What can I say about executing a set at the Theatre in Old Town? It’s not your everyday scene shop. As I pull up to the parking lot next to the theatre, I find myself peering over the rustic fence at the lumber racks, sawhorses, and various bits of flats from old productions. This is the shop, where the thermostat seems to vary as much as San Diego weather, and the paint takes eons to dry on a damp day, or dries too quickly in the hot sun. And the rain is a constant threat that can set us back days at a time!

The talented team of carpenters under Technical Director Andy Scrimger use the yard behind the theatre to pre-build our scenery in parts. It’s a tricky planning process, due to a few approaches we use on our sets, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Andy began working with Cygnet in 2009, and has consistently been one to balance the needs of the budget with the demands of quality. Any technical director would tell you this is not an easy task. These days, we work together to implement strategies towards putting up a set by being very frugal, and as a byproduct (and a constant goal) using green, sustainable methods of creating scenery.

Every bit of brick or stone you’ve seen on a Cygnet set in the past several years (and trust me, there’s been a lot) is made with a recycled, pressed paper pulp product. Contrary to Vacu-form material, which is heat-molded plastic, and the mainstay of many scene shops, the recycled paper pulp actually provides us with a malleable surface of dramatic relief.

At Cygnet, the technical director and scene designer work to plan shows in tandem with one another- finding flats from one show that can be re-covered and repainted, arranged with different elements for the next show. It is not a constraining process if one designs with these things in mind- as changing a flat, or wall unit, from three feet nine inches to four feet wide is no skin off my nose! The process becomes even more simplified when I design two shows back-to-back, as is the case with The Tragedy of the Commons and Cabaret. After all, I can pick a door casing and baseboard that works for the architectural interior of Commons, then have them gilded with gold paint for Cabaret. Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone

Things like this really separate Cygnet from a larger theatre company. I find it unbearable to throw anything away, anticipating another show in which such an item could be used- redressed, and repainted. It’s not a hindrance to creativity- in fact it can be quite rewarding when we find a new life for an old item. And I believe it can be that personal touch, that selectiveness with consideration for keeping things, that makes some productions all the more powerful. There is a bit of magic that takes place when we can transform a chair or a table that we’ve used before, to Dakin and Macy’s patio set, or Sally Bowles’ dressing table.

Another element added to the mix: Andy Scrimger also owns a printing company, Volume11 Graphics. He builds brochures, banners, posters, vehicle wraps, building wraps, and bus advertisements, using a variety of materials with eco-friendly methods. Due to the limits on space for painting backdrops and other similar elements, Andy has printed drops for us from digital artwork provided by designers for shows like Private Lives, Sweeney Todd, and The Tragedy of the Commons. By keeping the work in-house, there is a great deal more control on the quality and execution of these elements. And as a designer, this is exciting because I get to see my own work go directly from computer screen to full-size blowup, with fewer steps in between.

As a load-in is upon us, we find ourselves with pieces of two shows. Carpenters sort out what is to be re-used versus saved. The prefabricated elements for the next show are mixed in with the recycled elements, and the objects we saw as random pieces stacked in the scene shop take on a new life as part of a larger whole.

For any designer who’s used to seeing pieces of their set in a more complete form prior to load-in, this can be a disconcerting experience. Is it going to fit together right? Am I going to have to make an on-the-fly decision about something? Painting might happen when the pieces are in place and assembled, with some things pre-painted outside. It’s like watching a cubist sculpture become a realistic house in a matter of days.

That is what is exciting about theatre, in the end. During load in, the cubist sculpture of elements converges to become a full-size creation of that first scale model. It distinguishes it from TV and film and many other forms of media. You just can’t cheat, or stop audiences from seeing parts of scenery. Working with real pieces in a space that is viewed from all angles, with different levels and colors of light coming from different places.

Once that actor steps out onto that stage in costume, all of those choices and thoughts, conversations, sketches, and droplets of paint are transformed into an environment.

Last year, Sean Murray asked me to work with him on Sweeney Todd.  It was our seventh production together.  Working with Sean and co-director James Vasquez was

possibly the most freeing experience that can be asked of a designer for a musical theatre setting: we threw out all preconceived notions of the staging, we started from scratch and found our own voices in the piece.

And I discovered that doing a musical on a thrust stage means that, despite the amount of decorative flourishes I may apply to a setting, my eye always becomes inexorably riveted to the performer.  Out there on that thrust surrounded on three sides by a rapt audience, and commanding a story.  In one breathless moment, I can forget about everything I’ve been hired or trained to do as a designer, as I sit back and watch energy flow.

Being asked to design a stage setting for Cabaret can seem, like reinventing the architecture of Sweeney Todd, a daunting task. Certainly, a young designer can feel overshadowed by images of Boris Aronson’s original painterly and expressive setting, or Robert Brill’s radical departure from this in the 1993 Donmar Warehouse tour-de-force, which then transferred to Studio 54.  The latter, more than the former, was one of our major inspirations for this current production, but do not be fooled! Much in the manner of our dealings with the blood-spattered barber, this Cabaret was to be germane to Cygnet, and to the character of the Theatre in Old Town.   And as ideas developed, we found our world take root.  I think it’s a character of its own.

There is, of course, reality to be dealt with.  We’ve got to fit a five-piece orchestra into the set somewhere, for heaven’s sake! And how do we create the pervasive spirit of the Kit Kat Club, here, at the Theatre in Old Town?  Not to mention the persistence of budget, HVAC ductwork, and tricky sightlines, but I won’t bore you with those details!

