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Everything is Super Great
by Stephen Brown New Light Theater Project, 2019 In association with Stable Cable Lab Co. Director: Sarah Norris Set Designer: Brian Dudkewicz Costume Designer: Mari Taylor Sound Designer: Janet Bentley Props Designer: Sarah George Prod. Stage Manager: Alannah O'Hagan Asst. Stage Manager: Elizabeth Weber Photography by Hunter Canning A new play written by Stephen Brown, Everything is Super Great (a comedy about what's missing) is a down-to-earth comedy that is at turns sarcastic, endearing, bittersweet, and heartwarming. Set in a small Texan suburb during the lead up to the Christmas holidays, the story focus on the lives of Tommy, his mother Anne, and the weighted presence of Tommy's missing brother. Court-ordered to find a therapist after "the arson incident" at Applebees, Anne turns to her friend Dave, a struggling art therapist with his own emotional baggage, while Tommy tries to befriend and help Alice, his shift supervisor at Starbucks, with her own familial issues. Brown's play examines the very different ways in which people deal with loss, while quietly highlighting how each person has a deep history to tell, no matter how mundane it may seem.
Working in a small (12' x 14') playing space that needed to convey ten different locations, both the scenic and lighting design worked foremost to provide delineations in time and space. The walls of the set were mutable in colour, and featured an assortment of symbolic props and light sources to help ground each location, ranging from the Starbucks breakroom, to Anne's car, to Alice's front stoop. The biggest challenge to the lighting design was making each location feel different while still providing underscoring to the emotional arc of the characters (and maintaining that festive Christmas spirit, of course). |
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