Happy Saturday or How to Keep Up Morale When Nothing Else is Going Right

Fired. I am fired. From writing about my career and thus thinking deeply about it. There is really no excuse, but let me tell you a a little bit about why I haven't written since November.

Do you recall that production of The Cherry Orchard that I was working on in the summer? Well, for reasons I still do not fully understand, I faced a battle to get paid my fee when everything was done. I did, in fact, get paid (Hallelujah!) but it really put a damper on my feelings about working in theatre. The occurrence called into question the integrity of the field and the economic viability. And since then I've been thinking of a way to talk about the situation without 1. whining or 2. bad-mouthing the whole experience and possibly getting sued for libel. I wanted to write up a post about contracts and wording for contracts, but, as is obvious from the situation I faced, I have no clue about designer contracts. (I didn't ever sign one-- yes, yes, I know!) And then I wanted to write about artists supporting each other and everyone being open and honest when financials don't measure up, but, well, since I don't understand what happened, again, I didn't want to possibly get in trouble with libel. Combined with the rather rude comment I got on my post about sewing made me just feel like there was no good to come out of this field right now.

And then fast-forward to my life right now, and, well, things have been looking bleak.

That's why I've made a concerted effort to look on the bright side of things. Because of this, I'm bringing back the blog (especially after reading The Pioneer Woman's "Ten Things I've Learned About Blogging") and a tradition I started when I was trying to decide on a pie recipe for Thanksgiving: "Happy Saturday." Basically, when I was trying to find the right recipe for a Turkey Day Apple Pie, I had to test them out. But I didn't want to eat lots of pie. So after one successful Friday night of pie-baking, I brought half of the pies to work at CTC for the cast/crew/whoever was in the building. I wrote a note with a description of the pies: "Happy Saturday!" Because, let's be honest, working on Saturday stinks. I baked pretty regularly on Friday evening (who can go out partying when you have to be at work the next morning and either use power tools or at least paint within the lines?) and brought in a portion of the goodies to work Saturday morning. And, not surprisingly, the company members at CTC started to look forward to this little ray of sugary delight at the theatre on Saturdays. After Christmas I decided to stop because, well, it does cost me money and time. And people were sad. Combined with the very arduous task of our annual Fund Drive and our bleak financial situation, I needed to resurrect my baking. And so "Happy Saturday" returned this past weekend with Cranberry-Orange Coffee Cake and Apple-Cinnamon Coffee Cake. It was a rousing success. This time I put out a donation can so that people can help pay for the treats if they can, and, well, along with the compliments for the goodies, I got some money to help offset the tradition. And it's awesome. I'm happy to be back in the kitchen as it were, and I know that it's something everyone enjoys looking forward to.

This is all to say, I'm glad I can bring some good to my place of work, especially when I could just be a dark, doom-and-gloom rain cloud. This is not to say that things are peachy and I'm happy with all of the decisions being made by management, but I want to make sure my peers--my company--have some happy in their lives. So, here's to an awesome tradition and pictures of last week's Happy Saturday treat and recipes from The Joy of Cooking:

Apple-Cinnamon Coffee Cake

 

Cranberry-Orange Coffee Cake

Have all ingredients at room temp.
Preheat the oven to 350°
Grease a 9-inch square baking pan or a 9-inch spring form pan

Combine
.5 c sugar
2 T all-purpose or rice flour
2 T unsalted butter
Blend until crumbly then add
.5 t cinnamon
(.25 to .5 c of nuts if you'd like)
This is your streusel topping. Set aside.

Whisk together:

1.5 c of flour
1.25 c of sugar
2 t baking powder
.5 t baking soda
.25 t salt
(1 t cinnamon for Apple Cake)

Beat well in a large bowl:
1 c sour cream
2 lg eggs
(1 T grated orange zest for Cranberry-Orange Cake)

Add the dry ingredients and beat until just smooth. Overbeating tends to toughen the cake. Spread batter in the greased pan.

Add

2.5 c dried cranberries or diced, peeled apples (depending on type of cake)


Sprinkle with streusel.
Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Enjoy with your awesome friends!

Good Theatre & Teaching Philosophy All Rolled Into One

I wrote this recently and while it is a little less polished than it should be, I had a lot of revelations about my thoughts on theatre and teaching theatre that I think are important to share.

