I don't usually wander down into the scene shop. To administration kids like me, it's an unknown environment that frightens me in a very meaningful way. Bare-handed soldering of huge pieces of metal; huge paintings of Noel Coward's face; super intimidating facial hair; lots of crazy things. However, recently, I happened to find myself deep within its interior (looking for cookies or something) and stumbled upon a giant door. The August Wilson Door.
Acting as a good Rep blog investigator, I looked into it. Supposedly, there is a path in Seattle Center that is being renamed "August Wilson Way" in honor of the late, great playwright August Wilson. Supposedly, there was a request for an "icon" to be designed to commemorate this path. Supposedly that "icon" looks a lot like a door. A twenty-some foot, 3000 pound invocation of 1839 Wylie Avenue, the house that bookends Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle (the characters live in it in the first and debate the demolition of it in the last). And we here at the Rep made it.
And we do tons of stuff like that. I guess our brilliant carpenters/painters/machinists help out with projects outside the Rep all the time. Well, not all the time, but, if you saw Shrek the Musical at the 5th Avenue, the coolest pieces of the set: yeah, that was them. Now, if they do that kind of work for foreigners . . .
1 comment:
As the designer/artist of this iconic door in celebration of the life and work of August Wilson, I want to formally acknowledge the GREAT work of the REP shop! Dana, Nancy, John, and all of the others who worked on this project did a MAGNIFICENT job of fabricating this ton and a half piece. What an exceptional crew! I am exceedingly grateful to them for their professionalism, craftsmanship, and creativity. Not to mention, that it was a joy to work with them.
I do have to make a small correction to your blog comment though and that is that this door frame was inspired by what I thought might be a door in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where August Wilson lived, but there was no particular door I drew from. The red was meant to be Aunt Ester's red, and that too was my interpretation of what it might be.
The REP is an amazingly creative place -- on stage and behind the scenes. THANKS AND KUDOS TO YOU ALL!
Mindy Lehrman Cameron
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