Skeleton Crew

April has been busy, if not with actual spring. We made it to Skeleton Crew in it’s final weekend. If you missed it, I’m sorry for you! It was one of the BEST shows of a quite fantastic season at Portland Stage.

A year ago when I worked on the illustration, I began with character sketches of the four actors. My preliminary sketches are not at all pretty. I’m thinking as fast as I can sketch.

By award-winning playwright, Dominique Morisseau, the story is set in the break room of an auto making plant in Detroit. Faye is the veteran, sneaking smokes. Shanita is pregnant, moody, and full of vivid dreams. Dez is impatient and cynical about the plant’s rumored closing. Reggie is the supervisor under pressure to keep them all in line.

This was an early small sketch.

I considered making figures out of auto parts and bones, to tie in with the title.

Gears, smokestacks, cigarettes, a side eye could suggest the environment and tension within.

Another variation on body parts, auto parts, tools, and faces.

This one attempts a visual emphasis on the crew that holds up the job, while the supervisor stands alone.

Same idea, different look.

I tried actually making a collage of machine and bone parts on this rough.

Faye, smoking with her safety goggles, behind a factory silhouette. The chain link fence suggests the security issues at a plant facing routine thefts.

Another variation on the crew theme.

In researching Detroit, I came across super graffiti, which I tried to suggest in the title treatment. Again, I have separated the crew from the supervisor, whose large face looks down from the windows.

Another graffiti variation of previous ideas.

After 12 sketches, I stopped and submitted my roughs. It turned out the very first thumbnail got the approval from Director of Communications Eileen Phelan and Executive & Artistic Director Anita Stewart.

I worked out a full size sketch on tracing paper. I was asked to have the three figures more prominent than in my first sketch.

I’d just been to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where I saw two Charles Sheeler paintings that influenced my approach to color.

I drew the workers on sandy pastel paper.

Another Sheeler painting gave me color ideas.

I wanted my color background to create bold angles, the rough texture suggesting the gritty environment.

I drew Faye’s face separately.

It was decided that she looked too sad. She needed a stronger expression, as the stoic anchor in the story. I redrew the face with less lines and a direct gaze. After scanning all these parts separately and merging them digitally, I added hand-lettering to the final illustration.

Working traditionally, but layering pieces digitally, has led to new options for my illustrations. Deadlines can be the mother of invention! The image was cropped for the window display outside the theater on Forest Avenue.

We had a double date with Chris and Maryann Cocca-Leffler, first-timers at Portland Stage who moved to Maine last spring.

As always, the stage design was stellar. Directed by Jade King Carroll, the ensemble cast gave powerful performances. Olivia Williams as Faye was phenomenal.

Lighting by Bryon Winn and sound by Karin Graybash brought momentum to the tension between the crew, all on edge about losing their jobs. Fantastic production all around! Thank you, Portland Stage, for this gathering of enormous talents.

Next up is The Last Five Years, a hit musical that weaves the beginning and end of a marriage together in time, mostly in song. Time to get tickets!