(click photos to enlarge)

Hamlet Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Set Design:  Michael Ganio

Costume design:  Dorothy Marshall Englis

Lighting Design:  Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz (lradesigns.com)

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Photos: Peter Wochniak

A Midsummer Night's Dream Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Set Design:  James Kronzer  (www.jameskronzer.com)

Costume design:  Susan Branch Towne (susanbranchtowne.com)

Lighting Design:  Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz (lradesigns.com)

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Photos: Jerry Naunheim Jr.

Fire on Babylon All Out Arts' 2016 Fresh Fruit New Play Festival, The Wild Project, NYC

Set Design:  Marc Wheeler

Costume design:  Edward Ray Kiely (edwardraykiely.carbonmade.com)

Lighting Design:  Phil Monat (philmonat.com)

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Photos: Lloyd Mulvey

The Glass Menagerie Great River Shakespeare Festival

Set Design:  R. Eric Stone  (www.rericstone.com)

Costume Design:  Margaret E. Weedon

Lighting Design:  Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz (lradesigns.com)

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Photos: Kathy Christenson

Stones in His Pockets Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Set and Costume Design:  Michael Ganio

Lighting Design:  Kenton Yeager (yeagerlabs.com)

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Photos: Kenton Yeager

Major Barbara Clarence Brown Theatre

Set design:  Christopher Pickart

Costume design:  Marianne Custer (mariannecuster.com)

Lighting design:  Leigh Brown

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Photos: Christopher Pickart

Saint Joan Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Set design:  Robert Mark Morgan (morgansetdesign.com)

Costume design:  Dorothy Marshall Englis

Lighting design:  Peter Sargent

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Photos: Jerry Naunheim, Jr.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Pioneer Theatre Company

Set Design: Peter Harrison

Costume design:  Susan Branch Towne (susanbranchtowne.com)

Lighting Design:  Kenton Yeager (yeagerlabs.com)

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Photos: Alex Weisman

The Miracle Worker Syracuse Stage

Set Design:  Michael Vaughn Sims

Costume Design:  Tracy Dorman (tracydorman.com)

Lighting Design:  Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz (lradesigns.com)

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Photos: Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas Pioneer Theatre Company

Set design:  George Maxwell (website)

Costume design:  Kevin L. Alberts

Lighting design:  Phil Monat (philmonat.com)

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Photos: Alex Weissman

Little Shop of Horrors Utah Shakespeare Festival

Set design:  Beowulf Borritt (beowulfborritt.com)

Costume design:  Tim Dial

Lighting design:  Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz (lradesigns.com)

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Photos: Karl Hugh

The Diary of Anne Frank Denver Center Theatre Company

Set design:  Robert Mark Morgan (morgansetdesign.com)

Costume design:  Susan Branch Towne (susanbranchtowne.com)

Lighting design:  Charles R. MacLeod

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Photos: Robert Mark Morgan

Shakespeare’s R&J Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Set design:  Scott C. Neale (scottcnealedesign.com)

Costume design:  Garth Dunbar

Lighting design:  Mark Wilson

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Photos: James Visser

Amadeus Geva Theatre Center

Set design:  Bill Clarke (billclarkedesign.com)

Costume design:  Dorothy Marshall Englis

Lighting design:  Kendall Smith

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Photos: Ken Huth

As You Like It Pioneer Theatre Company

Set design:  Gage Williams

Costume design:  Carol Wells-Day

Lighting design:  Lynne Chase (lynnechaselights.com)

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Photos: Lynne Chase

Paul (l) and Great River Shakespeare Festival resident designer Erik Paulson (r) in the drawing room at Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, collaborating on plans for GRSF's 2010 season production of The Comedy of Errors.
www.tenchimneys.org

Paul in the drawing room at Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, working on the text for GRSF's 2010 season production of The Comedy of Errors.
www.tenchimneys.org

Making theatre is a team sport

Kenton Yeager, a lighting designer I’ve been lucky to work with frequently, commented during a particularly thorny tech process in which we were grappling with specific choices about some particular look or cue or moment, “Hey -- it’s a team sport.”  It’s a thought I’ve carried with me ever since, because even though I’ve always known this, Kenton’s playful phrase (and his way of problem solving) is indicative of the collective struggle involved in shepherding a production through to opening night.

