Silent Dream of a Scale Model Set Design

“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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