How I Learned to Drive images
Here you see the road signs (not yet washed out), the projection screens (white and tan rectangles—the tan ones were later replaced with white) and, in the middleground, Mary painting some fence slats.
The set, if you can call it that, consisted of what you see here plus three or four side chairs and a table or so, all shifted around as needed. And a bed/bar, the monolithic object in the center background of the photo. Allen needed a realistic bed, so we foreshortened an old innerspring and built a wagon under it. The whole affair is hidden behind the brown object, which has a thing like a doggie door that flops open when the bed is pushed forward. Rex figured out how to do it, and Andy and I engineered it. It ran so easily that no one noticed. Somebody had the clever idea of attaching pillows to the back of the door flap, so when the wagon was pushed onstage and the flap pinned up, a bed with headboard and pillows appeared.
This How I Learned to Drive was a tough show to watch. Paula Vogel's script is a perfect model of how to get the most impact out of the least resources. Bryn and Rex, as Li'l Bit and Peck, gave incomparable performances, supported by Kris, Derek and Mary as various family and friends. In the climactic scene, where grownup Li'l Bit recounts what is happening while adolescent Li'l Bit is being definitively molested by Uncle Peck, Laurin as the teller was outstanding—she said later that she had never, even in early rehearsals, turned around to see the upstage action. The scene is one I'll not forget. Nobody will. An extraordinary show.
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