In the Hicklen Theatre, with students laying out and gluing together blocks of foam for the rocks by the stream.
My project for the afternoon — working on the botanical prints. At this point, I have half of them traced out, and got four of those tracings colored today.
The pears, before final sepia wash.
Two completed flats, after the sepia wash.
Panels
Base coats on the platforming for “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Circuiting is happening at the same time, so that’s freshman Jake Taylor standing there with his lighting stick. I’m glad he waited until the paint was dry. The collage painting on the stage floor is left over from this past summer’s “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” designed by student Keenan Minogue.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that we were going to go with carpet, and I changed the rendering to reflect these textures. Sadly, the budget won’t allow it, so we’re back to paint.
The final project for the scenic portion of Introduction to Theatrical Design was due yesterday, and here are some of the projects on the bulletin boards outside the classroom. Students chose to work on one of these three plays: “The Weir,” “The Holy Rosenbergs,” and Wole Soyinka’s version of “The Bacchae.”
The finished “Aladdin” set under worklights. The orange ‘onions’ were added to hide the join between the green and red arches, since it wasn’t possible to carve the compound angle necessary to make them butt cleanly. The show is now touring to area schools.
During last night’s technical rehearsal. The princess in the throne room. The throne is not quite done, but I’m quite happy with the way the tiling on the column turned out. Lighting design by student Sean Jensen. Costume design by student Julia Boarini.
Street scene with Aladdin and his mother.
In the shop this afternoon, making the push to finish the tile painting on the blue columns. We’ll finish the last two green ones tomorrow afternoon.
The throne with first paint on it. This, too, will be finished Friday afternoon. We’ll be bedazzling the heck out of it.
And finally, when you don’t have the one planter you want, you take two planters and turn them into one.
Getting set up for tech last night. Yes, still a fair amount to be done, primarily finishing all the tile painting on the columns and painting the throne (not pictured), and the join between the green and central arches is awkward and will be covered by an additional ‘onion’. But it all looks suspiciously like the rendering. . .
This afternoon’s paint work — the other upstage masking flat for “Aladdin.” Here it is with the bulk of the color laid in. The interestingly shaped plywood leaning in the back are the beginning pieces for the throne.
And here is it at the end of the afternoon, finished.
And the Intro to Theatre students continue covering the arches with cheesecloth. Tomorrow they’ll get primed white.
Paint work from yesterday. These are two completed masking flats for the upcoming production of “Aladdin.” These two flats will be picked up and moved center for the street scenes. That’s one of our students off to the side speaking with TD Steve Chene about how they will fix the right hand flat, which was built more rhomboid than square. The blue pillar will get a diagonally sloping tile pattern.
A pause during today’s paint work. About halfway through laying in the colors.
In the shop. Student in the Intro to Theatre class are covering the arches with cheesecloth preparatory to painting.
End of day. Almost finished with this folding masking flat for offstage right. A little more line work, some shading on the trees, and then tomorrow it’s onto the final masking flat for stage left.
At what served as the tech table for “Music in the Air.” That’s costume designer Tracey Lyons (a colleague at UW-Whitewater), director Greg Ganakis, and Scott, the light board operator who was rather left in charge of the partially completed lighting design the final two nights (he kept up though!). Also note the lack of stage manager, as the sole member of stage management (as well as the only crew member for a cast of 80, which included children and a cast member with early onset Alzheimer’s), Kaylee Oost, was running all the props backstage. NO ONE CALLED THIS SHOW. Oh, and no headsets either. The Whitewater students who thought they were on the run crew were never told when to show up, and all backstage crew was finally cut by the producer on Wednesday, though no one from Music on the Lake ever bothered to contact them. It’s a wonder there is any one is smiling in this photo.
During tech; set up for Ernst’s office.
A slightly blurry photo the day after load-in. The road cases on stage are sound and lights getting set up. This is the first day with the actors (all seventy plus of them) on the full set. The panels are shown with the “Munich” side.