Making theatre happen depends on collaboration. Directors are only as good as the team of people around them: actors, designers, composers, musical directors, choreographers, fight directors, technicians, staff, producers.  The process of putting together a production depends on the concerted efforts of many people committed to a common goal.

Directing begins in solitude and then rapidly expands outward. When prepping for a production, I try to provide designers with a clear sense of what I think the play is about – what story I’d like to tell – so that together we can envision the world of the play.  I love designers who get me to examine a script in ways I hadn’t thought of and who are unafraid to passionately argue their point of view.  And I love it when my imagination is fired in new and unexpected ways by whatever team with which I’m working.  When all collaborative pistons are firing, the results can be combustible, exceeding those initial, solitary impulses and spurring all of us to expand our thinking, take greater risks and experience continued growth.

Michael Ganio, set and costume designer for Stones in His Pockets at St. Louis Rep, provided a circle of shoes around the perimeter of the set that took on a life of its own when Kenton Yeager’s lights made them glow brighter and brighter. At key moments the shoes became the villager-extras on the film shoot.

Chris Pickart accomplished the impossible with his Iron-Industrial Age design for Major Barbara at the Clarence Brown Theatre: 3 completely different locales in a theatre never intended to house proscenium-based work. Robert Mark Morgan’s soaring Gothic arch helped frame Joan of Arc’s story while embracing the audience and providing a sense of the enormity of the events of her life. Peter Harrison’s set for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Pioneer Theatre Company gave the play a fluid space and a platform on which we could tell the story, while Michael Vaughn Sims’ vivid impressionistic surround for our production of The Miracle Worker at Syracuse Stage captured what was for me the poignancy of Helen Keller’s young life: so much color and Southern sensuality just beyond her grasp.

George Maxwell and the wizards at Pioneer Theatre Company provided a multiplicity of sets for Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, the first six of which never make a return appearance in the play; Beowulf Borritt devised an ingenious set for Little Shop of Horrors at Utah Shakes which played in rep with two other designs (much credit to Ben Hohmann for his work on Audrey II); and Robert Mark Morgan met the challenge of producing The Diary of Anne Frank in The Space at the Denver Center Theatre Company by utilizing every inch of the arena to create the claustrophobic circumstances of Anne Frank’s years in hiding, without benefit of a two-story design.

The setting for Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R&j is not specifically delineated in the text; Scott Neale and I decided we would suggest a deserted garret in a classic boys’ prep school. Scott’s slightly elevated platform spanning the stage width gave us a place for the collage of classroom and dormitory scenes with which the play begins; when the four actors descended onto the larger, bare floor playing space they entered new and dangerous territory.

Bill Clarke and I have had the unique experience of working on shows in pairs. Two Amadeuses, two Romeo and Juliets, and two To Kill a Mockingbirds, so not only have we enjoyed several collaborative experiences, we’ve gotten to build on our work together on specific scripts. Bill’s ingenious design for Amadeus – first at St. Louis Rep and then at Geva Theatre Center featured high gloss, reflective surfaces, a burnished center floor medallion, and an opaque Austrian drape which enabled fluid movement from one locale to another. It was a simple, handsome design that let Mozart pierce and violate the dark, orderly mind of Salieri and of 18th century Europe, and adapted elegantly to both theatres.

As You Like It was the first in a fortunate string of directing assignments at Pioneer Theatre Company, and my second opportunity to work with Gage Williams, who had designed a simple, elegant set for a production of Romeo and Juliet I directed at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival a year prior to our collaboration at PTC. I happened to see Penny Metropolus’s production of The Good Person of Setzuan at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that Spring and loved the idea of the set for the play. That design became the basis for discussions with Gage, and influenced where we went with AYLI.

