Mr. Terrell thought the fact that scenery is almost vestigial on the arena theartre stage was fortunate. "Scenery never brought a nickel into the theatre," he said. "In fact the high production costs have weighted the theatre down."
The Music Circus' first scenic designer, Charles Evans, proposed that sets for the round were not sets at all, but decor. He preferred to be called decoreographer when designing set for theatre-in-the-round.
In the early years, the set were built behind the tent in a make-shift shed. Later, my father Elmer Case, took on some of the tasks building sets in his shop on Canal Street in Lambertville.
In 1963 when the tent moved to the new location in West Amwell, there was a farm house and barn on the property. The upper floor of the barn was turned into a scene shop, while the lower floor was used to store sets and props for recycling into future shows.
Decoreographer 1949-1951
Charles Evans (1907-1992), born in Atlantic City, NJ, was a modernist known for his abstract style of painting. He studied at New York's Art Students League and Parsons School of Design, and later in Paris with Fernand Léger at the Academie Moderne.
In 1930, Evans and his wife spent a year living in what was Paul Cezanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence, France.
The following year, Evans purchased the old silk mill in New Hope and became involved in the area's modernist movement, joining The Independents in 1932.
In 1948 Evans co-founded the New Hope [PA} Gazette with Walter M. Teller. The same year he created set designs for St. John Terrell's Lambertville Music Circus. He also designed sets for the Bucks County Playhouse and Philadelphia's Playhouse in the Park. He later served as Set Designer for the Fred Miller Theater in Milwaukee and as Artistic Director for the Queen Elizabeth Playhouse in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Source: www.bciu.k12.pa.us/michener/html/bios/evans.htm
Decoreographer 1952
Research has turned up very little on Mr. Cecil. He is credited as the Decoreographer in June of the 1952 season. Then it appears, James Hamilton assumed the role from July onward.
Scenic Designer 1952-1955
Mr. Hamilton was a member of the Music Circus scenery department as assistant to Charles Evans since 1949, until he became its head in 1953.
He graduated from Brown University and Rhode island School of Design. He was the set designer for "Show Boat" at the Motor Music Circus at the State Fair of Texas in 1952, and has worked for WJAR-TV in Providence, RI.
After leaving the Music Circus, he founded Design Associates, Inc. in Lambertville, NJ that did scenic design and set building for Broadway shows and Industrials. After that, he went on to open the renown restaurant, Hamilton's Grill, with his daughter in the 1980s.
Mr. Hamilton was the Set Designer for the World Premier production of "To Hell with Orpheus" at the Music Circus in 1953.
Scenic Designer 1955, 1956
A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, Donn Fischer was a television designer for the National Broadcasting Company in New York for a few years before he came to the Music Circus. From 1950 he has designed sets and scenery at various musical theaters around the country.
Decoreographer 1956
Scenic Designer 1957
A native of East Chicago, Indiana, Mr. Reppa studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He did the sets and scenery at the Bucks County Playhouse for five seasons, and for the Perry Como TV show for two years.
Scenic Designer 1958
A native of Fort Lauderdale, FL, Robert Adams was a graduate of the New York School of Interior Design. In past summers, he has been the decoreographer for several leading Theatres in Miami as well as Ft. Lauderdale. On television Mr. Adams has done such shows as Studio One, Omnibus, United States Steel Hour, Jackie Gleason, Suspense, Danger, and The Web.
Scenic Designer 1959
Born in Lynn, MA in 1933, Mr. Micunis attended Lynn English High School, classes at The Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston. BA cum Laude, English and Fine Arts from Tufts College; MFA in Scenic, Costume, Lighting Design from Yale University Graduate School of Drama
He served in the US Army in Europe for two years during the Korean War. He designed Scenery and Costumes for The Opera Society of Washington DC, New York City Opera with Beverly Sills, Baltimore Opera, San Francisco Opera, Many off-Broadway shows, and "The Ritz" revival on Broadway with Calvin Culver.
Mr. Micunis designed the sets and/or costumes for many regional theaters around the country in the 1960s and 1970s.
He designed the Subway store prototype and 10,000 Subway stores worldwide, also many unique McDonald's prototypes.
