UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Six weeks later, five of them in Novafeltria, Italy, working on four operas — Lucia di Lammermoor, Le Nozze di Figaro, La Cambiale di Matrimonio, and Suor Angelica. I started as the lighting designer, became the stage management intern supervisor, and upon arrival, learned that I was also the production coordinator. Here are some of the first photos of the trip.

Here, the bus disgorges the staff and students in the central piazza of Novafeltria.

This is the scuola, a little ways up the street from the piazza. This building housed classes, the shops, the office.

This is the Teatro Sociale, the theatre of Novafeltria. While we rehearsed and teched in this space, only a few actual performances were held here, as the majority of performances toured to other nearby towns and cities.

The stage of the teatro. Notice the lights up in the gallery on either side. This was our front light positions.

Backstage at the teatro. Notice that there is no counterweight system — merely cotton lines with no weight. There is no real wingspace either, and very little backstage. Also note that the floor is raked. This proved typical of all the interior spaces we performed in.

The first electric — or Americain, as they call it. The PC was the standard unit in most theatres.

We also rehearsed up the hill behind the church in the cinema. This was where Lucia rehearsed most days.

Finally, the light board in Novafeltria. This board turned out to be the standard board in most venues. Despite the Italians’ preference for loading cues into submasters (‘grabbing them into the register’), since the lighting equipment available in each venue was a bit different, after tech almost every performance ended up being improvised on whatever two scene preset board was present.