Painting begins today for “Come Back.’ Here are a fair number of tree flats, laid out in the Barnett, having been painted with their base sky blue. That’s Katie back there painting the edges and the edges of the holes.
In the shop, the last tree is cut out.
In the Hicklin, TD Steve oversees the assembly of the risers.
While Allison and Connor work on the ends of the deck planking.
The deck started getting assembled today. Here is TA Thad working with one of the Intro to Theatre students on tacking the knee walls to the floor.
In the shop, the tree cutting never ends. Quinn, another TA, cuts out tree shapes.
Enough trees have now had muslin applied that they are ready to be primed, so here’s one of the new work study student, Yoshi and Katie laying on the white paint.
The bird feeders arrived yesterday. . .
. . . so one of my small projects today was to experiment with wiring them up.
Light hang for “Come Back” begins today (designed by student Jayson Winslow). Here is the lighting crew contemplating something, with TA Thad atop the ladder.
It turns out it takes three electricians to move one of our new, heavier speakers.
Here are the deck pieces, sitting against the wall in the Hicklin, ready to be assembled.
In the shop, students cut out the tree shapes. . .
Then muslin is glued to the tree flats with wheat paste. Here is Allison carefully laying out the wet fabric.
And below, one of the Introduction to Theatre students trims the edge of the trees once the flats are dry.
Some of the flats are rather large, and here Thomas, Quinn, Katie, Allison, and Bruce move a covered flat out into the sun to dry.
Here Bruce is doubling checking the edges to make sure the breeze hasn’t uncovered edges that haven’t adhered. We probably won’t get too many more warm sunny days. . .
Now that classes are in full swing, the shops are open and forging ahead on both “Come Back,” and “Nate the Dragon.”
Here are some of the tree flats for “Come Back,” set on the Barnett stage. The next step will be to cover them with muslin.
All these trees, are of course, cut out by hand in the scene shop. In our program, the students of Introduction to Theatre work in the shop as the lab component of the class. That means there are lots of new names and faces to learn, so I’m not going to name anyone in the photos at this point. . .
. . . though here is Technical Director Steve Chene working with a student on framing out one of the tree flats.
Down in the costume shop, students are working on “Nate the Dragon,” which will be presented with puppets.
That’s costume shop supervisor and “Nate” costume designer Tracey Lyons smiling there in the background.
They do have fun down in the costume shop.
Further revisions. I drafted the groundplan after that previous conversation with the direction, with the intention of building a second model based on those revisions. Dealing with the front row of seating was a major issue, so between the request for crossover space and the monetary concerns involved in cutting seats, things got a bit more compressed. Because of time, this model would simply use the elements as drafted, cutting them out, pasting them onto foamcore and Bristol board, and then assembling. A dirty white model.
During our first production meeting this semester, the director realized that in the corner of the black box theatre, the extreme seats would essentially be behind much of the action that was staged downstage and asked me to me a bit kinder to those sightlines. I adjusted a bunch of things over stage right and have to redraft that portion of the stage, now. However, with my drafting table covered with model bits, I’m trying to get as much of that assembled as possible before clearing the table off for more drawing.
Yes, another picture of the drafting table, but then, I like drafting. Angela, the director, and I touched base this morning about the revisions to the groundplan, so I’m forging ahead on drafting the curved tree flats, so out TD can start working on this next week, when the shops open. That’s a copy of the completed elevation hanging on the bulletin board.