Even though I’d had years of collaborative experiences during my time at PCPA, I often worked there with designers who knew and understood me. Once I started free-lancing, I had to learn to return to home plate, and figure out how to clearly and specifically communicate with each set of designers, many of whom were new to me, as I was to them.

I remember Lynne Chase, the Lighting Designer for As You Like It, and I sitting in the theatre after returning from a dinner break. I was still a pretty green free-lancer, was having difficulty communicating my ideas, and we hadn’t yet found our director-designer “groove.” I was trying to translate into words what I was seeing in my head about lighting for the production. On a whim, I think I said, “show me everything you’ve got,” and Lynne pushed a button, suddenly flooding the stage with a myriad of soft, pastel colors and very bright light. “That’s it,” I think I exclaimed, “That’s Arden.” It was an almost accidental moment, but it provided a true starting place for our continued collaboration on the production.

When I entered the design process for Hamlet, at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, I didn't have a specific period in mind, but I did have some general guidelines for my wonderful design team, the members of which were trusted, valued, and respected collaborators with whom I'd worked a number of times. Winter. Scandinavia. Cold. Dark. A sense of corruption . . .  of things rotting from the inside out. I felt the play was many things: a Ghost story, a revenge story, a political story, a love story.  But warm and Mediterranean? Hardly. I knew I wanted snow when possible, and I also knew I wanted to keep things simple so that the focus would remain on the story -- the playwright's words, and that the action could take place in a versatile, fluid setting which would make driving the play with very little interruption entirely possible. Although Michael Ganio (set designer) and I had worked together a number of times, this was his first Hamlet, and as is always the case with Michael, I appreciated the ways in which he brought fresh eyes and sensibilities to the project. Our journey became one of discovery and simplification, till we really got down to the bare bones -- the necessities with which we could tell the story. A scaffold-like structure and a large leaning wall framed the space and gave us numerous entrances to and from which the characters could appear and disappear; we made use of the down center trap and an elevator for the graveyard scene, plus a great ascending series of low steps and platforms covering the vom, stage right; but other than that, I think there were two chairs, a couple of pillows, two racks for fencing equipment, and a few necessary hand props: luggage, 3 skulls, a couple of books, Hamlet's "tables," some invented lantern-flashlights, and a mass of paper goods, as is always the case with productions of Shakespeare's plays. So many messages and letters needing to get delivered and read (or not).  Could not have been much more spare or stark.  Dottie Marshall Englis's costumes were "now and then," as she said: "now" in their contemporary 'runway' influences and gestures; "then" in their classical silhouettes -- a sort of decayed Baroque became the easy generality we used to describe the production's 'look'. But she kept to the idea of a very dark palette, interspersed with flashes of red and, for lack of better words, a hint of putrescence on the linings of cloaks, capes, and finishing details which provided a subliminal connection to the idea of regicide and blood throughout the telling of the story.

Paul giving notes to the company of Hamlet at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, 2017.

Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz's lighting design moved as quickly from one scene and locale to the next as fluidly as I hoped it would; he was able to tighten and narrow down the world for intimate scenes and soliloquys, and open it up for the several massive court scenes. He and his crew also made elegant use of haze, especially in the early scenes on the battlements of Elsinore. Barry G. Funderberg's score for the production lent us appropriate majesty and mystery, and provided excellent tension when called for. Interestingly, the first time I collaborated with Barry (The Glass Menagerie at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre), we agreed afterwards that this was one in which we got all of the pieces right. I believe we all felt the same with Hamlet and were grateful for the opportunity as well as for the shared trust that came from knowing each other and working together over a number of years at a number of theatres on a variety of scripts.  It's important to surround yourselves with collaborators whose goal is to create the best possible production, who aren't afraid to ask the tough questions, and who actually listen to each other and work not just to enhance but to fulfill the vision of the production.

Occasionally directors and their design tech team feel that they have hit it out of the park - not necessarily in terms of a production’s financial or box office success (though that part’s always nice when it happens), but in terms of being in absolute sync on the realization of direction and design and that each of the individual pieces of their work compliments the others, elevates the production, and leads to a cohesive artistic whole.

