Favorite Set Designs — Page 5

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showstickets/ka/home/intro.htm

link to KA's website and a video that doesn't do it justice

I really like this one for the Crucible:



And this one for How To $ucceed:



Hah...thats right...totally pimping myself out. But I figure...its a set design thread, I'm a Set Designer, there must be a few people who have some opinions about my work (good or bad).

But seriously a lot of my favourite designers have been represented in this thread already. The Davids (Gallo, Rockwell, Korins), I also love the work of Scott Pask, Michael Yeargan, David Hockney, Bob Crowley, etc.). Also there are many Canadian designers I idolize, particlarly Dany Lyne and Michael Levine.

Akiva

Updated On: 1/23/11 at 09:37 PM

This message has no purpose other than to move it from the second page back to the first. I don't want this thread to go away. I love looking at all the wonderful photography people have sent.

cool beans. some very lovely work

As is Camelot.

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INTO THE WOODS (original)
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS was amazing

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Dance of the Vampires had one HELL of a staging

Two set reveals from the '80s still stick in my head: Tony Walton's Act Two set for A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine and Clarke Dunham's backstage set for Grind.

Hollywood/Ukraine had two different sets for the two acts. Act One, set at Grauman's Chinese Theater, was fairly simple... basically a series of five lobby doors, painted black on one side, red on the other, forming different patterns throughout the show. When the curtain went up on the Act Two set, there was a collective gasp of wonder in the audience. The Act Two set was a Russian mansion in an eye-piercing shade of blood red and gold, with shiny black floors. Really a stunning moment.

The Grind set was, as I recall, first revealed after the opening number. You were outside Harry Earle's Burlesque house, but the set had four or five pieces on revolve, and the set spun around to reveal the entire backstage of the burlesque house, all at once, as if you had taken an entire wall off the building and could see everything going on in each room at the same time.

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It's a little fuzzy, but here's a picture of the backstage set for GRIND:



And here's Dunham's description of it:

"Grind" was a highly complex show that demanded a spectacular mechanical solution. I came up with a triple revolving stage scheme in which the three story tall center revolve contained most of the "onstage" and "backstage" gear including its own stage house and fly system so that we could revolve in view of the audience and fly scenery as we revolved so the by the time the revolve was complete we could be in an entirely different "place". To the right and left of the center revolve and also three tiered were two smaller revolves that not only could revolve but also track on and off stage while they revolved. This allowed us to go from a full stage scene to a "space stage" look almost instantly.

Accompanying the three revolves was a highly complex special fly system in the first ten feet of the stage that came to be known as the "dense pack" (after the Reagan Administration's Missile Shield). Using a special underhung grid and cable driven winches, we were able to hang scenery as close as four inches from unit to unit. This made it possible to create the theater marquee with its hundreds of chasing light bulbs as four perspective flown panels and still have six more hanging units in the same ten feet of stage.

But mechanics aside, the physical need was to move a hugely complex show along at a pace that would "wow" an audience and yet not dominate the show. That meant moving silently, efficiently, fast and with an element of surprise. In order to avoid the "here it comes again" syndrome, we were careful to vary the results of each scene change. So just when it appeared that the system's variety was exhausted, a Southside Chicago kitchen would track downstage apparently out of nowhere, or a "janitor" flipped a light swich by the Stage Door and you suddenly saw through the entire set to the empty theater beyond.
GRIND at Dunham Studios

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Designed by David Rockwell

La Cage aux Folles
Designed by Scott Pask