UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Today’s progress on the UW-Whitewater production of “The Furies!” I managed to have the morning free, so I spent it in the shop working on the navelstone. It’s finally beginning to look like something.

Once shop hours started and students rolled in, Steve continued to work on the platform pile. Here he is with Intro students Kim and Jennnifer, explaining how to cut thin arcs from a sheet of masonite to create a lip around the edge of the central round platform. This will prevent the water poured over Orestes from trickling off everywhere. We’ll be putting a drain in, as well.

They cut them out, and went ahead and primed them:

We also finally finished painting all the shards. Here they are lying in the shop awaiting their final spatter. Now we have to thread the darned things.

Props manager Allison adds a glossy sheen to our black and white pottery shards. . .

. . .while TA Brian and Intro student Makenzie build the blocks that will be supports for the platform stack.

Which looks like this right now:

With Steve making an adjustment, as seen past all the drawings:

One of my other projects was to recover the seats of all the juror chairs. It’s always fun seeing what people have done to chairs through the previous decades. . . and I could have sworn I’d pulled ten chairs.

And finally, Dale Kaminski, in the Department of Art and Design, was kind enough to use their giant printer to print out the head of Apollo on canvas. Just have to trim it down and attach it to its frame.

Now that we’re back from Spring Break, work continues on the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of the “The Furies.” Before we left for break, Steve (our TD) and the students got the deck in and primed. . .

. . . which meant that it was ready for me to paint. Here it is, part way done:

And here it is, done:

Well, done that is, until I add the mortar lines of the individual stones and all. That’s going to wait until after the central pile and all the facing is in place. So, while I wait for that to happen, I can do things like work on the naval stone. The students have glued together sheets of styrofoam, and here it is, waiting for me to start hacking away at it (in a well ventilated shop. . . ):

While I’m painting away, TA Thad works with Jake and Jennifer on platform understructure:

And props manager Allison works on a prototype Apollo head sheild thing. . .

“The Tender Land” has opened, “Dancescapes” is gearing up, and “The Furies” is already starting rehearsals. This morning I finished drafting the groundplan (third time is the charm) and will get it scanned and copied and distributed tomorrow. Now it’s on to the rest of the drawings. . .

Last night was first dress for the UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land,” which was also our first night with the full orchestra. Scenically, we’re in a good place — it’s down to details now. I spent some time this afternoon working on the windmill, and I must say I’m rather happy with how the blades turned out:

This gets attached to an old color wheel motor and placed atop the tower:

We had it in place for the evening’s run; in order not to become a spinning distraction, it rotates at the top of the show until Laurie’s entrance, and at the end of the show, after Laurie’s exit (the winds of change. . . ).

We also continued with clapboarding the house. Here are Bruce and Brendan working on that project:

Last night was the second technical rehearsal for the UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land.” While the stage crew was sweeping and mopping, I took a few photos of the the stage in its state of near completion (the cyc and scrim have yet to be stretched which is why they’re wrinkly upstage, there):

Yesterday afternoon the porch went up, roof pieces were attached, and window were installed. Today we’ll be attacking the clapboarding on the house, which is the last large project — other than the windmill.

Crates and barrels had finish painting done (don’t forget to re-establish the stave edges on the barrels or they end up very 2D).

And some tonal glazing was done on the shed and fence(broom included for scale).

Just before curtain, everyone settles into position. We have Jim Butchart (director), student assistant directors, student sound and electrics head, stage manager, light board op, and Steve Chene, exchanging his TD hat for his LD hat.

Finally, some photos from the run:

Last night was first tech for the UW-Whitewater’s production of “The Tender Land.” We’re still working on the set (which is what sometimes happens when the TD has to split time between being the TD and being the lighting designer and it all has to happen at the same time). The two larger things that need to get installed is the porch (posts and headers) and the split rail fence along the upstage walkway. Oh, and the clapboarding for the house. It’s all built, and I expect will get installed this afternoon. In fact, here’s Intro student Josiah cutting the last few holes in the fenceposts yesterday afternoon:

I finished the groundrow:

And here it is, installed behind the scrim:

In the evening, as we got ready to get rolling, here is a shot of the tech table, with board operator Jennifer with TD/LD Steve Chene beyond:

And stage manager Allison figuring out some cuing in her prompt book:

Finally, the actors do their vocal warmups at the edge of the pit, led by music director/conductor Bob Gehrenbeck:

Oh, and then of course, earlier in the day I started working up the revised groundplan for “The Furies,” and here it is on the drafting table, under my lists and fresh platfrom cut-outs which will be used for the next stab at a model of the pile of platforms. . .

