UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Further work on the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land” from yesterday afternoon’s shop session. At this point, Steve Chene, our Technical Director and lighting designer on this production was on stage with the electrics crew forging ahead on the focus. By the end of the day, they’d gotten most of the front of house focussed. In the shop, smaller things were going on, like Intro student James and TA Logan boring and cutting out holes in the fence posts. . .

I was hitting some of the smaller paint projects, and with the final two portal flats finished, starting on laying out the groundrow. Here’s the elevation on the drafting table, marked up with measurements to help me figure out where everything goes when I blow it up to real size:

And here is the real size groundrow:

At the end of the day, Steve wrapped up focus, so here’s a view of the stage from behind the tech table. All the portal flats are up, and the frame structure for the house and the shed are in place. Over on the left, you can see folks working on the ladder up to the second story window.

At the same time, work rolls forward on “The Furies.” I’ve begun figuring out the grounplan, and one of the tricky bits will be the arrangement of slanted and ‘broken’ pavement. Here’s a go with bits of illustration board cut into stock platform sizes:

And then to start working with height, a revision using foamcore platforms glued together to make 6″ thick platforms.

Now I have to show this to the director (Angela Iannone) and see what she thinks. . .

Some of this morning’s “The Tender Land’ tasks. Working up the paint elevations for the stage left portal flats.

And sealing the upstage walkway. I painted this yesterday afternoon, and after Thad’s scenic painting independent study work session this morning, I had enough time to get some acrylic on this so it will be dry in time for the afternoon’s shop hours.

There will be a fair amount of pictorial paint work on this show. Our TD has told he will build the portal flats this coming week so I can attack those first. That means working out the paint elevations, of course, so here’s the first half, for stage right. Again, borrowing from great American artists like Grant Wood, Alexandre Hogue, and Thomas Hart Benton.

The drafting for the upcoming UW Whitewater production of Copland’s “The Tender Land” is done, so I’m turning my attention to painting. Here is the ground row, in progress.

I was already pulling a lot from American artists Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, but a colleague from the art department dropped by and told me I should also look up the work of Alexander Hogue. His feminization of landscape is the most overt of these three artists, and boy, am I glad Prof. Wilk made me aware of his work!

Classes begin next week, and amid syllabi and lesson plans, it’s time to get back to the drafting table and crank out the last few plates for UW-Whitewater production of Copland’s “The Tender Land.”

Here’s yesterday’s progress on the elevation:

And today’s work on the section:

I really need to clean my triangles. . .

The students in the Introduction to Theatrical Design presented their final projects (lighting design) this morning. Lots of good work. Most of them found themselves surprised they actually rather were getting into lighting. One of the senior acting students even said that he wanted to do more lighting!

Since we only have five weeks on lighting in the course, we focus on the start of the design process — from script analysis up to magic sheets and purpose lists.

(yes, she knows she misspelled “Rashomon.” And yes, she was suitably embarrassed. . . )

And despite it being finals week, work continues on the Spring productions. Here’s a thumbnail of “The Furies,” with Athena. . .

. . . and where we’re leaving off on construction for “The Tender Land” as we head off to break. The floor is painted, the platforms are in place.

The call of the drafting table. With “Clybourne Park” bring struck this weekend, I’m pushing to get plates done so the building for “The Tender Land” can begin next week, which is also the last week of classes. The plan is to get the deck painted early in the week, so that platforming can go in at the end of the week; we’ll have levels in place for when rehearsals begin at the end of the winter break.

A return to the drafting table. After “Clybourne Park” opened yesterday, I had a chat with our TD about budgets; it’s a little grim at the moment (we are a state university, after all), so I’ve decided to cut the raked platform in the center of “The Tender Land” to try to save a few pennies. I would be nice to have it, and would really give definition to the yard area, but we can survive without it. When the platform went away, I also had to reconsider other platform heights — the director, for instance, expressed interest in having the porch high enough that the platform became easily sittable.

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.