Theater set designer Jeremiah Teutsch believes if he does his job well, all of his hard work will essentially disappear.
Teutsch created the immersive stage set for Crimes of the Heart, produced by 100A Productions at the Carlos Alvarez Theater in the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and running through Sunday.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 Beth Henley play is set in late midcentury Mississippi. Teutsch pulled together multiple resources to craft an era-appropriate setting for what Producing Artistic Director Rick Frederick termed a traditional “kitchen sink drama.”
Grandad’s kitchen
The dramatic action of Crimes of the Heart takes place in a kitchen that bears a significant resemblance to the 1960s kitchen of Teutsch’s grandfather in Lubbock.
The atmospheric avocado-toned stove, Coldspot refrigerator and linoleum floor and kitchen cabinets are all derived “from my granddad’s house,” Teutsch said.
He was speaking figuratively, with elements begged and borrowed and bought from junkheaps, vintage stores, and friends and neighbors with similar eyes for 1970s-style kitsch, gewgaws and “greebles,” a theatrical term for seemingly insignificant details that add visual texture and lend realism to props and sets. One such detail are the plant cuttings set to root on the kitchen window sill, an old hobby of his grandfather’s.
“Anything I can do to help the actor feel like they’re really living in that spot, that’s what I’m into,” he said.
Frederick first met Teutsch when the two worked together at the McNay Art Museum, Frederick as associate registrar and Teutsch as matting and framing technician, a position he still maintains.
Frederick, who has worked in theater for four decades, became aware of Teutsch’s work as an artist, creating lifelike figural drawings and sculptures, and figured he’d make an ideal theater set designer for the AtticRep theater company. The two have worked together on various productions since an AtticRep staging of Lydia in 2009.
Frederick admires Teutsch’s obsessive attention to detail and textured approach to creating a sense of realism.
“His work is very rich in storytelling,” Frederick said. He said a stage prop isn’t simply an object for Teutsch. “He’s going to think about how old the object is, how long the person has had it, and what does it mean to that person. Those details that go into this set are as much part of the storytelling as the acting that’s happening on stage.”
And, ironically, the more attention paid to details, Frederick said, the more a stage set effectively fades into the background and keeps the focus on the actors.
“When that attention to detail is paid, then you’re not thinking about it anymore,” he said. “You’re there and you see it as a natural flowing thing, and it all makes sense.”
Easter eggs
The kitchen set is a mixture of fakery and working fixtures, from false-front cabinetry — except for three drawers near the sink that actually work — to a functioning sink, and flooring painted to resemble a linoleum pattern Teutsch found that contained a heart shape.
Such “easter eggs” — as hidden details that reward close viewing are called — are part of the fun, Teutsch said. A running Garth Brooks inside joke appears both in a keychain and in the photo album paged through by sisters Lenny, Meg and Babe, played by actors Georgette María Messa, Victorya Ross and Lee Drahl, as they confront dramatic turns in their lives.
Period appropriate appliances and home decor adorn the set of Crimes of the Heart at the Carlos Alvarez Studio Theater. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report 
The floor is designed to look like worn linoleum with a heart-shaped motif. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report 
Vintage appliances adorn the kitchen set for the 100A Productions version of Crimes of the Heart. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report 
One of the few functional cabinets in the set is filled with period appropriate dinnerware and food storage containers that could’ve been found in a midcentury home. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report 
Teutsch found a vintage tissue box and used part of it on his set. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report
One detail audiences won’t see is a framed ribald picture of 1970s television actor Lyle Waggoner hung backstage, a stunt Teutsch has pulled for every theater production he’s been involved in since his early days with AtticRep in 2009.
Though audiences won’t be aware that Teutsch has to meticulously glue back together a newspaper the characters cut a photo out of after each performance — he admitted making a mistake in not ordering multiple copies of the prop newspaper from a Chicago prop company — and they might not recognize most of his work as set designer, set dresser and property master, he said, “I love doing stuff like that.”
For tickets and more information on Crimes of the Heart, visit the Tobin Center website.
