Painting La Périchole

La Périchole is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach, set in Lima, Peru. (It was originally written in French--Tacoma Opera performed an English translation.) It was a big painting job!



We reused some of the painted drop cloths from Fledermaus. I worked on these at the Armory for a while, and then we moved over to the Northwest Stage warehouse.



Working on my scrubbed-stucco look. We put muslin over the seams once we got it onstage, so I had to go over a lot of it again.



Gail cuts styrofoam blocks.



Stippling. I've got the technique down but it does take a while.



A new addition at the warehouse--one of the guys in the adjacent workspace got locked in recently.



On stage at the Rialto. I didn't go on Saturday, when most of the build happened, but there was a lot of finishing-up to do in the remaining week.



Drawing brick lines with a paint pen.



Royce hangs up the picado streamers.



Styrofoam blocks for the prison scene. There's an old prisoner who breaks out of his cell only to find himself in an adjoining cell.



We put the painted drops on rolls and cranked them up and down. It worked but it was really a pain to put together. We probably won't do it that way again.



(photo by Peter Serko)

I took Kate and Tavah to the Friday performance. It's a very funny show. Marcus Shelton, who performed the fabulous routine with the mop in Fledermaus, played the role of Piquillo. He's so good at the physical comedy. Christopher Nardine directed this one too. He likes to add in a lot of extra jokes in the dialog, which the reviewer from the Tribune didn't appreciate. Marcus made a reference to this in the Friday show--"This letter sucks! Even worse than the review!"--and got a good laugh. Chris has a fun directorial style and I could tell that everyone was just having a good time with the production. Kate and Tavah both enjoyed the show. Tavah says she will have to attend more operas in the future.

Painting Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin is a Tchaikovsky opera based on a lyric novel by Alexander Pushkin.  This was Tacoma Opera's first time putting it on.  Mark, the set designer, populated the Russian countryside with birch trees which we created out of PVC--bare trunks with the suggestion of leaves projected on the screen behind.  In this photo from rehearsal we had a few of the trees in place.  (Photo by Peter Serko)



After La Boheme's difficulties, we wanted to get as much done as possible ahead of time and limit the amount of actual building happening onstage, which meant that we needed a nice big workspace. We made arrangements to use a warehouse down at the Port of Tacoma. Work began during our cold snap, and it was cold. I was painting in gloves. We brought in a little space heater. That helped.



The space belongs to Northwest Stage ("the Pacific Northwest's premier audio-visual and staging company"), and is full of interesting things.



The first day that I walked in, I saw this sign and knew I had to get a picture of it. Ha.



I spent a little too long painting the columns to look like malachite. I did the trim in gold. (This was my second time painting these columns. They were white for Fledermaus.)



Working on PVC trees. I helped wipe them down and Gail sanded them.



Troy built this rock wall and carved the rocks in pink foam, and then I got to paint it.



Striping wall. I went through a lot of tape.



Theater load-in day. We put the rock wall out in the hall so I could work on it while they locked up the theater and everyone else went to lunch. (I brought a sandwich.) That big rock in the middle is my favorite.



We had to get everything out of the warehouse, but by this time rehearsal had moved to the theater, so we took the trees over to the Armory to finish them up. Gail and our intern, Skye, put the spots on about half of them and then I did the others to match.



This production was in the Theater on the Square. I'd never been in there before. It's a small house (300 seats), and Mark was complaining about the sight lines onstage, but it's a nice theater to work in.



More trees!



Kevin arranges trees onstage.



I went to the Friday night performance with Anne Marie and Mimi. I told Doug, "I'm off to be Russian and depressing!" and he said, "Enjoy yourself!" The first half was more light-hearted and then it got rather bleak. The orchestra had some issues, and the chorus got badly off-tempo during their first number, but the other singing and acting were fabulous (the leading lady was especially delightful). We had a fun night out.



The trees looked awesome!

They announced next year's lineup. Noel had already talked to me about doing The Marriage of Figaro for their 50th anniversary, and I found out that after that they're doing Carmen. That's so exciting! I've been hoping to see Carmen since I started this job. Looking forward to it!

Palette Knife Painting and La Bohème

It's not just sets, anymore--for La Bohème I got to paint a prop. The character of Marcello is an artist, and works on a painting of the red sea. The set designer gave me a sketch of big red waves on an ocean with a woman's face in it.  The canvas was small enough that I was able to work on it at home, up against the half-wall in the living room where we get pretty good light.



After getting this far I decided that it needed to be done with a palette knife. I've never done this before. I didn't even have a palette knife. I picked up a cheap plastic set.



I've discovered that I really enjoy palette knife painting. It's fast and bold, and makes fun textures. I was pretty happy with this, but Linda (the director) said that the face was too obvious, so I took it back home to tweak it a bit more.



In the opera lyrics, we're told that Marcello keeps trying to paint other things and then they turn into Musetta's face. Nobody told me this to begin with (I think I probably would have approached it a little differently), but it turned out all right. Linda was happy with it, anyway. It only has to look good from forty feet!



