Kira Nehmer: Rear Projections and Final Reflections

It’s the eve of my last day of work with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  It’s been a really great week.  I’m sad that I don’t get to finish the work that I’ve started on The Unfortunates, but I’m still learning new products and techniques on my second to last day, so it’s been a fulfilling week. 

At the beginning of the week I was out at the warehouse starching, cartooning and starting the large translucent drop.  It’s going to be a really challenging, fun project, and I’m glad that I got to touch it a little bit.  We spent about an entire day cartooning, which was good for me.  I tend to be a little slow when it comes to cartooning, so I appreciate getting to work on that skill.  I helped lay in some of the initial paint, but they are already well on their way without me after today.  I can’t wait to see photos of it finished!   

I’m ending the week working with Gabriel (the OSF charge artist) on two light boxes that are made out of Rear Projection screen.  I don’t remember ever painting on RP before.  We’ve been spraying them using tinted sealer.  Gabriel masked off our image with liquid frisket, another product that is new to me.  I’ve been extremely happy with the results- I’ve never used a product for masking that looks so organic.  It has a screen printed quality to it that works really well for the piece.  It has been a bit difficult to remove, however, so something to keep in mind for the future.  I probably won’t be able to finish this project by the end of day tomorrow, but I’m happy just to have worked with new products and with Gabriel. 

I had a meeting today to talk about my experience here and they asked me if I would recommend it to other artisans.  At the end of everything, I would.  Like any job (or life, for that matter) this experience has been full of ups and downs.  There were days when I really missed home, both my home shop and my home life.  There were days when I felt frustrated that I had to prove my skills to a new group of people, or that I didn’t know where a tool was, or that I didn’t have an understanding friend in my corner.  At the beginning of this I pointed out that self-examination is difficult.  It’s exhausting, really!  But I’ve learned so much.  I discovered that communication will always be the hardest part of the job in the theatre.  Learning how to work with co-workers is probably just as important as the scenic skills you pick up along the way.  I’ve discovered that simply being reminded of a product or technique can be just as important as learning how to use that product, how to execute that technique.  Simply being around other artists keeps one growing as an artist.  This shop is quite a bit bigger than the Rep, so I felt like I was constantly surrounded by people, constantly talking about scenic art and there were times that I wished I could just put my head down and do work, but I realized that the dialogue in itself was contributing to my growth as an artist.  It makes for long, exhausting days, but it’s been worthwhile conversation.  I’ve especially enjoyed working with OSF intern Erin.  She is so eager to learn and to hear about all of our experiences. Her enthusiasm is contagious and has been a reminder for why I’m a scenic artist and why I work so hard for theatre companies.  I look forward to working with her and so many others in the future.  Turns out that my co-worker’s prediction from week one was right: I am sad to say goodbye.  I’m happy to be going home, but I will think of OSF as my home away from home, if they’ll have me.  I have made some good friends here and I hope to keep in touch, both personally and professionally.  I am really grateful to have had the opportunity! 

Chris Perme: Greetings from DC

The past two weeks have been as tiring as they have been inspiring. 

For the second week of the DC Ballet's rental of Harman Hall, we had to strike most of the soft goods used for the first performance.  The next performance needed very minimal set pieces.  The one big piece was a GIANT red/white stripe banner that was much bigger than they thought it would be.  It was 72' long and the flyspace in the Harman was only 55' from batten to deck.  We had to fold the bottom up and tie the extra 20ish feet to the batten so that when it was flown out, it was not bunched up on the floor.  For the performance the banner needed to be flown all the way into the deck so that it could fly out slowly to represent a flag being raised during the last thirty seconds of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever".  There was a hanging star drop that represented the stars, and the stripes flew behind it.  The arbor was about 350 lbs out of weight when the piece was brought in, so it took four of us to overhaul it into the deck during intermission.  When the cue was called, I had to hang on to the wrapped purchase line and more or less "hand brake" the line as the arbor slowly came in over the course of thirty seconds.  I only had a couple rehearsals to practice the move, and I only got it right on the last three performances.  It was hard to find a good speed for the fly, and it was so hard to set up that we really only had one shot to get it right.  This made me realize that in the business of road house shows, art is fleeting.

After the final performance of the ballet, a strike crew was called in and took everything off the lines. We stripped the theater down to bare battens and deck so that the space would be ready for the shop and lighting crews to load in the “rep shows” Coriolanus and Wallenstein. I have to laugh a little bit because both shows are using the same set, and only the props and some hanging goods such as a chandelier are changed. It is nothing like the changeovers we do at OSF.  The deck is screwed down to the floor using toenailed 3" screws. They make the floor secure, but I imagine that strike will be very difficult. 

On Tuesday, I worked a screening of a documentary about Joe Papp, the man who started the "Free for All" performances in Central Park and went on to be one of the biggest names in theatre history.  After the screening, another stagehand and I cleaned the facilities and prepped for the shop to come in with their set.  The rest of the week was spent digging in to various stage operations spaces such as the tool room and paint room and cleaning the holy heck out of them.  It was very gratifying to get in there and make the spaces usable again after many years of catching dust and debris.  I was glad to leave my mark, however temporary, on this theatre.  Next week, I will send in some pictures of the set and explain the tech process here at STC.

cheers

-chris

Kira Nehmer: Help from Home

Blog 6- March 3

Since I wrote last week, we’ve been very busy at the festival.  My colleague, Sandy and I painted the main floor for The Unfortunates.  The lead scenic has been working on these beautifully textured concrete columns and other people in the shop have been working on smaller projects, mostly signs.  As a group, we were able to finish the tile floor that I wrote about last week.  At the end of the week, Sandy and I were back out at the warehouse laying out the next drop for the show, a 65’ x 18’ translucent drop.  

