We’re pleased to announce that Damon Falke’s new play The Sun is in the West is now available in print. Give it a look. We had many audience members at the shows ask us where they could get a copy. Well, here you go…
$12.95 + s&h
For this issue of the STRT Journal, we thought it would be nice to do a brief interview with our intrepid playwright, Damon Falke. It’s been an honor to work with him on a number of projects thus far, and we look forward to future collaborations as well.
Charlie Pepiton: It’s always interesting to hear what it was which originally propelled an artist toward a certain type of work. What’s your story, Damon? What first drew you to writing?
Damon Falke: It was, and is, a way of looking at the world. Most of what a writer does is look at things. But I think I really started putting words to paper after a girl I was very fond of said goodbye to me. I was a young man then and naturally heartbroken. I thought I could write all that out of me.
by Dave Seaton
When I was first approached about writing and performing original guitar music for The Sun is in the West, I had only Damon’s script and these words: dusty, bluesy, and 1930’s.
I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to write a film score. 
We weren’t doing musical theatre, yet somehow, I was going to perform songs in the midst live theatre. I suggested to Charlie that, instead of full songs, we treat the compositions and musical monologues – as if The Musician was the fourth character, whose dialog was intertwined with that of the other actors, speaking through notes instead of words.
After settling on that concept, we had an initial reading with the actors to discover the tone of the play and talk about our interpretations of it. As Charlie and the actors worked on the script over the following weeks, the necessary locations of the musical monologues became evident to them.
Enjoy this peek into the music of The Sun is in the West!
We open soon. Reserve your tickets today!
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DURANGO, CO - PAGOSA SPRINGS, CO – SANTA FE, NM
Music ©2010 Dave Seaton
Working as a designer puts you in service of some greater goal, in this case, the play. Luckily, the rich language of The Sun is in the West provides an absolute gold mine of imagery guiding the aesthetics of this show. After reading the script several times many images floated to the surface; land, wind, myth, artifact, image, water and of course the sky.
The design emerged after playing around with these pictures and working closely with the other collaborators to see how the dynamics of the story and its characters unfolded. Its hard to know how these things come together in a concrete sense, but one day after sketching and thinking, it clicked. The combined influences of pop art and the medieval triptychs provide for interesting results.