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As a working theatre artist, my philosophy on teaching is deeply intertwined with my philosophy about theatre as an institution. Thus, let me quickly outline my thoughts on what makes good theatre.

First, good theatre is truly collaborative. By this I mean it is more than a few artists coming together to make one artistic piece. True theatrical collaboration is about a few artists coming together to influence each other’s work and input in creating one cohesive artistic piece. In order to do this, a scenic designer must not only welcome suggestions from the lighting designer about, say, what material is used to build the set in order to facilitate an interesting look scenically and through light, but also know enough to suggest specific alternative footwear to the costume designer if the deck poses trouble for an actor who is supposed to appear barefoot. Furthermore, I believe truly collaborative theatre allows the designers to work alongside, rather than subordinately, with the director so that all ideas can and will be considered.

Second, good theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line. While it is important to create a product that will garner recognition enough to get the proverbial “bums in seats,” theatre cannot be an example of “the ends justify the means.” Theatre is an art form that has allowed countless playwrights, directors, designers, actors, and audience members explore society from new and engaging ways. When we answer “Why are we doing this show?” with answers like “It is a crowd-pleaser” or “It will make money” we are not doing the art justice. As theatre artists we must engage with the production from start to finish, finding the important reasons to tell any story, from Oklahoma! to Orpheus Descending, from The Cherry Orchard to The Little Mermaid. Furthermore, theatre is a living, breathing art-form. It changes in the design, rehearsal, and performance process because of the many different people—including the audience—that are a part of making it happen. Good theatre and good theatre-artists recognize that not only are the public performances important, but also the journey from conceptualization to realization.

Lastly, good theatre is vital to our society. Sadly, theatre’s popularity is rapidly dwindling in the face of the instant, often-free media offered up by our ever-wired life in the twenty-first century. Too often theatres face concerns over the rising age of their dwindling audiences. Nevertheless, as theatre artists we know that theatre is important. Why else would we be in the business? But, more than that, good theatre is important. As hinted above, it is easy to look at theatre as merely a money-making operation and pander to many audience’s desires to be transported from their mundane lives by special effects and happy endings. While there are some truly remarkable plays and productions that do happen to have those elements, more often than not, much of that theatre is Peter Brook’s definition of deadly theatre. Historically accurate, devoid-of-life productions of Shakespeare for the Canon’s sake. Ridiculous farces that make the audience laugh but leave them with hardly a new thought in their head about life. But good theatre, vital theatre, is more often the spark that reignites the people’s passion for our art. Productions of August: Osage County, Ruined, Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, The Lion King, to name a few, all brought audiences back to the theatre through gripping stories or amazing theatrical magic (or both). And all of those productions of good theatre proved to artists and audiences alike that good theatre is a vital, unmatched way of dissecting and understanding our world. Only through this live, collaborative art form can the audience commune in real-time with living, breathing, nearby people on and off stage. Through these types of productions theatre becomes, even for an instant, important again.

Now, how does this translate into my teaching philosophy? Do I envision myself using my role as teacher and mentor to grandstand about these points on theatre? No. My passion to be an artist who makes and takes part in good theatre drives me to be an inspiring and demanding teacher of theatre. I want to give my students the tools to define good theatre for themselves and know how they can contribute to that theatre if they choose to pursue it as a career.

Theatre as a collaborative art form is most directly applicable to my work as a teacher. While I was more than content to work solo on projects during my time as a student, group work and discussions allowed me to grow the most as a critical thinker and artist. As a teacher I translate my desire to bounce ideas off of people into encouragement of a collaborative way of learning and, thus, creating art. As a design professor I envision projects that mimic the collaborative process of designing with 2 (or more) other designers and even a director. This teaches students about the process of designing, and encourages a growth in communication and public-speaking skills. It also can create the space for students to learn about very important traits as a collaborative artist: humility and compromise. Undergraduate theatre students often have the most exciting ideas about art (because they don’t know what is “impossible” yet) but also have the most challenges either overcoming or building up their egos. A good theatre teacher will nurture the exciting possibilities that the untested artist brings to the table while identifying which students need to learn how to step back and those that need encouragement to step forward in sharing ideas about a given project.