Source: www.askart.com/
Source: glreview.org/
Scenic Designer 1960
Mr. Soule designed the sets for many productions in regional theaters from the 1960s into the 1980s.
Scenic Designer 1961-1963
Mr. Bishop was born in Malden, Mass. After serving in the Korean War he began his career in the theater as a scenic designer. He trained at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and continued at The Rhode Island School of Design and at Emerson College in Boston, combining his skills as designer/director at a string of regional theaters, including St. John Terrell's musical tents, scattered throughout the Northeast.
Previous to his stint at the Lambertville Music Circus, Mr. Bishop's designs had been used at many summer theaters throughout the country including Charlotte, NC, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Boston, MA. Among the shows he has designed are "Damn Yankees," "Auntie Mame," and "Say Darling." Off-Broadway he designed "Toinette," and "Heresy." Also a writer, Mr. Bishop wrote the Off-Broadway musicals, "She Shall Have Music," and "Sweet Miani." During the 1960s and 1970s, he honed those skills and soon became a premier major artist designing and directing for theater in the round.
In Provincetown, MA, he directed both "Deathtrap" and a new work by David Simpson, "Hotel Elysee" for the Provincetown Theatre Company where he also served on their board of directors. When not traveling around the country directing shows at myriad theaters, he and his partner, Steve Stephenson, were also busy running the Achilles House guesthouse which stretched out on a dock over the water. They moved to Arizona in 1987.
On Broadway, he directed Jane Powell when she replaced Debbie Reynolds in the title role of "Irene." While he recuperated from some surgery, Jane Powell called and over speakerphones, he directed her and her husband Dick Moore in "Love Letters," from his bedside to their rehearsal hall in New York. At Viterbo University in La Crosse, Mich., he held seminars on musical comedy, coached and directed the students in the art and flair for French farce with a production of Georges Feydeau"s "A Flea in Her Ear."
He served as guest director, artist-in-residence, and lecturer for numerous schools, colleges and universities where his commitment to his work touched the lives of thousands of young people. Mr. Bishop died on April 12, 2001 at age 72 in Tucson, AZ of congestive heart failure following several years' battle with diabetic complications.
Source: www.provincetownbanner.com/
Scenic Designer 1964
Clarke Dunham has designed the scenery, lighting and/or projections for over 300 Broadway, off-Broadway, Regional Theatre and Theme Park Opera productions during an award-winning career that now spans more than five decades. He was nominated for a Tony Award for scenic design in 1985 for "Grind" and "End of the World." His other Broadway credits include "Play Memor," Bubbling Brown Sugar," and "The Me Nobody Knows."
Read more on his Linkedin profile.
Scenic Designer 1964
Michael Devine wrote to us:
"I joined the 1964 company for the third show of the season, "No Strings," replacing Clark Dunham as set designer. I designed the rest of the season and remember vividly running out of scene paint (our season's allotment) before the final show, "My Fair Lady," and painting almost the entire show with spray cans of paint—the first (and I'm sure the last) graffiti style "My Fair Lady."
"I studied with the wonderful Lester Polakov in New York and have subsequently gone on to design over 300 professional theatre productions, films, television, concerts, and theme parks for Disney and Universal Studios. Happily, thanks to Sinjin, it all began in Lambertville."
Michael Devine, June 2009
Scenic Designer 1966
Scenic Designer 1967
Mr Wingates Broadway credits for scenic and costume design include: "Hamlet" (1961), "The Octoroon" (1961), "The Plough and the Stars" (1960-1961), and "She Stoops to Conquer" (1960).
Source: www.ibdb.com/
Set Builder 1950s
In the early 1950s, my father, Elmer Case, built some of the Music Circus sets in his woodworking shop under the supervision of Charles Evans and Jim Hamilton. This was my first exposure to the world of theatre. I found the playfulness and imagination infused in the sets to be intriguing. My mother took me to see a few shows, I'm guessing with comped tickets. I specifically remember "Annie Get Your Gun" in 1956 because I had seen my father build the shooting gallery piece where Annie shoots ducks travelling across on a conveyor belt, as someone inside knocked over the ducks she supposedly hit.