UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

It’s the last week of the semester and finals are upon us. However, that means getting more of the design for the Spring opera sorted out before the winter break begins, so we can return in January and get right to work. I’ve had meetings with out TD and the two students taking on assistant tech director roles; they worked through the drawings and broke things down for cost. It looks like we can afford everything I’m asking for, though of course, affording the materials isn’t the same as having the time and labor to get it all done. I’m pretty sure I’ve kept everything within parameters. And then there’s the question of how much higher the cost of materials will be in January, thanks to all those supply chain issues.

In any case, I’ve begun working up paint elevations using Photoshop. This is the first time I’ve used Photoshop as my primary paint elevation medium — normally I would do things with watercolor and colored pencil, but since the treatment for this show is rather basic (and based on Looney Tunes schemes) I thought it would be a good one to try out for a first go around.

Here’s the elevation for one of the Deluso facades:

And one for one of the Harpies facades:

Now, off to watch the Intro to Theatre students present their costume design projects!

The minute “She Kills Monsters” closed, we were on to the design process for the Spring opera. Due to COVID scheduling issues, the selection of our opera offerings didn’t get finalized until well into the Fall semester; much had to do with being sure that the pieces fit within singer and musician safety guidelines; we were looking for small cast, small orchestra pieces. We ended up choosing two twentieth century one-act operas: Thomas Pasatieri’s “Signor Delusa,” and Mark Blitzstein’s “The Harpies.” An added hurdle was that the design work had to begin before we were able to obtain the full scores and librettos. So.

Director Bruce Cohen wanted some visual approach that tied the two rather different pieces together as a unified evening of comic opera. We chose to head toward a Chuck Jones era Looney Tunes visual agenda, making the pieces both cartoony and presentational. The orchestra has been moved into the stage in full view of the audience. Here are two photos of the very rough preliminary model, showing the set up for “The Harpies:”

and for “Signor Delusa:”

The catch at this point is that our TD and TD students need to review the design elements and figure out if we have the time, budget, and resources to build this idea — before I’ve finished drafting the whole of the set design to give them the details they need to make their decisions.

Onward. . .