UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Today’s progress on the UW-Whitewater production of “The Furies!” I managed to have the morning free, so I spent it in the shop working on the navelstone. It’s finally beginning to look like something.

Once shop hours started and students rolled in, Steve continued to work on the platform pile. Here he is with Intro students Kim and Jennnifer, explaining how to cut thin arcs from a sheet of masonite to create a lip around the edge of the central round platform. This will prevent the water poured over Orestes from trickling off everywhere. We’ll be putting a drain in, as well.

They cut them out, and went ahead and primed them:

We also finally finished painting all the shards. Here they are lying in the shop awaiting their final spatter. Now we have to thread the darned things.

Props manager Allison adds a glossy sheen to our black and white pottery shards. . .

. . .while TA Brian and Intro student Makenzie build the blocks that will be supports for the platform stack.

Which looks like this right now:

With Steve making an adjustment, as seen past all the drawings:

One of my other projects was to recover the seats of all the juror chairs. It’s always fun seeing what people have done to chairs through the previous decades. . . and I could have sworn I’d pulled ten chairs.

And finally, Dale Kaminski, in the Department of Art and Design, was kind enough to use their giant printer to print out the head of Apollo on canvas. Just have to trim it down and attach it to its frame.

Even though it’s past the middle of the semester, the production meetings have suddenly piled up. We’ve got our two Summeround shows (“Suds” and “Arrangement for Murder, No. 2”), and our first two Fall offerings (“I Hate Hamlet” and “Three Excellent Cows”) to start talking about. I had a few ideas for “Suds” and started working up sketches, which turned into a Sketchup frenzy. This morning I showed the director where I was heading; he liked it, so I kept going. One of the walls still needs its stripes, but this is pretty much what I will present at the production meeting.

Work continues on the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Furies.” A small crew today, but there are always things to be done.

Here’s Jake cutting small blocks for the platforming:

And here’s our TD Steve Chene out on stage contemplating his next task as he waits for the blocks:

A full stage shot. The upstage walkway is in place, and the central disc with its two side platforms have been positioned.

We will have a large number of ropes thread through metallic ‘shards.’ Which means we have to make the shards and get them to look metallic. Everyday, some of the students end up on shard duty, and here’s Brandon and one of the Bunbury twins (sorry, but I still have a hard time telling you apart. . . ) painting, and painting, and painting. . .