PILES OF FURNITURE
Creating Clutter on the Mainstage

By Steven Scarpa

Sitting to the side of Long Wharf Theatre's Mainstage was a small table covered with stuff - coffee, bagels, floor plans, old furniture magazines, pens, paper, and most importantly, a small intricately designed model.

In the model, a lone man stands in a large room, dwarfed by piles of furniture stacked all around him, hanging from the ceiling.

The model held a place of honor in Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein's office for much of the summer.

Now that rehearsals have begun for his production of Arthur Miller's The Price, the second show in Long Wharf Theatre's 2007-08 season, the model is simply just an idea. Transforming that idea into a three-dimensional space is now the pressing task for Edelstein, set designer Eugene Lee and the rest of the theatre's production staff.

On Thursday, Sept. 20, staff gathered in the Mainstage to figure out how to construct the set for what Edelstein believes is Miller's last great play. That particular morning, the set for Menopause The Musical - a gaudy facing replicating the inside of a high-end department store - was still standing as staff members lugged a dusty array of furniture onto the stage.

Lee, a veteran set designer with extensive Broadway credits including the popular musical Wicked, strolled the theatre, an amiable presence with round glasses and unruly white hair. He jumped on tables, lugged couches and walked the audience, looking at sightlines and conferring with Edelstein.

The goal of Thursday's meeting was not to finalize the clutter - indeed, that will be a process that continues throughout rehearsals - but to get a general sense of the floor plan. Actor paths had to be determined and sightlines had to be clarified despite the height that Edelstein and Lee hoped to attain with the furniture.

"The key thing is to get in the rehearsal hall and play around with it," Lee said.

A seemingly random arrangement began to take shape. Several general islands of furniture were left on the stage, allowing for narrow trails for the actors to pass through.

Lee removed pieces he deemed too "proppy," operating under the assurance that there would be additional pieces added during the five-week rehearsal process. "We need a lot more stuff. This is weak," Lee said, surveying the stage.

"This is just the beginning of an idea," Edelstein said.

Neither Edelstein nor Lee seemed to mind if the playing space is a little cramped, or if a few seats are obstructed. Those problems are the physical manifestation of the characters' emotional plight, Edelstein said.

"The play is partly about obstacles, external and internal obstacles," Edelstein told the group. "Also it should remind you of your grandmother's house, the heaviness of it. The stuff you thought was nice when you were young but now you don't want the stuff in your own house. It is about the burden of family and the stuff un-dealt with from generation to generation."

With Lee's blessing, the props department will have considerable autonomy to place its own imprint on the set.

Jackie Farrelly, head of props, will begin a dusty circuit, searching old Long Wharf housing and shops, and the warehouses of Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, and the Huntington Theatre in Boston, among others.

"This way, we get to do our best work," she said. "As we look for the furniture you have to think about who these people are and what their marriage was like."

Everything on the stage is carefully planned to elicit some effect, whether to evoke some nuance of character or help elucidate the theme of the play. If all goes well, the result of the careful planning is that happy accidents occur.

In Long Wharf's recent production of the Craig Lucas drama Singing Forest, Farrelly provided a small item for a psychiatrist's office, a zen garden. No one had asked for the prop, but once it was placed on stage it became a source of inspiration to the actor, who crafted a telling bit of business around it.

"If we can create an environment that is ultra realistic, when it is called for, it supports everything the actors are doing," Farrelly said.

As Lee and the crew worked, Edelstein sat on a white couch, one that had seen stage time during a production of Hedda Gabler years ago. Crew members were buzzing around at Lee's direction, moving pieces of furniture in a seemingly haphazard fashion.

Edelstein looked around and simply laughed. "What are you laughing at?" said Jacob Stoebel, a senior education resident whose old couch was sitting on stage left.

"How cool it is going to look," Edelstein said.