In the five years I spent teaching in Kentucky, few things were as exciting as experiencing the skills of old fashioned Southern storytellers. Words can be magic, but more so the beauty of the human voice creating melody through patterns, rhythm, pitch, and timbre. When people ask me why I love Bright Star so much, I can only reply that somehow, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell have captured the essence of this storytelling tradition.

Great storytelling often asks our imaginations create the details. That is the idea behind the choice of a fairly simple unit setting for this production. The overall look incorporated elements that evoke a modest place of well-aged wood and elements you might find if you were invited to join the neighbors on the porch for a glass of lemonade and maybe an impromtu song on the banjo. The music and story are one and the same, and that drove the choice to feature the band onstage, with the ability for them to join in the action of the play.

Most of the elements that differentiate location were visible on stage as the audience entered the theatre. The director, choreographer, and actors transformed everyday, common things into pieces that suggested offices, homes, back yards, trains, and bars.

For me, this was the first show for which I fully dove into a 3D digital model (see below). The color sketch to the left was done in Procreate.