UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Archive for April, 2022

The Busybody

Posted in Uncategorized on April 25th, 2022 by Eric Appleton

Tonight is final dress, and then we open tomorrow! The rehearsals this weekend went pretty smoothly, and the list for the shop this afternoon is pretty manageable. The biggest item is assembling and painting the doorway for Gripe’s house.

But first, let’s back up to Thursday and Friday and all the activity during shop those afternoons. Here’s Tori, working on the Spanish tiles to be mounted around Traffick’s front door. We’ve adopted an assembly line approach — laying out the design, and then building them all up color by color.

And here’s Tori again an hour or so later, putting the finishing touches on the tiles:

Here we see Trevor installing the French doors on Traffick’s balcony, and Cody and Mary installing safety railings:

Here’s a close-up of Cody and Mary working on the safety railings:

One of Mary’s projects as an assistant technical director was to build the balcony rail. In this pic, it’s installed for rehearsal. Mary is seen in the doorway, still working on the safety railings:

Here we have Sam, Sam, and Harry attaching the Gripe doorway base structure to its doorstep wagon:

During the “monkey” scene in act two, a plate is broken. Here is props manager Abby painting the plastic plates that will be broken each night:

A view of the stage late on Thursday:

At tech Friday night, here is director Sara Griffin talking to a group of performers during the fight call. You can see the Spanish tiles installed around Traffick’s doorway, and a partially complete frame around Gripe’s doorway. That’s Lochlain in the foreground, as light board operator.

And finally, a moment from Friday night’s rehearsal, from behind the tech table:

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The Busybody

Posted in Uncategorized on April 19th, 2022 by Eric Appleton

Technical rehearsals begin later this week. Focus is done, except for things that need to get focused on the walls. We’ve got the pieces and are now starting to assemble them. The big items yesterday was getting the two major walls painted and raised.

Here’s from a day ago; the walls are almost done getting skinned with lauan:

Here’s Abby using a router to trim away excess around the openings:

At the end of the day yesterday, we stood the walls up and secured them with jacks so they could be used during that evening’s rehearsal:

Abby celebrates out accomplishment:

Abby is also the head of the props team, and here’s teammate Valerie (who is also in the show) working on the chimney board. Here she uses the bandsaw to cut out the legs:

And then a very detailed period paint treatment:

Seeing the star motif she selected, I decided to use a star motif for the changing screen. The chimney board is part of the Gripe household, and sticks to that house’s blue palette. The changing screen is part of the Traffick household, and sticks to that house’s golden Spanish motifs.

Here Cody and another student work on the doorstep platforms. There’s TD Ruth and Trevor in the background discussing the Gripe windows:

Ruth also decided to brush off her welding skills and use steel for the climbable trellis:

Here she is on the driveway behind the shop, preparing to grind down the burrs:

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The Busybody

Posted in Uncategorized on April 13th, 2022 by Eric Appleton

We’re in the midst of construction (and just finished light hang) for Susan Centlivre’s “The Busybody.” Here are a few photos from yesterday in the scene shop.

Trevor works on framing up the windows for the Gripe family’s facade:

Sam works with another student on framing up the Gripe family’s facade:

Technical Director Ruth discusses a project with Cody:

And then here’s Cody again with a drawing, putting together a cut list:

This is a photo from about two weeks ago when I was working on the stage floor:

This week, though, my project is painting the two cityscape groundrow flats. In this photo I’ve just started painting the detail on the stage left flat:

And this one is from about half an hour earlier, after I just laid in some shadow on the stage left flat:

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The Busybody

Posted in Uncategorized on April 12th, 2022 by Eric Appleton

I plan to get some photos of work in the shop in the next couple days, but in the meantime, here are two photos of the model. Because of time constraints I rarely build a fully colored model for our productions, but since we were exploring model building in Advanced Design Seminar, I felt that I should include myself in the exercises and build an example. Building the furniture was one of my Spring Break activities.

Here is the set up for Gripe’s interior:

And the set up for Traffick’s interior:

We’re also taking the play on a brief tour; a single performance at the Cravath Lake park pavilion in downtown Whitewater. The city didn’t have drawings of the space to share, so I and some students went down one afternoon and did a quick survey. After drafting the plan, I built a model in SketchUp so that we could all see how the furniture and portable scenic pieces could be arranged in the space.

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Archive for April, 2022

The Busybody

The Busybody

The Busybody

The Busybody

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