Such was the case with A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and The Glass Menagerie at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. In the case of the former, Jim Kronzer’s simple set with it’s pivoting arches that provided smooth, fluid movement from court to forest and back again, gave Susan Branch Towne the perfect “jewel box” in which her ‘runway’-influenced period designs - all of which gave hints of the woods outside Athens that lurk physically and psychologically throughout Shakespeare’s magical comedy - could prominently emerge and also blend into. Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz lit the production clearly and colorfully (making fanciful use of L.E.D. lights in the trees in the woods, among other effects), and Barry G. Funderberg’s sound design gave us not just music but a panoply of sound effects that highlighted and underscored much of the magic moments in the script.

Similarly, R. Eric Stone’s rep set for Menagerie at GRSF gave me the caged surround I felt would help lend the production its necessary urban claustrophobia, but also infused the Wingfield apartment interior with gauzy, transparent walls through which Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz’s lights could achieve poetic fluidity. Most prominent of all, perhaps, was the oversized portrait of the always present but never seen character in the play, Amanda Wingfield’s errant husband, the salesman who fell in love with long distances. Margaret E. Weedon’s meticulous attention to detail paid off with the period-correct, faded- into-just-enough-sadness “jonquil” dress for Amanda as well as Laura’s meeting- the-Gentleman-Caller frock. Matthew Tibb’s delicate sound design established the sense of memory and sentiment from before a scripted word was spoken, and melded beautifully with lights, set, and costumes; and Nikki Kulas’s insistence on finding exactly the right furniture and set pieces lent correct period detail and made for an incredibly gratifying and rewarding collaboration.

Working on several public readings of Michael Raver’s new play, Fire on Babylon, resulted in its acceptance as part of the All Out Arts 2016 Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City. Once we agreed we wanted to accept the invitation to perform Babylon, it became a real NYC-“guerrilla theatre,” off-off-off Broadway producing experience. We had minimum time, very strict parameters about put-up, tech time, strike, and storage capacity, and were left to our own devices to raise whatever money was needed to produce the play for its three performances during the two week long festival. An online fundraising effort yielded $8,000, and we were off and running. Marc Wheeler, a young designer I met in Ashland, Oregon while he was an undergraduate student at Southern Oregon University and who had designed an excellent set for Jim Edmondson’s production of The Glass Menagerie there, was on his way to Europe for a year’s internship in Freiberg, Germany. Marc had a couple of weeks to spare before ‘hopping the pond,’ so with the generous support of friends in the City who were on vacation, Marc and I had free housing in Jackson Heights. Other friends provided shop construction and storage space. Meanwhile, I enlisted the help of Edward Ray Kiely, former Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts costume design student (with whom I had worked on a production of Lady Windermere’s Fan at WebCo during Ray’s senior year), now a NYC resident and wardrobe assistant on Saturday Night Live, to coordinate the actors’ wardrobe; and Phil Monat, another New York-based designer who had lit a couple of productions I directed at Pioneer Theatre Company, volunteered to light Babylon, adhering to the Festival’s limited rep plot and with only one four hour tech rehearsal to do it. Working within particular restrictions often produces the most exciting results, and though it had been a while since I’d directed under these conditions, I was as proud of the results as I was of any lavishly budgeted production on which I had worked.

All of these designs were enhanced by the work of lighting designers who have grown accustomed to me saying, “Not so much amber! Too much saturation!” – or “brighter, clearer – I can’t reach their faces!” and costume designers who have learned that with me white is rarely white (I think St. Louis Rep actually has a fabric bin labeled “Paul Barnes White”), that no amount of distressing is usually too much, and in cases of stage blood, excess is always best.

Most important, I’ve been lucky to work with great playwrights, from Shakespeare and Shaw to Neil Simon and Kaufmann and Hart; Lerner and Loewe to Tina Landau and Adam Guettel. Excellent material always provides the best foundation and the greatest potential for excellence and success. Without great writing or a compelling story to tell we're just solitary kids in a darkened void waiting for the light to come on and our playmates to arrive.