Technology is a wonderful thing
We pulled out a bench from furniture stock and put it in the down right corner of the stage. Far up left three rolling office chairs signfied the “car.” Together, the pieces created our theatrical representation of the space between the parking lot and ticket office for the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. But what did that space look like in real life? The cast, crew and director gathered around curiously as I pulled up the internet on the laptop I use in rehearsal and typed “Durango ticket office” into Google.
The best link by far was from someone who had been to the city recently and posted pictures from his or her trip (though in the couple of days it’s taken me to make this blog entry I can’t find the link any more). The City of Durango Web site, and the D&SNGR site (everyone’s got a Web site these days!) were both helpful for pictures of the city as it is now and as it was in its historical past.
Content with what the vast internet had to offer, I journeyed to the SRTP Google Group - a site we created internally to post pictures and share research and production materials in the show creation period. There I found pictures from our company member Lee Keenan’s family trips to the southwest, including this great dinosaur running over the red hills and - of course - the Durango ticket office!
The amazing technology of the World Wide Web was invaluable to the folks in rehearsal that day for helping us grasp the landscape of where our characters had landed. Seeing the images of the Durango region - particularly the candid family snapshots - really put us in a wonderful mental place for visualizing and understanding the world we were creating. And all this with the click of a few quick search buttons!