I like to start vague though.  It’s nice to trip out on ideas without consequences just yet.  Some people think you should start in ground plan, or by finding cool materials, or coming up with a metaphor (trust me, sometimes metaphors can be just a bit hard for audiences to really get).  I like to start with the drinks.  In this case the alcoholic drinks.

You heard me.  Yeah, yeah, I know about this scene in the Cabaret, when Cliff Met Sally, but what were they all drinking that night in the club? Sherry out of a decanter?  Sake?  I like to think it was a fairly heady German beer, cheap and low-quality.  The kind that leads to a mountain of headaches in the morning.  Maybe they mixed other things in their beer: like in a Berliner Weiss mit Schuss, a beer mixed with a shot of flavored sugar syrup.  The syrup tinted the beer to green (woodruff flavor), red (raspberry flavor), or yellow (lemon). The layering of something sweet and colorful masking a darker, or more bitter truth, seems fitting as an emotional statement about Cabaret.

So in designing this set, I mused, how do we go about capturing this dual quality?  We had already determined that this was not going to be the high-class, pristine Nouveau Cabaret.  Sean Murray and I spoke of the space as a secret club, a German speakeasy, underground and a bit dingy.  The location would be an abandoned theatre.  Something that still contained some semblance of a proscenium, gilded balconies, and an old wooden stage.  Perhaps rearranged so that the balcony appeared squarely shoved into the proscenium, and that there would be a second, more modern proscenium within the old outer one, that truly expressed the character of the Kit Kat Club and its inhabitants.

From this point on, the decisions followed naturally.  The elements contained within could appear to be almost found objects from an old theatre, shifted and juxtaposed to fit our purposes.  The dominant choices would become color and texture- bold carnival reds and some deep jewel tones, with an overall cast of chipped, eroded gold leaf. This was an allusion to that sugar-tinted beer drink- sweet at first, but complex and dark at the core. However, it’s all still background elements.  As a designer in Old Town, I must remind myself of the importance of that actor on the thrust- how every design choice must help to motivate the swift movement downstage.  The upper level, serving as both a place for an orchestra and a major entrance, is not prime real estate, but it allows us to create an elaborate stage picture and use the full height of the Old Town proscenium.

To start the season, we will revisit the works of Alan Ayckbourn, author of our immensely popular production of Communicating Doors. This time instead of traveling through time, we will visit the same time as seen in three different rooms, all of which get their own play! The Norman Conquests – which includes Table Manners, Round and Round the Garden and Living Together – revolve around Norman a charming library assistant, and the women in his life. Each play stands on its own, however, the fun is in seeing the entire trilogy as each play reveals unique secrets, surprising answers and loads of laughs. Directed by Artistic Director Sean Murray and Francis Gercke, The Norman Conquests will run in rep with the same six actors from July 28th through November 2nd, 2010.

For the holiday season, we are very happy to announce our fifth annual production of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry. Each year, Cygnet audiences delight in this wintertime tradition. Tom Andrew will return with his San Diego Critics Circle Award winning performance as George Bailey, and the brilliant Scott Paulson will once again infuse the evening with his live, old-fashioned Foley sound effects ‘orchestra’. For Cygnet, the holidays wouldn’t be the holidays without the fictitious “WCYG Theatre of the Air” and the classic Frank Capra story in a “live” 1940’s radio broadcast filled with music and the beloved characters of Bedford Falls. It’s a Wonderful Life runs November 26th through December 31st, 2010.

We are incredibly honored and excited to begin 2011 with the World Premiere of The Commons by Stephen Metcalfe (author of the screenplay Jacknife, based on his off-Broadway play Strange Snow). Our staged reading of this powerful work, which focuses on a retired school teacher, his wife and the threatening of their beloved home, received overwhelming response and will now receive its premiere production with the same cast. Jim Winker and Associate Artistic Director Francis Gercke headline this moving, electrifying production. The Commons will play January 20th through February 20th, 2011.

In the Spring, we invite you into the Kit Kat Club as we explore the world of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret! Set in the tumultuous city of Berlin, just before Hitler’s rise to power, and based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories”, Cabaret introduces the interlocking stories of cabaret singer, Sally Bowles; the American writer, Cliff who takes her in and the other local denizens of a quickly changing society. Sean Murray directs the dark, daring and provocative musical that won 8 Tony Awards and includes the musical numbers Willkommen, Mein Herr and Maybe This Time?. Production dates for Cabaret are March 17th through May 15th, 2011.

We will close our season at Cygnet with the Pulitzer Prize winning Our Town by Thornton Wilder. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town stunned its audience when it was first presented for its audacious, almost avant garde simplicity. Director Sean Murray, picks up from there and brings a contemporary sensibility to the staging of one of the most beautiful and moving plays ever written. Playwright Thornton Wilder (The Matchmaker) explores the essence of life and living by focusing both on the minutia of daily life’s routines and necessities as well as the larger place mankind holds on the cosmic plane of our universe. The always surprising Our Town, with its sparse, lofty stage and 23-member cast promises to take us on an exploration of our humanity. Performances for Our Town will run June 9 through July 10, 2011.

We certainly hope you will join us for our eighth go-around and look forward to seeing you at the Old Town Theatre.