There was a lot of set painting to do, too.  We're back in the rehearsal space at the Armory. It's gone through some cosmetic changes, but of all the spaces that I've worked in it's the most familiar.



Tracing out big sandstone blocks. I made a foam board template.



Anne Marie came with me one day, and I put her to work painting seam lines on wood paneling.



I got a plastic stencil blank and made myself a brick stencil. When I arrived at the Rialto for load-in and there wasn't anything ready for me to paint on stage yet, I spent a few hours painting bricks out in the lobby.



I will remember this as definitely the most hectic and exhausting set construction that I've been through. Tony and Rosy retired and bought a house in Mexico, so Tony's carpentry role was filled by somebody else (who was familiar with the process but hadn't worked in that specific capacity), who found himself rather over his head and then got sick. So there was a lot of scrambling and everybody jumping in to help out, and lots of long hours. This pic was taken on the day of dress rehearsal. Now, we've never been completely finished before dress rehearsal, but we've never been this far behind. It was crazy.



Kevin and Royce paint window mullions.  Everyone was super helpful.



I added some smoke damage to the bricks above the fire place. That turned out really well. (I probably would have done more if I'd had time!)  The set is reversible--the back side is one big long stretch of sandstone blocks, which I never did get a picture of, since it was always on the back side and the lighting was horrible, but that's what I spent the most time on. Lots of ladder work, at the end. On opening night I was at the theater for about eight hours, painting like crazy. And then I went home and crashed.

In the past I understand that the opera did run for two weekends, but since I've started it's always been just final dress rehearsal Wednesday, opening night Friday, and matinee Sunday. This year they decided to try doing two weekends again, so we had final dress Thursday, opening night Saturday, and then two more performances the following Friday and Sunday. And since Doug has evening class this quarter (again), I begged tickets for Friday instead of final dress. As it turned out, having a week to recover in between made a huge difference. I was not completely wiped out the next day. So it seems it's not the late night and the excitement and the Rialto's uncomfortable seats that are so exhausting, it's the week of painting before that. Whew!



I went with Anne Marie and Erica and we had a great time. None of us had ever seen La Bohème before. I've seen it described as one of the most beloved operas, which I didn't quite get--we found the plot a bit thin--but the music was sublime and the performers truly amazing.

Käthe Kollwitz and The Threepenny Opera

Tacoma Opera finished out their season with a production of The Threepenny Opera. This was a very different set from anything else that I've worked on.  Noel gave me five drawings by Käthe Kollwitz
to reproduce on big panels, to display along the back of the set. The opera was written in 1928 in Germany (between the wars), and its themes of social criticism are nicely illustrated by Kollwitz's depictions of poverty and oppression.



For this show we had the use of an empty office building downtown (owned by the man who owns the Armory, I hear).  Doug checked out a laptop and projector from school, and I used that to trace the images onto the panels. I've never tried reproducing anything like this in paint before, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but it turned out to be surprisingly quick and easy. The fact that they were (mostly) sketchy and imprecise helped a lot.  I ended up just dry-brushing everything, and it looked just like sketchy pencil lines.



This was the one piece that was not sketchy pencil lines--more of a cross-hatch pen-and-ink technique, which was a lot more complicated to reproduce. I'm glad they weren't all like that!



I thought the girl in profile was looking a little too Dr. Seuss-y, so when Anne Marie came painting with me one day, I got her to take a look at it and figure out what it needed. (Doug often gets to fill this role when I work on things at home--it helps to have a second pair of eyes.)



Anne Marie dry-brushing stairs.  The rest of the set was all weathered gray wood.



Photo by Kate (she was having stomach pains and came with me instead of going to school that day).



This was a really nice space. There was plenty of room to spread out all my painting stuff and not get in the way of rehearsals. (It did get a bit hot and stuffy on sunny days, but other than that it was awesome.)  The ceilings were nice and high, too, so I didn't have to worry about whacking anything when turning a panel over.  They were looking for a new tenant, though, so I guess we won't be able to use it again. Alas!

Theater load-in started on a Friday instead of Saturday this time, and I was actually not painting up until the last minute on the day of dress rehearsal. There was still a lot to do, painting and dry-brushing the scaffolding that they put together, and painting the undersides of the higher platforms black so they wouldn't be glaringly visible from the audience. It was kind of a noisy set, with people running up and down the different levels, but Tony put some carpet on the higher platforms and that helped.



Photos by Peter Serko.



(That's Johann in the back.)



I went to the opening night show with Mary McGiffin and Erica Davis (Anne Marie went to a Sherman Alexie book signing and couldn't come). Mary has been to four of my six operas with me, but it looks like this was our last together, since they just found out that they're moving to Spokane. So sad! I will miss my opera buddy!



I wasn't completely familiar with the storyline, but I knew that it was pretty dark and gritty. If I were going to sum up the theme, I would say it's about how morality goes out the window when people are starving. This definitely isn't one to take kids to.  The cast did a fabulous job and everything looked amazing. 

I got to paint all three shows this season! Now I shall fill my summer with other projects.