UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

With the drawings for “Deathtrap” done, I’ve begun working up the rendering for the second UW Whitewater Summeround show, “Muskie Love.”

French doors!

Our TD, Steve, and the students have been getting the stage of the Barnett ready for “Deathtrap” rehearsals. Since work is being done in both the black box and the house of the Barnett, we’re doing it in the round, on the stage. The playing space is really small — 9 feet by 20. The risers are in place, they’ve hung the rep plot, and are starting in on the corner stair structure.

And I’m working on paint elevations this week, since I won’t be around much to supervise this work. Here’s the floor treatment, pinned to the hallway bulletin board outside the shop.

This is the finished rendering, also on the bulletin board outside the shop.

And here is a plate of wall elevations, looking very paint by numbers.

Step by step, the “Deathtrap” rendering gets closer and closer.

First the outline. . .

. . . and then color by numbers.

Today’s project is working up a rendering of “Deathtrap” for tonight’s first rehearsal. Having started out way back in high school with mechanical drafting, my drawing has always had a rather schematic look to it.

And, my other Callas book arrived in the mail today. More preparation for this August’s “Master Class” at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.

“Deathtrap” is on the drafting table. Since we’re doing it in the round, the staircase needs to be placed in one of the voms, so I’m working up the configuration.

The semester’s over. I’m trying to cut back a little this summer in order to have a little down time, so I’m only going to be working on four shows. First, I’ve signed on to do lighting for the Optimists’ production of “The Winter’s Tale,” which is their Shakespeare in the Park offering in Milwaukee this summer, and will open the second week in June. This is the pavilion in which we will play:

As befits the pavilion, the director has chosen to go with a somewhat “Star Trek” informed aesthetic. Since it won’t be dark until halfway through the show, and we’ll have maybe 24 dimmer tops, lighting will be — well, minimal yet inventive. We’ve been discussing handheld LEDs and solar powered actor manipulated sources.

I’m still working on the two UW-Whitewater Summeround shows, though I’m designing and then handing them off to our TD. Here’s the groundplan for “Muskie Love,” hot off the drafting table.

The last project of the summer will be lighting “Master Class” for Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in August. So a little reading up is in order:

Distributing the groundplan for “Deathtrap” this morning. This is one of the UW-Whitewater Summeround shows. Since the Hicklin theatre will be down for renovations, and the house of the Barnett will also be having renovations, we will be staging both this and “Muskie Love” in the round on the stage of the Barnett. For a play like “Deathtrap” it means making some decisions of expedience. . .

Now that “Into the Woods” is done and gone, our attention turns to “Romeo and Juliet” (while Dancescapes goes into tech this coming week). With two pivoting units, Angela (the director) has been eager to get more dimensional representation to help with blocking. My sad little model — in progress — is pictured above. It’s just enough to help her figure out what is where and what can be seen when which unit is turned which way. One of the challenges of teaching and designing is doing both at the same time — you can either catch up with grading papers and preparing coursework, or you can work on a model. And when you work on a model, you still have to get information to the TD so the set can be built. Which is why the model is just barely adequate.

On the other hand, here’s a picture much closer to what the set will look like, in Sketch-up. The pivoting units are already being framed up in the shop.

Had a talk with the director of Romeo and Juliet, Angela Iannone, the other day, and made more progress on the two pivoting units. Some elements are placeholders — the scaffold will probably not be simply pipe, and the glass block is there to stand in for eventual translucent elements. But I think we’re close.

Now to build actual models of the units so folks like the fight choreographer can start seeing how these work in the space.