UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Halfway through finals weeks, and taking a break from drafting “Into the Woods” to take some of that drafted information and begin the 3D model.

The last of the essays have been graded, and the Intro to Theatre final has been written. Back to the drafting table to start laying out the frames!

The finished groundplan, with the elevation hanging above on the bulletin board. Now, onto grading papers!

In between end-of-the-semester grading, back to working up the groundplan.

The finished drafted elevation of “Into the Woods.” Now I need to head back to the groundplan and get that to our TD by the week’s end.

This is where we left off with Romeo and Juliet at the end of the production meeting yesterday. This thumbnail shows the upstage framing structure with projection screen between the three central openings. Downstage will be two pivoting structures that have yet to be figured out. . .

The elevation for “Into the Woods” has been seen and approved by the director (Jim Butchart), and our TD seems to think it’s buildable and won’t break the bank (of course, we haven’t gotten into all the bits and pieces yet) — so it’s time to move onto “Romeo and Juliet,” our show at the end of the Spring semester. We have a production meeting this afternoon, so I’m working up some preliminary doodles. The director (Angela Iannone) has decided to go with a steampunk look to the play. Structurally, we’re trying to develop two pivoting tower elements down and center which will keep the action down in front and provide the bits and bobs required for the various scenes — she would really like to keep changes seamless and swift and not bring items on if it can be helped. She’d also like to use projections to help establish mood and locale, so we’re going to want some sort of surface upstage. I’ve been looking at Victorian gasworks. . .

Almost finished with the elevation, so I asked Jim Butchart (the director) to take a look. He approved. I still have to allow a bit of space off right to allow the Narrator to slip off beside the tree, which means opening the main act a foot, which means revealing more structure stage left as well. Now to run it past our TD (Steve Chene) and see if we can build it. . .

“Into the Woods” on the drafting table, developing the elevation. With all the layers of trees and structure, I’m drawing from the front to back. In this image, the downstage most sets of trees have been finished.

Taking the aerial view from the Sketchup rough work-up of Into the Woods, I’m working up the groundplan. It may seem a bit of a backwards way to work, but I find that while Sketchup is good for tossing around basic structures, once you get into thinking about detail, you have to figure out how to build the detail before you can add the detail to the model. It’s easier to simply draw it, and then, once I know how the detail works on paper, I can go back and build it in the 3D space. More useful accidents happen on paper.

I’ve laid out the footprint of the space, made some changes, and will now take this preliminary groundplan and work up an elevation in which I can incorporate more detail (that Russian Constructivist book open in the corner is informing things — the director would like climbables. . .). Then it will be back to the groundplan to work in those discoveries.

At the same time, there are all the costume design projects from Intro to Theatre I have to get graded. . .

And “Into the Woods” hits the drafting table.