Alright, so we just had our first dress rehearsal last night.  Went pretty well, except for this recurring street scene that we have.

It's a pirate themed show, so I have a lot of my main "townie" characters dressed in poor peasant blouses and pants/skirts.  There's also a shop front behind them (they own the shop).  The problem is that the shop is painted white and the peasant blouses blend right in.  There's plenty of color contrast on the other side of the stage (the dock, which is filled with crates, shipments, barrels, and a blue/black backdrop), but this shop side is just white with no depth.

I was considering mixing a very light grey paint and repainting the flats for the shop.  Alternately, I was considering mixing up a pail of dirty water (dirt + water) and washing the flats with that, just to dull down the shop front and make the characters stand out.

Any thoughts/good experience here?  The shop should look a little shabby anyway, as the entire island town is supposed to be very poor due to the ravaging pirates.

If you have lighting tips, I'd take those too, although I only have a VERY limited number of lights to work with.

I personally don't like sets that are white unless absolutely necessary. It is hard to make actors stand out. You wind up with them looking like silhouettes in many cases. I'm not a big fan of sets painted to a color that matches skin tone either.