UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

This is a photo of the drafting table last week as I was finishing up the elevation of acts one and three. Construction has already begun; it’s a good thing that our TD (Steve Chene) and I have established a pretty good system of working together. I can get him partial drawings or sketchup models if time is crunched, and with some talking through things he has enough information to get tech drawings generated. Very important when you’ve got students in the shop waiting for things to do — and deadlines to meet. . . and “Into the Woods” to get designed. . .

That being said, here’s Steve with some of the students bolting together the central pivoting platform. Those large shapes behind them are pieces of Zeze’s garret.

TA Thad measures stuff.

TA Keri and Intro student Samantha working on another piece of Zeze’s garret.

And finally, since the Dupont’s parlor will feature a gradated paint treatment, here is my first experimental stab at working out the colors and the gradation.

Last night was first dress, so a couple of photos from the evening:

The set up for the first scene, the yard of Jack’s House, under worklights. Today we’ll be taking the floor back to black. There’s still detail to finish on the two screens, and this afternoon’s project will be to complete the beanstalk.

This is the set up for Act Two, the Giant’s Kitchen. That’s Jack hiding behind the stove.

We have a single performance of the play on campus (this Saturday). After that, it will spend its life on the road, visiting various local schools with their variety of performance spaces.

The beanstalk is now covered. Tomorrow, we paint.

The screens are mighty close to being done. They’re awfully busy, but then again, so are the research images.

As we move into first tech tonight, lots of things getting finished, or close to finished, or close to close to getting finished. . .

. . . the beanstalk is encased in muslin so we can paint all that plastic without having the paint flake off, and so all the tubing has a chance of staying attached both when Jack climbs it and all the transport is must endure.

Here’s Eric painting leaf after leaf after leaf.

Close to done with one folding screen. . .

. . . as Anna paints birds and leaves on the other.

With tech beginning tomorrow, we’re painting up a storm on “Jack and the Magic Beans.” Everything’s been cut out since last week and has been in use in rehearsals, so it’s really about making sure we don’t have acres of white-primed scenery that light will bounce off and blind us during tech. Though of course, the beanstalk itself is a bit more complicated than that. . .

Here’s TA Keri (at the top of the stalk) working with a crew of Intro students on wrapping the sonotube with ethafoam tendrils and vines. Tomorrow we’ll cheese cloth the shebang to provide stability and a decent paint surface. That’s Thad over there on the bandsaw, cutting out templates of birds, trees, and pigs for use on the big folding screens.

Here’s Kyle and Joe working on the town groundrow.

. . . and from another angle.

I started laying out the patterns on one of the large portal screens. There are those birds templates that Thad was cutting out on the bandsaw.

And while it might seem like Kyle and Joe were everywhere in shop today, they just happened to finish with the town at a time I needed to start filling in shapes on the screens.

Finally, some of the mostly finished pieces sitting on stage after the afternoon’s dry tech session. I am rather happy with how the fence turned out.

Painting on Jack begins in earnest today!

Here are Intro students Devon and Molly working on the landscape groundrow. Yes, it IS just like a giant paint by number set!

TA Keri works with student on standing up one of the folding screens that will form the downstage portal.

And here is Keri working on laying out the Giant’s clock.

Finally, another Intro student, Bruce, knocks down the edges of the Giant’s table preparatory to painting.

The shows come thick and fast. “Jack and the Magic Beans” is in the shop, and today I’m working up the first act groundplan for “Anything to Declare?” a French farce which is our December show. It’s also our ACTF entry, so it has to be designed with an eye toward possible portability, should we be chosen to present at January’s conference.

As much as I hate to admit it, we were down to the wire on this one. It’s the first show in my six years at Whitewater where we had a fair amount that had to get done the day of opening — at least it was almost all scenic elements above the actor’s heads and didn’t have too much of an impact on the tech and dress rehearsals. Jayson Winslow, the student set designer, didn’t have a chance to cue in the candles before yesterday afternoon, but since his overall look was already solid and the candles served more as accent, again, not horrible.

At the beginning of shop, yesterday afternoon, finishing up the central gable of the bed/crypt structure. That’s TD Steve Chene and one of the Intro to Theatre students, Sean.

Students work on wiring the canldes, as well as painting the theatre floor black and numbering the seats.

And at the end of the afternoon, the peaks are all in place and the candles are all wired. The units with the candles rotate, revealing statues for the crypt scene.

Smoke check, with ASM Nick.

Then finally, the whole shebang, done.

This evening’s dress rehearsal:

The stage under work lights, as we begin setting up.

A bit of a closer view. There’s still a fair amount to be done on this end of the stage — before we got rolling, I finished filling the bookcase, and during rehearsal, painted the balustrade’s mate. I’m rather impressed that it really does look so greyscale.

In preset; the lighting designer is student Jayson Winslow. That black fabric is draped over the arm chair because even though I’d painted the back hours before, it was such a humid day by go it still hadn’t dried completely.

And finally, a couple moments from the run.

More progress, getting ready for last night’s first tech:

. . . completion of the full moon (gotta repaint the black surround, of course). . .

. . . getting hoses and pipes ready to vent the fog under the deck. . .

. . . for a successful fog check.

Steve Chene, our TD, continues to forge ahead on the gabled peaks for the crypt/bedroom structure. . .

. . . as I tackled carving out the statues that will flank the sarcophagus.

Finally, the doors are installed for use in last night’s first tech. The bookcase stage right has a swinging portion at the bottom for one of Dracula’s escapes. While we’re not as far along as we’d like to be (the price of ambition in the first slot of the season), everything needed for rehearsal was present, if not perfect. But then, tech rehearsals are voyages of discovery.