My second assertion that theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line is more in line with my philosophy on (theatre) education as a whole. It speaks to the question of what is more important, the process or the product. Many of the educational institutions I have had contact with have struggled with this concept. It is easy to say on paper that the theatre department is committed to the process of putting on a show, but, when push comes to shove, the product takes precedence over the process because of ticket sales or institutional oversight. I firmly believe that my role as a theatre teacher and mentor is to highlight the process as a learning opportunity for the student as student and as artist. In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp asserts that the best productions for her have been critical failures because she learned the most from them as an artist. Through critical evaluation of the artistic work during and after the process, I wish to instill in young artists critical thinking both for their own, their peers’, and their mentors’ work. As well as encourage them to see that the act of making art is as vital as the final artistic product.

Furthermore, as a woman in a male-dominated area of theatre with an underprivileged childhood, I personally have struggled to define what the process of design is for me. As a teacher I not only expose my students to the traditional design process as discussed by the forefathers of design (Robert Edmund Jones, Adolph Appia, Lee Simonson), but also encourage students to define their own process based on how they artistically interpret and experience space. During my time at UNCG I was fortunate enough to read and discuss new design pedagogy, including that of veteran theatre professor Richard Isaacks of UT Austin. He has challenged the script as the sole jumping off point for design, instead creating exercises that force students to create the visual narrative and then apply it to the written word. As an artist I’ve challenged myself to break out of the process in this way with great and eye-opening results. As a teacher I aim to challenge my students to approach design from every angle and to question not only what they are choosing but why they are choosing it to represent the world of the play. This ties directly into my paper on the intersection of feminist theory and the design process, which is less about a gendered approach to design but more about the individual’s response and synthesis of their world into the picture created for the stage and what role that plays in creating meaning for the actors and the audience.

Finally, as a student of theatre for seven years I was painfully aware of the professors that no longer cared about our art. I worked with professors who had been in academic theatre for so long that they were out of touch with the current trends in theatre and only viewed the art form through an academic lens. While academic theatre can be vital, it is often too bounded by curriculum and community desires to challenge its audiences and artists. As a theatre teacher I believe it is important to continue to work professionally. This not only allows me to continue to grow as an artist, but keeps me up to date with artistic and thematic trends that my students will face as they pursue a career in theatre. I aim to mentor them on their theatre, not merely my own.

Sew, This is What You Have To Do

My apologies for the silly pun in the title, but how could I help it? What is this blog entry about: sewing. Specifically, the importance of being able to sew if you are a scenic designer/painter/carpenter/prop master. Yes, seriously, even if you have a penis.

So I learned to sew from my mom when I was young. She actually sewed me clothes and costumes and barbie outfits. Yep, my mom is pretty awesome. This is her the spring after I was born (it's the most readily available picture I have of her and I like it):

I never really thought much of sewing until I got to college where I had to sit through the "costume" portion of stage crafts. Basically, we sewed on some closures (button, hook and eye, skirt hook, etc) and learned to use the sewing machines and serger. I was pretty proud of my ease with all that, and low-and-behold, after successfully completing Intro to Stagecrafts, I got a job in the costume shop. And my knowledge of basic sewing blossomed into the awesome power to whip stitch, cut patterns, and be awesome. Yeah, that's right, working in the costume shop makes you awesome. (I apparently like the word awesome tonight.)

Even when I transitioned into the scene shop at Grinnell, I kept working in the costume shop because I was a work study student and I wanted to work anywhere but the dining hall. This lead to an tell-tale event my junior year. I was assigned to assist a visiting scenic designer. I had not met him until the first production meeting, which was at 4:30pm on some weekday, after my weekly shift in the costume shop. Before the meeting, I was happily hand-sewing a strip of fabric to the inside of a kimono collar. I had about 5 inches to go and the meeting was just down the hall from the costume shop, so I figured why not take the project with me and finish sewing while all the grown ups talked about the show. During the introductions, the scenic designer shook my hand and said, "I see that you can sew." He had a bit of a glint in his eye, and the next day I found out that my primary job as his assistant would be to hand sew the tatami mats (we were doing a Japanese play, can you tell?). I never set foot into the theatre during the entire process because he kept sending me down to the costume shop to sew props. I am still a little bitter about it, mostly because it was my first assist on a scenic design and I really didn't do much scenically.

However, since then I have put my sewing skills to great use in a non-costume way. From building a crazy quilt for a production of Intimate Apparel:

To sewing 6 32'x5' lenghts of white polyester together to create "Antarctica" for Angels in America:

To repairing a scrim after an actor rammed a piece of scenery right into it during a performace.

