff for Bucknell in those days.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
A production directed by Bucknell senior Richard Humphrey. Far and away, Brecht's best play, and this was a very fine production. I kept several of the masks, including the one for the villainous Natella Abashvili, for several decades. We rented costumes for the production and I had the pleasure of visiting the Eaves wardrobe in NYC. Some of the costumes I pulled came from the original Broadway 1928 production of Marco Millions. It was good stuff.
This was almost the last play I ever designed. There was a community theatre production of The Boys in the Band that I did but never photographed. The Chalk Circle seems to me today to be a much better finale.