UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

“Come Back” has been struck and next week we head into tech for our children’s production, “Nate the Dragon.” The scenic design is by student Thad Kraus, who is new to scenic design.

Here’s Thad considering a color chart in order to figure out how he will mix colors to match his image.

At the start of Wednesday’s shop session, this flat was at this point. . .

By the end of the day, we were here. It may not look like much change from a distance, but a lot was done.

At the same time, the masking/framing flats were getting base colors.

I haven’t posted progress photos lately, as I’ve been focusing on making progress on the set for the UW-Whitewater’s production of “Come Back.” We had our final dress rehearsal last night, so here are a few photos to take us through the past several days.

Here’s the top of the ramp on the scene shop floor. I’ve just finished painting it. Meanwhile, in the background, TD Steve Chene talks to students about the rolling desk unit they’re working on.

In the Barnett theatre, the large flats are laid out for painting. Here a couple of the Intro to Theatre students paint the cerulean flats while I start working on clouds.

Clouds. And More clouds.

The installation of the tree flats commences. The wheelchair off to the side is a piece from the show, and is on stage to ensure that there’s enough space between the flats to get it on and off. You can also see work on the ramp happening.

More progress on the tree flats. I think that’s Allison back there holding it in place while it’s tacked into place.

The finished set, under worklights.

Preset. The lighting was designed by student Jayson Winslow.

Scene from final dress rehearsal. Sky (played by Colton Larson) sits in his friend’s Erin’s wheelchair and mourns his death.

Painting begins today for “Come Back.’ Here are a fair number of tree flats, laid out in the Barnett, having been painted with their base sky blue. That’s Katie back there painting the edges and the edges of the holes.

In the shop, the last tree is cut out.

In the Hicklin, TD Steve oversees the assembly of the risers.

While Allison and Connor work on the ends of the deck planking.

The model for “Come Back” continues. I combed through the script again this morning to double check on moveable items and where and how they needed to get around the space, and I haven’t yet worked out the masking upstage into the shop, but I feel I’m getting close. I need to get the director’s comments before I move any further on it. . .

Now that I’ve watercolored a bunch of clouds, I’m cutting them out into tree shapes.

There are a couple of reasons I’ve chosen to fore-go the 3D computer modeling (Sketchup) on this show. First is that with the trees, clouds, the curved walls, etc, there were enough reasonably non-geometrically complex features on the set to make me want to go analog; I would spend too much time in Sketchup trying to make it look how I wanted it to look and still not get as close as I would like to. There are spatial things I wanted to work out in real space.

Second, I discovered last year that sharing the 3D computer model with the directors actually confused them — if they didn’t actually have the program on their computers, and weren’t familiar with manipulating their way through the model, it was just another 2D image. and not as expressive as a painted rendering. It’s much, much easier to move a couple of paper figures through an actual model than it is for the directors to move them through the virtual version. A 3D model on a computer screen is still, ultimately, a 2D image.

Finally, with the time it takes to make a detailed computer rendering, I could build the model and still draft the whole set by hand. While the computer model would certainly have a high degree of detail that the tech director can use, I found last year that there was a lot of detail that was better off described with a note on a plate of drafting.

With the curved walls I am planning to use for “Come Back,” I decided it would be best to play with a model before committing myself to the drafting (I also need to run this permutation past the director, and she’s proven more receptive to models rather than 2D images),

Here’s the deck in the theatre’s box. We’re staging it in the corner of the Hicklin.

Even though the curved walls will do the bulk of the masking, I’m considering staggered tops, and with the audience sitting along both sides of the playing space, making the back walls blue seems like a good idea. They will be darker blue than the walls themselves, though.

A run (after several previous runs) at the clouds that will be painted on the curved walls. Not quite the clouds of my photos, but getting much closer. Clouds are hard. . .

It’s final dress for “Muskie Love” tonight. Here are the renderings and the groundplan pinned to the hallway bulletin board outside the theatre. When I started at Whitewater, I discovered that most of the Intro students doing their shop hours really didn’t have a sense of what the final product was to be, so I started hanging the drawings up outside our TD’s office so if they were at least interested, they could go take a look.

A view of the stage from one end. . .

. . . and the view from the other.

Roy’s bait shop sign. Since I’m not painting this summer in an attempt to let my hands have a break from the carpal tunnel, all the painting was done by students (and our TD, Steve) without my immediate supervision. I think they did a pretty solid job of it (though I apparently forget to tell them to age the fish as they did the letters — my fault, since they were working off a photo for that).

Finally, I’ve got “Master Class” on the drafting table. This is a lighting design for an August production at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. I have to get the plot and hookup finished and sent off no later than Thursday night.

The build for “Muskie Love” continues:

Here’s the completed boat that will be pushed around via foot power. . .

Kat works on the muskie part of the Roy’s bait shop sign. . .

. . . while Anastasia works on the lettering.

With “Deathtrap” closing this weekend, production work continues apace on “Muskie Love.”

Here, leaning against the wall in the Hicklin are the two platformed areas — to the left is the dock and to the right is Roy’s Bait Shop.

On lovely, sunny days, we open the shop doors and do a little work on the loading dock. This is stage manager Alison, who is also doing a fair amount of painting and prop work on the show. She, Anastasia, and Cat are all base painting Roy’s sign.

On the drafting table, the last plate for “Muskie Love” is done — the boat, the counter, and some crates.

Which means I can move onto further paint elevations. Here, things dry for the dock and shop, with a little help from Jerome Robbins.

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: