Pieces of the show

Yesterday Ron (my actor cum designer/carpenter/all-around handyman sine qua non) and I drove up to Cambria to the home of my dear friend, Jayne. When I directed at Coast Union High School (a lifetime ago) Jayne choreographed the shows. But she is a professional artist, having recently joined the brand new Trader Joe's in Templeton as a sign painter, and she (bless her heart) agreed to head up painting the seven flats for Annie Get Your Gun. So Ron ordered and precut the flats, and we delivered them to Jayne's, where we sat around her kitchen table and discussed all the scenes and how they should look and the historical context of the show, and came up with a plan for the seven flats. These will be BIG paintings! Each scene's backdrop will consist of two flats (each in two pieces), which, when joined, will measure 7-1/2 feet high by 16 feet wide. Jayne will have to find a way to lay out the lightweight board (1/4 inch wide), so she can prime, sketch, and paint. It's quite an undertaking. But our meeting went great, and both she and Ron are a tremendous source of inspiration and good ideas, so I'm really excited about how the set is going to look.