In a career spanning nearly 12 years as a scenic artist in professional theatre, Ken painted the sets for eight original Broadway productions including "The Full Monty", "Play On", "Ain't Nothin' But the Blues", "Imaginary Friends", "Last Living Confederate Widow Tells All", and the recent "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".
FAQ: Yes, the Broadway sets were originally designed, constructed and used in San Diego for the initial runs of these shows (which usually lasted six to nine weeks) and then broken down, loaded into semi trailers and shipped across the entire USA to New York, where they were reassembled and played in several of the legendary theaters of the Great White Way, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years depending on how successful the show was. These bound-for-Broadway sets were really amazing examples of theatrical engineering.
In addition to the Broadway shows, Ken also painted the sets for dozens of world premier productions and not a few spectacular bombs. For instance, "What the World Needs Now" was an original production slated for a Broadway run - scored by Burt Bacharach and choreographed by the same team that did "Cats" - that was so bad the set (which was spectacular) went straight into the dumpster after it's limited run. Heartbreaking.
Here is a gallery of highlights from Ken's theatrical career.