But other than being able to put my sewing skills to good use, my knowledge of sewing and fabric and even costume construction means that I can make better decisions as a scenic designer. For instance, when I came up with the idea for Pericles last year, I was drawing upon my experience with the variety of fabrics I had worked with in creating dresses and flowing costumes. I could articulate how the design of fabric panels spoke to the costume designer's ideas about Diana's costume. Overall, I would not have felt so confortable including such a dramatic design element without the knowledge that my years of sewing for pleasure and theatre had taught me.

This is all to say that, be you male or female, learn to sew! And stop complaining about it. Right now I am working at a theatre where I am a team of two in the scene shop. So when I designed a creepy tree branch border/leg combo, it's on me to make that happen. No problem! And, it hasn't been. I went and picked up the fabric and sewed the two pieces together, and tomorrow I will cut the branches out and attach some bird netting as a cheaper stand in for scenic netting. Yeah. All because my mom taught me how to sew a button when I was five. Thanks mom!

Mermaid's Horatio and Such

I am fired. So unbelievably fired. My only excuse for not having written since my last post is that I'm just tired and worn out and there are things I want to talk about but cannot in a public forum. One day, promise, but for now, things are better left unsaid.

So, what have I been up to? Well, The Cherry Orchard is over and done with and I'm trying to get CTC's The Little Mermaid ready to open on Monday. OMG, on Monday. And then I have a week to do all the stuff for CTC's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... oy vey. Things for Mermaid have been going well. I carved a statue for the show. Yes, see the pictures below of Horatio in progress:

Step One, Draw him out on pink foam.

Step two, Cut out his basic form.

Step Three, Start to carve on the Z-axis... and freak out a bit.

Step Five, Continue to carve and question what you're doing.

Step, um, nine? Chisel his face with a hot knife and make him look weird... Are those Mick Jager's lips?

Look! He's done! And still slightly pink. But you can see how he turned out. :) These two lovely friends of his are Brendan North as the Prince and Sarah Thermond as The Little Mermaid.

Here is a picture of part of the set:

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the show. The crunch of time and energy has been trying, but that's what theatre is all about. And, damn, designing for a touring show is hard. :( But I suppose I will get the hang of it. I hope so, because otherwise the rest of the season at CTC is going to feel like a constant up hill battle. And, for reasons best unsaid, I'm very done with uphill battles in theatre.

I just want to work in this business I love, creating amazing art in a collaborative way, and with people that are generous and awesome. Sure, things go wrong; we're only human. But let's not stab each other in the back. Okay? Thanks. More blog updates soon. Maybe even something of substance... I'm working on it. ;)

Work Where You Live & Live Where You Work

Okay, The Cherry Orchard opened on Friday and I have finally been able to stop driving to and from Martinez. The one thing I realized during this process is that commuting to and from theatre is not fun, especially when you are the only crew and you are holding down another job.

This was my commute

View Larger Map

It takes 1 hour 14 minutes according to Google, but really, it's an hour. But when you add in traffic... one day it took me almost 2.5 hours to get there. And on the way home I had to stop at a sketchy gas station, at midnight, to get gas because I wasn't sure I would make it home otherwise. Not cool.

So, while it might seem great to get a professional gig and some extra money, I think when I factor in what I spent on gas and the amount of years shaved off my life from the stress, was it worth it? Probably not. And despite realizing this during the project, I had made a commitment to the show and what's done is done. So I put in my all, or as much of my all as I could spare as I got back to work at CTC and chalked it up to a lesson learned.

Next up: CTC's The Little Mermaid. I have had some trouble wrapping my head around making a touring set, but I'm going to make it happen. And it will be great! Pictures to come after final approval tomorrow.

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For those of you who may not have seen them on Facebook: Some photos from my phone of The Cherry Orchard & process for the cyc:

Raw Materials for the cyc.

One garland done.

Many garlands hanging in my window.

First part of the install... I did not have enough, even with the store-bought ones added in.

Not quite done, but you can see where it was going.

Pretty much done, though there was still work to finesse some stuff.

