“All the World’s a Stage,
so
Hold On to Your Dreams”
~~~
Today I wrote in my journal about the items on my bucket list!
Such as:
Published a memoir,
Made a CD of Piano Solos
Made a CD of Jazz & Gin
~ ~ ~
Which two are left?
First: I want a scale model of
the set design I sketched for
my musical: Silent Dreams.
It’s set in 1955 near Greenwich Village,
a brownstone boarding house and a “coffee house” across the street.
A park bench, d.l.
The lights of Broadway in the distance.
I wish knew how to insert the Overture
so you could hear it!
~ ~ ~~
Back Story
Back in 1978,
I did a set design for
A Member of the Wedding.
Our community theater
The Town and Gown Players
was down to $400
to produce our spring show
A Member of the Wedding.
Our Artistic Director,
Fritz Nementz Kelly
said we had no set design,
so I decided to give it a try.
I’d taken Set Design in the
Drama Department of
The University of Georgia.
I wanted the set to look like an old kitchen with kitchen chairs and running water
and a screen door to the outside
for a bench near the grape arbor scene.
I borrowed two junipers and
eight gumpo azalea plants
from Cofer’s Garden Center
to use for a “real” hedge.
I even cut down a long pine branch
from behind my house,
dragged it to the carport
and shoved it into the trunk of my
little red Pinto Station Wagon.
Two crew members “flew” it
from the grids.
The wonderful unexpected feature
was that suspended like that
it would “sway” a bit when the actors walked by.
I'm so grateful that someone took a photo.
A couple of years ago I found the old play review.
T & G Evokes South in McCullers Play
Athens Banner Herald May 11, 1978
Reviewed by Staff Writer Cecil Bentley
I thought I was having a dream for a minute.
There, on stage, was a simple bare kitchen. Three wooden chairs that didn’t match were shoved haphazardly under a nondescript table, a pack of Fig Newtons lay open on top of the old ice box, a pine branch rubbed against the kitchen window, and a sink of half-washed dishes sat next to the screen door leading to the shady back yard.
It could easily have been a mirage, lingering with the lost thoughts of the first kitchen I remember bumping a shin in, snapping beans, having a glass of milk and asking my mother a million questions as she prepared supper.
But it wasn’t.
Carson McCullers vision of a kitchen in a small Georgia town during the late 1940s is beautifully brought to life in this Southern play focusing on the loneliness and insecurities of adolescence . . . Chip McDaniel’s set decoration evokes the time perfectly and deserves applause as well as the actors and the director, Mary (Fritz) Kelley.
——
Even though my musical,
Silent Dreams,
has never been produced,
it’s alive in my head
because of the Set Design.
I want to see a scale model.
Maybe I can videotape it and
narrate the plot.
That’s on my bucket list.
Can you help me?
~ ~ ~
Second on the Bucket List
Publish a Poetic Diary
entitled
Only the Stars Are Immortal
~ ~ ~
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