Nine to Five is a classic 1980 workplace comedy that inspired an office workers anthem that became a platinum certified hit for Dolly Parton. In the early 2000’s Parton wrote 16 new songs for 9 to 5: The Musical, and this summer The Reif will present a talented cast of local performers in this musical production.
Director Katie Smith asked me to design the set. I agreed but was a little apprehensive, because stage shows based on a movie tend to have many locations requiring quick transitions between them.
I have an established order when I design a set; script, research, modeling.
Every show begins with a close reading of the script, looking for the time period, locations, scene changes and furniture needs. The script begins by stating the year is 1979. This firmly sets the musical as a “period” piece, meaning looking for furniture and props of the time as well as a set that feels of the late 1970’s.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that while there were a great number of locations in the script, most of them were various areas around the office, the secretary bullpen, Hart’s office, the Xerox room and the coffee area. Still there were some significant scenes set outside the office, Violet’s living room, Hart’s house and the hospital. There would still be some tricky scene changes but an idea was starting to formulate in my head. Katie has already mentioned wanting to use “portals” in the set. This is just a fancier way to replace the black legs and black borders that surround the stage. Instead we build (in our case they are already built, another bonus!) wood flats that will surround the stage. I was starting to think of using the portals and filing cabinets to create an office “surround” that would remain in place the whole show!
I was ready to conduct some research. In the olden days (early 90’s in graduate school) I once designed a set for a show set in a gas station. I found myself driving the back roads of Mississippi looking for old gas stations and asking the owners if I could come in and take a few pictures! Now I just hit the computer and began looking for 1970’s office pictures. I also researched 1970’s design motifs, looking for a pattern to paint on the portals. I found “70’s lines,” a pattern that screams 1970’s but would also be relatively easy for the painters to paint.
While I didn’t have everything fleshed out I felt like I was ready to begin a model. Some set designers work by sketching and painting set renderings. I prefer a simple model with little attention to color and fine details. For me the model is the point to see what the set will look like on stage while it’s still easy to make changes. My usual materials are foam board, poster board, straight pins and glue. Also a good sharp modeling knife and most important of all a triangular scale ruler! The scale ruler allows you to quickly select a scale and craft model pieces that will represent the actual dimensions of the set piece once built.
I already had a 3/8” scale model of the Wilcox Theater that Buzz McCulloch built. I began with my idea for the office surround. Using our flat inventory, I cut portal pieces out of foam core that matched the existing inventory. The scale ruler made it easy to cut out pieces to represent the 4 foot wide by 16 feet tall side portal units.
I began to introduce some new ideas. To separate out office scenes from non office scenes I thought of two large windows that would fly in just for the office. In the script there are three scenes set at the elevator, but only one of them made reference to the elevator. Katie and I had an idea to replace some of the elevator scenes with a water cooler scene. That’s the little unit Stage Right with a pink foam water cooler and filing cabinet. Stage Left we decided to create a coffee area. Like the windows these will only be present during office scenes. A quick note on stage directions, they are always from the actor’s point of view. So imagine you are standing on stage looking at the audience, Stage Right is to your right and Stage Left to your left.
Scenes set outside of the office will have minimal set pieces, mostly furniture. The hospital will be simple as well, with just large pieces of white fabric flying in. Lighting will be important in these scenes as well. While we can’t hide the office surround, we can direct the focus away from it with lighting.
Another important part of building the model is deciding where set pieces will fly in and where furniture will store when it’s not in use on stage.
The final step of the set design is to present it to the director, getting input, making adjustments and changing the model. As of this writing carpenters are building, painters are painting and props and costumes are being created! 9 to 5 may be the name of the musical, but we’ll be putting in longer days than that to get everything done!
“It is so amazing that we have a tech director like John here at the Reif. His knowledge and talents in stage lighting and design are invaluable. His ideas for this show have really helped transform our space into a late 70s office. As the pieces have started going up this week you can see the cast settling in and believing they are going to work at Consolidated Industries.” ~ Katie E. Smith
Come see the show and see how it all turns out! Production dates are July 14-16 and July 21-23.