Making Prop Money

Okay, one of my biggest pet peeves as a designer and as an audience member is prop money. I don't know if it is because it's just left to the last minute or proppers assume that the 30 foot rule will absolve them of all sins, but too many times I see prop money the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong everything. And, yes, I'm likely a bit pickier than your average audience member, but you could have a numismatist sitting in the audience. (Yes, go look it up.)

The first thing to consider when setting out to make realistic prop bills is color and size. I find that the worst prop money I've seen on stage is often the wrong color, even American Bills have a specific kind of green. And European bills, while not always a known entity to your audience, have a certain look (often more colorful) and are bigger than we're used to (well, unless it is the Euro, then it's pretty much the same size).

The reason I am thinking about this is that I just finished a bundle of rubles for The Cherry Orchard and had to go in search of some images that would work for turn of the century Russian money. But Google-searching for an image of a Russian Ruble is not as easy as so many of my generation seem to think it is. As is with any image you want to print rather than see on your screen, you must must must pay attention to the size and resolution of the image. How many times have you taken a picture off the internet that seems big enough, only to print it out and it be the size of a postage stamp. Or all pixelated and ugly. That, my friends, is because of the resolution of the image. So, here are a few things to know and do when making prop money:

1. Get a hold of the real thing. Yes, if you can scan a real bill, you are in luck. Scan it with a high resolution (pixels per inch). At least 150 dpi, but if you can, go up to 300 dpi. This is the magic number that graphic designers for print like because it gives them enough pixels per inch to resize, but isn't so big that the computer freaks out about the file size.

2. If you don't have the actual bill, by all means, do an image search. But PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIZE of the image. Do this: Google image search "Russian Ruble." You will probably get this picture as your first result:



When you moused over it, more info should have popped up that told you what size the source image is. In this case "700 x 303" . That means that the image is 700 pixels by 303 pixels. Sounds pretty good (and if you follow the link and then right click "show image in new screen" you can see that it is a pretty good-sized image.) But, you are not out of the woods yet. If you copy the image into a photo-editing program, like Photoshop, you will have even more info to determine whether this image is worthwhile.

3. Once you save the image (right click>save as) open it in Photoshop. Go to Edit>Image size. Look at the info that is there. There will be a place where it tells you the resolution, at the bottom of the dialogue box.



The number in that box tells you how clear and crisp your picture will be when you print it. (Okay, little known fact to non-computer geeks and graphics people of the web: your computer monitor of non high-def fame will display beautiful, crisp images with a DPI as small as 72. And the lower your DPI, the smaller your file. So most web people [and programs that compress images for people who don't know what they are doing] save their images to be published on the web at 72 DPI. Do not let the pixels on the screen fool you.) Okay, so you now know that this image has a 72 DPI... is all lost? Not necessarily.

4. The next thing you need to worry about is the printable dimensions of your money. Look at the size of the image, which is just above your DPI in inches and a little further above in pixels.



Now, you need to know or decide what size your bills need to actually be. Because if your bills need to be 9" x 4", then you're going to have super pixelated bills on stage. But if you're making these for a performance where the nearest audience member is thirty feet away, that might be okay. However, if you want an image for your bill that isn't going to look like a weird Magic Eye puzzle, then you need to find a better image.

5. So, google images has come a long way in the last few years and now it allows you to sort through images by size as well as relevance. So if you go back to your original google image search of "Russian Ruble" you'll see on the left side options to choose size. Obviously, click on "Large" rather than "Any size" because Bigger is Better! In this case, I'm going to talk about the fourth image result:



Because it has a very important element that you may not have thought about when planning to make your prop money: The back of the bill. Yes, money is two sided. And yes, you should strive to have the matching artwork for the same bill on both sides of your prop bill. Obviously, you are not always so lucky, so you can fake it with two different bill images and some time spent in Photoshop, but let's assume you get as lucky as I did and get a large enough digital image of both sides of your bill. Hooray!

6. So, download it and open it in your image software and look at your image size. What do you see?




Yep, that's right, the resolution is 72 DPI. But what else do you see? The dimension of the image is 12"x12". I don't know about you, but a 12" long bill seems a little beyond the large scale of European bills. For whatever reason, when this image was created, it was compressed to 72 DPI, but the image dimensions blew up. This means if you printed it out on your printer, it would be bigger than sheet of paper but be pixelated. And this will work in your favor.

