UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Presentations of Intro to Design’s final lighting design project happened this morning, and now the corridor is lined with projects:

Which means finishing up the grading, entering the grades, then doing some more work on “Sweeney Todd”. . .

. . . which I suspect will indeed kill us all since we’ve only got about two and a half weeks to build it when we return in January. We’ve also started meetings on “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” Meanwhile, the next book chunk deadline is Jan 1st, and we hope to have four or five more chapters to send in. On the other hand, we’ve printed out the first nine chapters and will now go through them with a fine-toothed editor’s comb.

The day before Thanksgiving was the day the Intro to Theatre class’s costume design products were due. We spent the class period looking at them, and yesterday I dug in and started evaluating them. This is one of my favorite Intro projects, as the students do something they never before thought they were capable of doing.

There was also the push to get the groundplan of “Sweeney Todd” into the hands of all concerned:

Then, the fastest way to get more info to our technical director is to launch into the 3D modeling:

Now, heading full speed into cranking of “Sweeney Todd” drawings. This afternoon, working out small groundplans for all the wagons and other bits before launching into more detailed drawings:

Strangely enough, a friend of the music department had a harmonium for sale just when we needed it most:

And this morning, Tracey’s camera broke during her make-up class. I ran down to snap photos of students’ prosthetic work. Here are some of them working on their projects:

Just heading down to talk to the director and TD. . .

The end of the semester is fast approaching, and there is yet lots to be done. We opened “Radium Girls” this morning for the Arts Immersion Day matinee. Scenic Design by Eric Appleton, Costume Design by Tracey Lyons, Lighting Design by student Joe Berman, Sounds Design by student Mason Ronan, stage managed by student Allison Lozar, and Props Manager student Lilliana Gonzalez.

Act One, when Grace goes to meet Kathleen Wiley for the first time:

Roeder sights Grace watercoloring in the cemetery:

The faces of all the dead girls:

At the same time, I’m trying to figure out “Sweeney Todd,” and with every passing day there’s less time for planning and building, especially since the show goes up at the end of February and we don’t return from winter break until about January 20th. I scrapped my original direction and yesterday came up with some new thoughts, which Jim Butchart (the director) approved of.

Today has been spent working up a rough scale groundplan and truly rough quarter inch scale model to present at tomorrow’s production meeting so I can get some drawings into the TD’s hands next week.