THE DROWSY CHAPERONE
The Drowsy Chaperone is a fun and silly play about nothing in particular, set in an apartment of a home-body that loves old musicals. He serves as the narrator as the story unfolds around Janet and her fiance who are getting married at a hotel where a lot goes wrong, but there is ultimately a happy ending where all the wedding guests fly off in a plane together to Rio.
As with all my shows at Interlochen, this show was in rep with another: Radium Girls. Radium Girls was set mostly in a factory in New Jersey, so I opted for a base set that would be appropriate for that as well. In Drowsy, the big window, exposed brick, and concrete flooring is representative of an old adaptively-reused apartment in the city, and in Radium Girls, this base serves well for the factory, as well as a few courtroom scenes.
One challenge of this show was the seating arrangement in the black box space. In early discussions, the director of Radium Girls suggested an alley set up. The Drowsy Chaperone director was not convinced, but I managed to create a hybrid that we all thought might work. The seats were arranged in what I call a “graduated alley”, meaning the seating banks faced each other like a typical alley set up, but tapered off on one end to open up the space. The Drowsy director was able to use this hierarchical configuration more like a thrust stage and we positioned the on-stage band at the opposite end of the alley.
These shows couldn’t be more different in terms of tone; where Drowsy is light, fun, and full of color, Radium Girls is dark, cold, and dripping with disdain for the upper class. Neutral tones allowed me to present both. For Drowsy, I made up for the lack of color in the set with lots of bright set decoration, and with an assist from the lighting designer, we achieved the buoyancy that a fun musical requires.
Photo credit: Interlochen Center for the Arts (where indicated)