From the first moment of conceptual discussion about Touch, it was clear that visually and sonically, this show needed to morph and change, to be full of light and hope one second and darkness and emptiness the next.  It needed to shift, to be intangible, to float.  So it was clear that it was a concept that lived heavily in the lights and sounds.  This show does not want the clutter of set.  Part of what we settled on for actual scenery involved rocks.  Fieldstones, just plain old rocks.  Finding a bunch of these turned out to be a bit harder than I expected.  This is not something you can just give up searching for and head to Target.  In the end, it involved me and my wonderful husband Sean (assistant scene designer by marriage) digging rocks out of the creek near my family’s home in St. Louis over Thanksgiving, heaving them across the bank, lugging them back in multiple wheelbarrow loads, hosing them down (it was cold that day!) and piling them in the back of our Jeep to haul back to Chicago.  Rocks, CHECK!

Now for the risers.  We are using risers for seating this time, which also sounded like a relatively simple concept.  But getting platforms to our space, cutting wood, and legging them up was tricky without a large vehicle and with only spotty woodshop access.  So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a bit of tunnel vision, trying, with Nick and Marni, to figure out how to make this happen.  Tunnel vision happens to everyone in the process eventually, especially during tech.  We start with the concept meetings, big picture, zoomed out, and get excited about the show we’re going to make.  Yay!  Then we get down to the business of the details of our particular jobs, and we zoom in.  We get frustrated, we try and fail, try and succeed.  We spin our wheels, we get bogged down.  So for the whole week, I’m thinking, “Where are people gonna sit?? When do I finish these?  What if there’s not enough room?”  And the major pieces got done, and the other day during Nick’s sound tech, I was walking around on the risers, trying to be quiet, my mind running and running and trying to capture all the details of what still needed to be done, and I realized I wasn’t doing any good pacing like that, so I sat down on a riser with my coffee. 

And on stage, Dan and Jackie were mid-scene while Nick was trying out a cue, and all the risers and lumber and unfinished tasks fell away from my mind. 

This was a random 20 seconds of a scene, out of context, in a start-and-stop tech, with no lights and no costumes.  Just the low, quiet sound cue and those two actors on the stage.  And the heat and tension of the moment made my heart stop.  And I had a sudden zoom out.  This is what I’m working towards, and everyone around me is bent on the same purpose- HAS BEEN bent on the same purpose along with me the whole time. Sometimes it’s easy for the end goal to seem so far off, and it’s a wonderful surprise when you get blindsided by the first few individual pieces coming together.  When you start to catch bright flashes of the final piece you’re working towards.