6. You can change the resolution of an image like this (where the actual dimensions are much larger than the dimensions you need but the resolution is too low). Do that. Type in 300 into the resolution box instead of 72. You'll notice that the pixel size changed (because you've told the computer that per square inch, you want to have 300 pixels, not 72... this is not hard math). But before you close the box, you also have to change your width dimension. In this case, I changed it to 7" because I feel like that will give me the right size bill (give or take some centimeters). Note: you only have to change either the height or the width dimension because Photoshop assumes that you want to proportionately scale your image, and so it links them and changes them as you like.



7. Okay, now that you've done this, you're ready to crop your images so that you will have two different documents, one with the front of your bill and one with the back. If you don't know how to do this, get Photoshop for Dummies. And now, all you have to do is create two identical-sized images in, one of the back and one of the front, that you can print back to back on a piece of paper. When you cut apart these two sides of the bill you can actually print two bills per page, so I ended up stacking my fronts and backs:



(PS. I changed the DPI for this image to 72 because otherwise it would have taken an hour to upload. So, don't try to cheat and use it.)

8. With two images, one front and one back, you just have to do one simple thing: print one side of the image in photo shop (don't worry about resizing the image or canvas to match your paper size because Photoshop is cool and will automatically center your image, and you want it to do that because when you print on the other side of the paper, your back image will be automatically centered). Once you print the first side, flip over, rotate, whatever it is you need to do with your printer to print on the backside so you get a double sided piece of prop money which, once you cut away the paper border, looks awesome.

A few final thoughts:

REPLACE YOUR INK CARTRIDGES! I worked on a production once where the American dollar bill used to create the bills on stage was printed with a printer that was running out of color ink. The bills looked teal. Check your colors, please. Especially when you're trying to duplicate American Money.

NULL AND VOID THE BILL! You can see on the example image I used it has a big ol' stamp that says "Speciman" and the web address of the company I pulled it from. The company that uploaded it did that so no one could try to counterfeit with it. If you come across an image (or you scan your own bill) that does not have a watermark on it, put something on it that, when the Feds look closely at your fake bills, won't lead anyone to think you were trying to get rich quick with your Canon printer and Google image search. I knew one prop designer who changed the blurb about the American bill being legal tender into a statement that said the "bill" was intended for theatrical use only. DO THIS! It saves your butt! Especially with American currency.




AGE YOUR MONEY! Have a big party while you're watching TV where you crumple up ever last bill that you've cut down and then uncrumpled them (unless you need crumpled bills) because, trust me, unless you have to have crisp bank bills (and I hope you don't because those are really hard to replicate) your crumpled and then uncrumpled bill will look so much more realistic (and it breaks down the paper you printed it on because, well, printer paper and the paper they print money on is different. Go figure.).




USE PARCHMENT PAPER! Go to the office supply store, go to the resume and nice paper section, buy a box of parchment paper. Trust me. The base paper of any bill around the world is not 92bright copy paper. It is usually fiber based and off-white. Save yourself the tea-staining headache and start with an off-white paper that already has some texture to it. Trust me.

Any questions? Let me know and I'd be happy to help.

The Blossom Cyc or Reality vs. The Dream

Okay, so I haven't updated for a while not because I've been putting it off but because I've been hunched over a sewing machine making paper flower garlands for The Cherry Orchard. This past weekend I had made enough (9) in order to determine what I thought I would need in order to complete a 20' curtain. By my estimation: 125 garlands total. And I have been completing about 3-7 a day. Yeah, you do the math and say what I said: Ummmm, what was I thinking?

So, the reality of the situation is while I'd like to make an entire 20' curtain made up of my garlands:



I have to supplement what I've done with something prefabricated. I think I've found some options, though the colors are wrong wrong wrong. And with all this paper I fear that the set is going to burst into flames... But whatever.

Then today I came across a blog post about a flower curtain which is a far more remarkable version of what I envisioned, but still awesome:


No Betweens, 1996, sculpture | silk, cotton, polyester, and thread, by Jim Hodges

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/20917##ixzz1XPwk0R23
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


And it is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art!

Anyway, what this all boils down to is that, while I wish I had more time and more labor and more money in order to create this curtain of flowers like this image (and maybe it is a good thing I didn't see this image until after I'd started in this vein), it's the sad truth about theatre that the artistic vision is often watered down due to the lack of those things. Nevertheless, I have faith that my design for The Cherry Orchard will rock socks, if and when it gets built. :)