The Glass Menagerie, 1994

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was  directed by guest James Steinmeyer whose daughter Joleen just happened to be the stage manager for the show.

Joleen was a talented student who would go on the design the set for a Mainstage production the following year.

The Glass Menagerie has only four characters and does not require a large or complex playing space.

A memory play, the action takes place in a small apartment in St. Louis in the 1935.

In our production two rooms were seen, the living room which was downstage center and the dining room which was mid-stage.

The rest of the apartment was indicated upstage through an arch and doorway.

The somewhat small set on the Tower Mainstage was surrounded by most of our stock of large flats and window units to represent the surrounding tenements.

Most of the window units were distressed with broken glass and boards over some of them.

To enter the set the actors walked on a raised sidewalk that started upstage left, came downstage to the lowered pit and back around to stage right ending outside the front door on a steel framed fire escape platform.

Of course we still have the fire escape in stock.

After the actors were in the set the lighting for the surrounding areas was lowered and the focus was just on the two rooms.

The set had several lighting practices but I wanted something more.

The biggest lighting moment of the show is when Laura shows The Gentleman Caller her menagerie of glass figurines lit with just a candle.

I wanted to be able to add just a little fill light to the scene but there was no good place to hide a lighting instrument.

Working with Drew the scene designer I told him what I needed and suggested making a box in the front of the pit to hide the light but thought it would be too low to the ground.

After some thought Drew designed two posts that would be added to the edge of the sidewalk in which I could hide a small light.

The posts looked that were always part of the set and light was just in the right place.

I was afraid of having the old horror movie effect that when people were walking in the dark with a lamp there would be in a spot on them and you would see the shadow of the lamp on the wall behind them.

That did not happen as I added just enough light to fill in the actors faces.

The combination of all of the elements, set, lights, costumes, acting and direction, made this a very successful production.

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