Harpies, Deluso, and Busybody
Construction for our opera offering, “The Harpies” and “Signor Deluso” moves into week three. We finished painting the deck this past Friday, and here’s a pic of student Sam finishing up areas of the final color:
I’ve also been in conversation with director Sara Griffin regarding designs for the final production of the year, Susanna Centlivre’s Restoration comedy “The Busybody.” Sara’s been running back and forth to Chicago for some classes, as well as being under the weather this past week, so nothing has been finalized yet (though I’m supposed to turn in final drawings to the shop on Feb 14).
A major challenge of the play is balancing the needs of the interior scenes with the needs of the exterior scenes. At the moment, we appear to be heading toward a stationary facade, downstage of which interior scenes will be played. There’s also a balcony that a character leaps from onto the street. Oh, and we are planning to take the show to Whitewater’s downtown park for an afternoon matinee, so everything has to be portable and easy to breakdown and assemble.
One of the first iterations was this:
This shows the central facade with a residence on either side, and the balcony at the downstage point. A flat cityscape serves as masking (and will hide parts of the park’s pavilion). As we conversed, it morphed into this:
This version has the balcony more clearly associated with one of the houses (on stage right), which I think is better. This is where we currently stand. No doubt things will develop from here, especially once we bring in the technical director to discuss whether this idea is viable for touring.
As I wait for our director to become well, I also worked up a rough SketchUp model:
This image shows the two facades, the upstage cityscape, and furniture elements placed downstage to suggest interior spaces. At no time in the play are we in two interior spaces simultaneously.
Onward!