Floor Process

The floor that Sandy and I painted is a charred wood floor.  We used a process that I’ve used a lot over the years- I’ve used this process three times just this season at Milwaukee Rep.  We used the wood’s natural texture and color, just enhancing what was already there with a series of glazes over the top.  We added in the charring around the edges, also with washes, and then took sandpaper to some higher traffic areas to make the floor look more weathered.  

Charring

While Sandy and I were doing the floor, Pat has been texturing and painting all of the concrete columns in the show.  I was slightly disappointed not to be around while he was doing the whole process, because I am especially interested in textures.  I’ve used a lot of different products to achieve different textures, but I’ve never used what he was using: a cement-like product, cutting it with glue and water to the desired consistency.  He applied the mixture with a trowel.  He made some extra holes or areas where paint and plaster is peeling by putting craft paper underneath the texture compound and peeling it up once dried.  The resulting texture looks fantastic.  The columns practically paint themselves after such a thorough texturing.  These columns in particular are fairly aged, and all of the texture allows the paint to settle in cracks, making it look that much more dimensional and aged.  It looks really great!

On Friday Sandy and I laid out the translucent drop and started starching it.  We had a few questions about the starching: neither of us could remember the recipe off the top of our heads and we needed to make the starch in smaller batches because of available burners and buckets out at the warehouse.  The artisan exchange is working well, because I called the Milwaukee Rep’s shop and picked Jim’s brain, as he’s done countless translucent drops over the years.  He was able to answer all of our questions and we were able to get the drop starched before the end of the day.  We have a nice blank canvas to look forward to on Monday morning! 

Kira Nehmer - Scrims and drops and stencils

Blog 5- February 21, End of Week Four

The show that I’ve spent most of my time on at OSF is called The Unfortunates.  So far we’ve painted a tile floor, a large scrim, a traveling bounce drop and we’re starting another floor tomorrow. 

The tile floor process was intense.  We painted about 700 6” square masonite tiles, 400 of which had an intricate design in the middle.  When looking at the research, my instinct was to make a stencil to do the pattern, but they had other tricks up their sleeves here at OSF.  The first challenge with the pattern is that it is small and the second, that the designer wanted the pattern to be very crisp.  We were concerned that if we used a stencil the paint would bleed, so we decided to use a vinyl cutter to create stencils that would adhere to each individual square.  The vinyl cutter takes the image from the computer and then “prints” out the image by cutting it.  We then took our stencils and transferred them to transfer tape so that we could apply each stencil to the tiles, peeling away portions of the stencil as we painted on the appropriate colors.  We had problems with the vinyl peeling our base color off of the tiles, but we quickly discovered that if we sealed over the vinyl (we used Varathane Clear Satin), and then applied our color, we could easily remove the vinyl without peeling off our paint.  Because we had so many tiles to paint, we set up a little assembly line to get these done as efficiently as possible.  I had to step away from the project to paint scrims, but I’m glad that I got to see how the process worked with the vinyl.  I’ve created stencils out of a lot of different materials, but never vinyl and transfer tape.  

Tile Transfer - Tape

 

Tile Process - Peeling and Final Product

The past few days I’ve been painting scrims and drops out at OSF’s warehouse space with another scenic artist.  The scrims and drops have the same watercolor type of feel to them.  It’s a style that I’ve painted quite a bit, but I’m learning to experiment more with sprayers.  My one go-to trick with garden sprayers is to do a fine mist over everything at the end to tie things together.  I tend to be a subtle painter.  My partner in crime, however, is a bold painter, and we’ve made a good team.  I’m learning to adjust the spray more and experiment with using streams of paint, as opposed to fine mists all the time.  I’ve been really happy with the results and happy to expand my use of a tool that I use almost daily.  

The Unfortunates drop

 The Unfortunates scrim - final spray

Unfortunately I won’t be here to finish this show.  I won’t even be here when they start tech rehearsals, let alone for opening.  It’s a bit unsatisfying for me to be working on a project that I won’t see completed.  It reminds me of my freelancing days.  One of the obvious perks for me working in regional theatre is being around from start to finish, from conception to actualization of the piece of theatre.  I enjoy being able to see the shows that I’ve worked on.  

On that note, it is opening weekend here at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  I was able to see The Taming of the Shrew while it was in previews and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I have always had a hard time with the sexism in that script, but this interpretation had Petruchio meet Kate in the middle somewhere, which I appreciated, as a modern day feminist.  I was extremely impressed with the design concept and the production quality.  The design concept was 1950’s Rockabilly, which led to a very whimsical, fun show, complete with live music and incredible costumes.  I’m so glad I saw it and I hope to see the other three shows that will open this weekend before my time here ends.