Arrabbiata On Stage part 4

I had a free day today, and made plans to put in some more time painting sets in Manasquan.  I had dropped by the theater briefly yesterday and Pat had told me she wanted me to work on the A101 sign, which had been sitting at the back of the stage all last week.  It was still there, painted to look like what you see above, but there was some technical stuff being done up there today, so I had to bring it out to the lobby.  The space we had to work in was a little tight, but we could work on top of tables today and had much better light, so a good trade.  The letter/number shapes were fine, but I was told that they needed the letters to be brighter while still maintaining high contrast, so, following given directions,  I replaced the red facing part with a golden color, tops and sides with an orange color, and a deep red for the shadow areas.  Below is the results.

After a quick pizza break, I moved on to the dance space where we had people working on stone walls.    Stone painted on corrugated cardboard with a thin wood frame, about 20 feet tall.  Below, BAC members Ralph and Jim add highlights to make the "stones" feel more three dimensional.  They worked on at least four of these today, with me helping on the last two.  When dry, we moved them into the theater, setting the lightweight pieces rest on top of the seats.  We then moved on to start this stone process on two more large pieces, each including half an arch.  We got as far as making the mortar lines between what will eventually be the big stones.  Including clean up time, it was a six hour day.

Of course, it's never that simple.  As with all theater productions, there are many people involved in all aspects of the production.  For example, after finishing the four tall pieces of wall, we were prepared to start working on two shorter pieces leaning up against the wall.  But then we were told by someone else to forget those for now, and that we should get going on the arch pieces first, orders of the person in charge of the show.  Later that boss showed up and said the arch pieces weren't important, but the short pieces we had been told to set aside absolutely had to be done by tonight.  The person who had switched us from one to the other took the blame, the process for us was the same either way, and it was my quitting time, so not my problem.  And my sign from earlier, on the way out I was told that now the word was it was to be made to look like stone.  Again, now someone else's problem.  Theater people have been causing me problems going back to William and Mary, when they would invade our studios looking for places to practice screaming at each other, and I would have to throw them out so I could get my work done.  Twenty-five years later, things aren't any better.