Backstage Baltimore

I recently had the opportunity to take over this amazing theatre space for a shoot. I met the creative director of the theatre, which is the Center Stage Theatre in Baltimore at a Creative Morning session. If interested, Creative Mornings are a national breakfast lecture series for the artistic community where diverse artists share their projects once a month. After I shot the lecture the director showed me around the building and agreed to let me do a personal shoot in the space.

Really, the creative director, Gavin Witt, was so generous to hand over the keys to this unbelievable castle for a morning.  The space is like heaven/Disneyland for visual people with all these fantastic weird rooms, unlimited props, and super-old, funky architecture. He gave me and the model Jess free range of the grounds.

If you just came to the theatre to see a show, you would have no concept of the enormous, maze-like, backstage portion of this historic Mount Vernon building. There is a prop room the size of a vintage furniture shop, an extremely high-ceilinged room just for stage painting, and huge rehearsal rooms any dance studio would envy, to name but a few of the crazy rooms in this place. Walking around the halls we passed by a room full of designers working on extravagant period costumes, and at one point while we were shooting people rolling around carts full of tea sets and aquatic gear streamed past us. It really felt like I’d died and gone to a heaven just for wonderfully creative, eccentric people. I loved putting together different ensembles for the atmosphere of each room we shot in. I could shoot in this space a hundred more times and never get bored.