Continuing progress on the UW-Whitewater production of Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land.” The last few days have been busy. While Steve Chene (our TD and lighting designer for this show) is on stage focussing, I’ve been in the shop painting and supervising painting. The groundrow is my last big painting project, and yesterday I had students painting benches and crates and shed doors. The last construction bits included cutting holes for rails in fence posts and cutting strips of corrugated metal for the shed roof. Which I’ll have to paint tomorrow. . .

Here’s a shot of the stage at the end of the day. The cyc has been unbundled and is hanging to allow some of the wrinkles to fall out, though we will be stretching it (and probably misting it) later on. That piece of painted stone work up center is not part of the set; Steve was probably using that to stand in for the groundrow as he focussed.

Further work on the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land” from yesterday afternoon’s shop session. At this point, Steve Chene, our Technical Director and lighting designer on this production was on stage with the electrics crew forging ahead on the focus. By the end of the day, they’d gotten most of the front of house focussed. In the shop, smaller things were going on, like Intro student James and TA Logan boring and cutting out holes in the fence posts. . .

I was hitting some of the smaller paint projects, and with the final two portal flats finished, starting on laying out the groundrow. Here’s the elevation on the drafting table, marked up with measurements to help me figure out where everything goes when I blow it up to real size:

And here is the real size groundrow:

At the end of the day, Steve wrapped up focus, so here’s a view of the stage from behind the tech table. All the portal flats are up, and the frame structure for the house and the shed are in place. Over on the left, you can see folks working on the ladder up to the second story window.

At the same time, work rolls forward on “The Furies.” I’ve begun figuring out the grounplan, and one of the tricky bits will be the arrangement of slanted and ‘broken’ pavement. Here’s a go with bits of illustration board cut into stock platform sizes:

And then to start working with height, a revision using foamcore platforms glued together to make 6″ thick platforms.

Now I have to show this to the director (Angela Iannone) and see what she thinks. . .

Yesterday saw work on the final two portal flats for the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land.” After this, of course, I will have to paint the groundrow. I thought I might be interesting to snap a photo of one of the flats at each step of the process.

First, here’s the palette of colors (I’ve just finishing stirring them at the start of the work session):

The other week, I based in shades of tan — lighter near the horizon line, and darker in the foreground — to help give a unified tonality to the whole piece, and to help create a sense of distance.

While it may or may not make sense from a painterly/fine art standpoint, it made sense for this project to base in the tree masses as the next step. The paint I’m using is pretty dilute scenic paint, so the approach is more watercolory than oil paintery; it’s really hard to lighten something back up once you’ve got paint down.

After the trees (mind you, you’ve got two flats going, so while one dries I work on the other. Back and forth, back and forth. . . ), I added the layers of ground. You can see the paint elevation on my handy little stand there. It’s covered in Saran Wrap to prevent splashed of paint from getting onto the original. This flat is the one on the far right of the elevation — it’s drawn in 1/2″ equals 1 foot scale.

Then I go back and start adding light and shade to my sylized tree and bush masses.

Now we’re heading into textures and detail. The plow lines and fence posts are also added.

Some more detail in the house and fence posts, some stylized stems and trunks, and some more lines of color to help create the plowed and planted fields. Those yellow dots on the bushes will become the centers of flowers.

Now is a good time to lay in the three sky colors, blending from darkest at the top to lightest at the bottom.

Barbed wire and the windmill. Also some flowers on the darker set of bushes.

This afternoon, clouds and done.

Yesterday afternoon production activities for the upcoming UW-Whitewater production of “The Tender Land.”

First, I finished up the fifth and sixth portal flats. . .

. . . as I was applying the final clouds and shading, students were readying them for hanging. Here’s Intro student James stapling up some of the flappy excess muslin around the edges. . .

. . . and TA Logan working with some Intro students on attaching the hanging irons.

In the Barnett, electrics work was wrapping up. The hang is done, and we’re about to move onto focus (in fact, we focused some units as part of that morning’s Intro to Tech class). Here’s TA Quinn and TA Joe at the tech table talking about some notes.

We also got the frames for the house (at least, the lower section) and shed up, so now the actors have doorways!