Closed Topics: Dearly Departed

Print Page | Close Window

Dearly Departed

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Archives
Forum Name: Closed Topics
Forum Discription: Uncategorized posts from the previous version of our discussion board. For browsing and searching.
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1426
Printed Date: 6/08/25 at 4:13am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Dearly Departed

Posted By: Sammy Coleman
Subject: Dearly Departed
Date Posted: 6/11/05 at 1:36am

Hello all! Well, I've agreed to direct a play next season at our local community theater (before reading the play, mind you.). The play is "Dearly Departed" - hilarious!!! I think I will truly enjoy this experience. However, I am worried about being able to design a set with 18 scene changes! If anyone has participated, or read and may have ideas, about the set design of this play, please provide. Any suggestions/feedback will be deeply (no pun intended) appreciated. Thank you!!!

Replies:

Posted By: Aimee
Date Posted: 6/13/05 at 12:56pm

Having not read that play, I can only offer some general advice.

Do you NEED all those scene changes? If you can get by with less, you'll be better off. If you do need all of them, make them simple. you don't have to have a complete room to get the idea acrooss that you are in a living room or outside in a garden. Some times just a few pieces will do the trick. Great for those short scenes.

we recently did "Leader of the Pack" Pretty much for every song we had a scene change. a few benches and a metal archway, some creative lighting and we were in the chapel, or a step stool, a chair, and a full length mirror and that was the bedroom. Sometimes less is more.

Just a few ideas,hope that helps abit.

Good luck!

-------------
Aimee

Posted By: NickH.
Date Posted: 6/14/05 at 4:28pm

Shakespeare troups are notorious for solving problems of quick scene changes, as the old Bard was extremely generous with the number of scenes he wrote in his plays. If you have the chance to attend any Shakespeare production, you will get lots of ideas about solving problems of scene changes.
Most often, a ''unit'' set will do. Basically, a set with several levels and moveable small flats, flags and gobos, and an inventive lighting designer can do wonders for plays that demand lots of scene changes.

-------------
If all the world is a stage, what am I doing in the wings?

Posted By: Christine
Date Posted: 7/15/05 at 11:28am

I was the assistant director for this show 2 years ago - here's what we did.

Looking at the stage from a bird's eye view:

12 o'clock - Mama's kitchen on an elevated flat. Remove kitchen table/chairs - wheel in partial wall with window - it becomes the outside scene where Raybud and Junior sit and drink and talk in Act 2.

9 o clock - Marguerite's Living room - on a slightly raised platform

3 o'clock - slightly raised platform - Royce's bedroom - use a fold up cot to get it out of there quick

Main stage area in the middle serves as living room, church, radio station

The elevated flat areas have minimal set changes if at all - so the major set changes occur in the central portion of the stage. The elevated areas only have to hold 1-3 actors (Mama's kitchen has 3 at once) - so they can be small, leaving your main stage area in the middle for the scenes with the entire cast.

Posted By: Shatcher
Date Posted: 7/19/05 at 5:38pm

I do not know the play but if you are going to have lots of scene changes make sure to give your crew plenty of time to reherse. scene changes that are to long can bring the pace of the show way down. I did No Way to Treat a Lady a few years back. we did all scene changes in view of the audience during the action of the play. we would change a scene up stage while the actors played a scene somewhere else. crew in all black inclueing hats. we spent a lot of time getting it down and we got to be really fast.

Posted By: Topper
Date Posted: 7/19/05 at 11:06pm

I was in a production of Kaufman & Hart's "Once In a
Lifetime" which involved a large cast and numerous
scene changes/locations. However, the sets were
very minimal.

It was a sprawling tale about the early days of
Hollywood and the onset of sound (think "Singin' in
the Rain" without the music).

Because there were upwards of twenty actors in the
cast, the director decided to facilitate the scene
changes by making them more "cinematic" and
using many of the cast as "extras."

For example: the play starts in a one-room
apartment and moves to a railroad car. As the
music came up, actors dressed as Pullman
Redcaps moved off the furniture and brought on the
train benches. Another dressed as a Conductor
simply walked across the stage, checking his pocket
watch and motioning two more extras dressed as
passengers. A Sailor kissed his girlfriend goodbye,
etc.

From the train to the Grand Hotel: The RedCaps
moved off the benches as a BellHop carried some
luggage across the stage followed by the Same Two
Passengers we saw earlier. A Hotel Maid walked
across with a mop. A Maitre D' and Cigarette Girl
crossed the stage in animated conversation, etc, etc.

Not only did these vignettes cover the scene
changes, but they helped move the play along and
solidified in the audience's mind the locations before
a stick of furniture was set.

The costumes were all drawn from stock and the
actors playing the extra parts all found their own bits
of business to occupy the few seconds they were on
stage.

The possibilities seemed endless! For backstage at
the studio, Two Stagehands merely carried a ladder.
An actor in an elaborate cowboy outfit walked by
studying his "lines" from a script. A nosy
Photographer got thrown out by Studio Security, etc.

It was a great technique and could easily apply to
any production! I plan to steal it myself someday.

-------------
"None of us really grow up. All we ever do is learn how to behave in public." -- Keith Johnstone