The Trip to Bountiful images
Two things gratify me about this show. First, Marie's design is very much to my taste. She worked within the real constraints and ignored the imaginary ones.
The real constraints have to do with how many concrete blocks they used when they built the playhouse: Wing space is 4 feet 9 inches per side and won't get bigger, the grid over the stage is 12 feet 6 inches high and won't grow any higher, and whenever you add a scene-shifter to the crew you must add a spot where that person can sit when not shifting scenes.
The imaginary constraints are the ones many amateur directors think they have to live with: the requirement for a box set, the inability of your audience to comprehend a picture that isn't fully realistic and three-dimensional, the dissonance of a design mixing realistic and abstract elements.
About 18 months ago Fran brought me home a library book, The Shapes of Our Theatre [sic] by Jo Mielziner, in which the great designer protests against wrong applications of "literal realism" on the stage. He says that certain economies can pay off for both the production and the audience: The designer must consider which parts of the stage picture (he says "expressive elements") the people watching the show can fill in or simply accept as not represented. The pieces that are present must be right; abstract does not mean freeform or sloppy, and realistic does imply a high degree of detail in the pieces. The demands on craft don't become less stringent just because a certain wall gets a suggestive cloud treatment or a door unit has to reverse itself and turn into a sash window.
Marie understands this ideal better than I do. Her design for Bountiful passes every check on Mielziner's list. It was a treat to get to work on it.
The second gratifying thing about this production is how well it is done. (Seats for the second weekend, June 28 to July 1, are still available as I write this. Call 706 208 8696 for reservations. It's going to be a tough ticket, though.)
I don't like writing reviews of my friends, and though it pains me not to tell you how fine each performer was, I'll stick to that practice. The show is well worth a visit to the playhouse, enough said.
The photo up at the top of this page shows Marie dressing the old house at Bountiful on the day before opening. (Who knew that the makers of silk flowers also market silk weeds?) When the curtain opened for Act 3, even I was stunned by the beauty and simplicity of the piece. Bobby gets a gold star on his chart for engineering and building the house. And the crew gets perfect marks too, for finishing the change from Act 2 to 3 in the announced three minutes.
The second photo, also made the day before the show went up, looks like a shambles, and that is pretty accurate, because it was the day before the show went up. You can see units from Act 1 (the bed—repaired a few minutes earlier after its ingenious carriage twisted around and cracked a leg—and assorted furniture piled on it), Act 2 (the green door units from the Houston bus station, with the re-engineered directional signs—you'd think little magnets would be the modern choice, but those didn't work and we went back to 19th-century nails), and Act 3. The stump and woodpile to the left of center incorporate real, well-aged local tree material, and at the end of the play Carrie delves into the base and spills real topsoil on the stage. Also visible in the left foreground is the tool that becomes most vital as the set construction and dressing process winds down, a long-handled dustpan.
| Previous image | Image index | First image |
| Approved Ben Teague web site |
 |
Images