Joking Apart Set Photos

Here are a couple of pics to show the set I designed.

Joking Apart 2010

Anyone for Tennis? Wouldn't that be nice...

Last week the season of Joking Apart closed. It was a long journey for me, and one which I learnt a lot from. Creating a garden indoors then flooding it with lights (not the UV kind) each night turned out quite well, when all is said and done.

The best part of the show were my crew, whom I loved working with. From driving around to pick up soup mugs all over town, to stealing trees branches from the curb-side and later early morning expeditions to get our real trees (kindly donated to us by the wonderful people at Indoor Gardens), it was so much fun.

My workshop crew made me feel at home in an environment where I could quite easily feel foolish and out of place. I was blessed with an incredible team of builders, painters and giggling girls who can really pull together. As the invisible curtain closed on the final night (not that the fire curtain didn't try it's hardest to ruin that!) it is with a mix of happiness and the slight twinge of sadness that I watch it all end. The happiness is that I am happy with the work done, and am glad to be able to have done and move on. The sad is that I will miss my crew.

Thank you to all that worked with me on this show, your skills at hiding monsters, gnomes, faces and so on amongst the garden are not to be protested. Your work speaks for itself and I wish you all the best in your futures. I hope that some of us are lucky enough to work together and share in the fun once more someday. Thanks to all that came and saw the show, had a laugh and supported me. Much love.

"Steak and Yorkshire Kidney Puddings? Oh get on!"

Joking Apart

Tickets are now on sale for my new show Joking Apart through the WAAPA box office! It is going to be an amazing show, it has been a huge learning curve for me and I can not wait to see it all come together. Please come along.

The search for life. Plant-life.

1pm. 

Joking Apart. 

Time for production work.

Find assistants.

Compose lists.

Shout "Hoorah" each time an item is ticked off. 

Track down ute. 

Borrow key for ute. 

Pile in too many people. 

Hope that I do not crash. 

Drive out to list of locations. 

Get lost.

Curse at the GPS system and rely on instinct instead. 

Avoid being hit by oncoming traffic as we climb out and run across busy road ways with branches and trees from the verge. 

Discover how little people are wanting to donate. 

Discover that the plants promised equate to tiny pots with either dead twigs or small flowering plants. 

Flowering plants, with one flower per pot. 

Drive back and forth to add to our pile. 

Feel pile is growing but would like to grow far bigger, much faster. 

Explore op shops for glasses and mugs. 

Discover that I have designed with my parents kitchen items in mind.

Kitchen items from the 70s.

Kitchen items that are in another city.

Discover that said items aren't so easy to find, wonder if people are holding onto them like my parents. 

Give it up people!

Find desired glasses and discover that some match. 

Some match despite being found on opposite sides of the city.

Weird. 

But "Hoorah"!

Hope that this is the last of it. 

Actually want to do homework and not drive ute.

Come in to discover set nearly finished and feel wave of excitement.

Wish that I could turn set into a tree house/ cubby and hide away inside.

Hear Pirates of the Caribbean theme song in head for fourth time in one day.

Decide it is time for the weekend. 

Game, set, and Match!

One show down, one term down, and six months to go.

I am currently working on Joking Apart by Alan Ayckbourn, for which I am doing the set design. It is being directed by Andrew Lewis, staged in the Geoff Gibbs Theatre with half of the third year actors. Actually the casting is wonderful. I first read the play in January and laughed out loud, which is always a good sign. I did not find out the casting for at least a month, but was so pleased with it. It will be very funny indeed. Joking Apart is set in an old overgrown English Garden, with most of the action taking place off stage in a tennis court (which butts onto the stage) and a little gazebo. Creating the world of this has so far proven rather challenging as we are battling with a really low pros arch, a deep stage and very specific set requirements. I have drawn and re-drawn plan after plan, perspective drawing after perspective drawing, and have finally worked it all out. The white card model has been made, and approved by Andrew, so on Monday I will have it costed once more by the workshop department, and begin making the real model and the construction drawings all ready for the presentation coming up. There is a lot of work to do, but as I feel I know the dimensions and have answered as many questions already as I have pre-conceived ever coming up, I am confident. I think tis show will be pretty darn good! I am looking forward to starting rehearsals and the build. During the course of my last show I feel in love with the people in workshop once more, they really are a great bunch.

So far I think this semester I have learnt the most about set related stuff, and tried to focus more on my perspective drawings and building the models. I was so happy to have made the Playhouse in half a day, which I will use for my class project with The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell. I am learning a lot from Zoe Atkinson, who is really a great teacher. She has been so encouraging and has pushed us further than we normally are in classes. We were also able to tour the Playhouse and meet the playwright Reg, which has made a huge difference in my interpretation of the play.

I am meeting the playwright and the director of my final show at WAAPA late next week. It is a musical, being written for WAAPA called A Little Touch of Chaos. I am hoping that it will afford me a chance to design some bolder brighter costumes. Maybe be able to be a little more adventurous, although, it is a small budget musical, and it may be too contemporary. I seem to design for more serious costumes, in suits, and house dresses and period ware that are pale, muted colours. I am keen to do some more print clashing, fabric clashing crazy stuff just for a change. We shall see…

Day one (recent trip down south)

On holiday down south of WA. With family and Daniel. Adventures and observations to follow...

Day one…
Woke up in what seems to be hippys-ville. Momentary confusion; followed by recognition of foreign place. In hindsight, the name “Innercraft” should have given it away. Beautiful cottages in bushland, with stained glass dolphins aplenty. Ahuh.
Mmm, breakfast of gluten free cereal and Casa yoghurt, eaten out on the deck overlooking the tiny birds flitting between the trees. This is good. As good as finding that I had no cell reception (yey no one can contact me at all!). Pile into the hire car and drive down to wander through the gardens of Voyager Estate. Sit back with a teapot, homemade jam and scones. Oh and this time we remembered to pay as we left (last year- we sorta forgot). Wine tastings on the way out. Since Voyager’s 2007 Shiraz beat Penfolds I had to try it. One bottle added to the collection, and a pack of six amazing grape juices- you have to try them!!!
Onto Leeuin Estate, housing a fairly decent art collection. After some driving around in the wrong direction for hmm… let’s say an hour, we stopped off at a brewery. Not my thing, but hey, we weren’t there long, and there were geese. With animals around, not even beer can ruin things. (Did I just loose part of my audience?) We stopped off at the distillery for il Gelato vanilla bean ice cream and a shot of macadamia liqure. I didn’t think that ice cream could get better, I was wrong. Crocodiles and blow up doll men with George Clooney’s face were to be anticipated here, but at least the latter was somewhat of a surprise.

Driving around I read Joking Apart- my mid-year show, which made me laugh out loud from the first page, definitely a good sign. Looking forward to that project, tennis courts and all. We tried to eat at Providore, but alas, it was closing early. Skipping through the organic veggie patch was cool though. Hungry at this point, we booked into dinner and headed to Bussleton to wander down to the jetty. How late our booking seemed… but it was worth the wait, since it was in an old homestead and I got two entrees. Scallops= melty melt. Episodes of 30 Rock with the ever funny Salma Hayek before crashing and that’s day one. Xx