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By Krista Layfield, Lilly Theater Manager.
In the initial concept meetings for our latest Lilly Theater production, The Emperor’s New Clothes, we were all drawn to the fact that the entire play took place on a tiny Caribbean island. What could be the one element of the set that would make the audience immediately feel like they were on an island with the actors? Palm trees seemed to be the obvious answer. We decided to anchor the stage in several places with palm trees that stretched across the stage and went all the way up to the ceiling. The lighting designer, Brent Winderlich, wanted to light the sides of the theater with very large gobos (stencils that alter the shape of light) shaped like palm trees to implement the feeling that the audience was surrounded on all sides by the trees.
In the research that the set designer, Troy Trinkle, had done of homes in the Caribbean, he was drawn to the wide array of pastel colors such as yellow, orange, blue, and purple. He was particularly inspired by one watercolor painting of huts on a beach. To recreate this watercolor effect on the set, the Lilly staff needed to learn a new painting technique which involved mixing the scenic paint with a transparent glaze and water. This would allow the paint to look like it was wet and watery even after it was dry.
To begin, everything needed a base coat of white paint to help create that watercolor look. Then the paint mix of glaze, water, and scenic paint would be applied on top of the base coat using wide, light brushstrokes that would not completely coat the set, but would allow the prime coat of white to bleed through the colors. To start this process, we needed to do several test patches of the paint mix to get the ratio of glaze to paint correct. We ended up discovering that a 1:1 ratio of glaze to paint seemed to have the look we wanted to recreate.
The other thing that we discovered about creating this watercolor effect on the set was that we would not be able to rollerbrush or spray the paint mix on. It would all need to be applied by hand. So the Lilly staff ended up spending about 50-60 hours mixing and applying the paint to the scenery. We used about 15 gallons of paint, one gallon of the glaze and two gallons of a polyurethane sealer—all to help protect the paint as well as to give it a little sheen!
You can see The Emperor's New Clothes: A Musical Comedy in Lilly Theater through August 2, 2015!
