UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

Our finals for Period Decor and Styles and Introduction to Theatrical Design were scheduled for the tail end of the final exam period (thank you university scheduling). So, the past two days have been spent working through all the projects and evaluating them in order to get the grades in by Friday afternoon.

For Period Decor, the students were assigned a scene from a play with a strong period requirement and expected to design the room required by the play. It wasn’t about design, but rather the application of research, and all of their choices were to be backed up with images and notes in an accompanying binder (since drawing skills varied widely). Here is a shot of most of the set renderings and models (they were given a choice depending on which they felt more comfortable with), pinned to one of the hallway bulletin boards:

For Intro to Design, their final project is also their final lighting design project. They were to present their design metaphor, explain how they developed design elements from the metaphor, present a central metaphor image, lighting visual research images, a charcoal sketch story board of the whole play, a cue synopsis for the whole play, and then develop two color sketches from two of the storyboard looks, create magic sheets to develop those color sketches, and then distill the magic sheets into purpose lists. Here are some pictures of their projects, also hanging on the corridor bulletin boards.

Twelve projects, and each one takes about forty minutes to go through and evaluate fully.

“Public Enemy” struck over the weekend, and the plates of drafting for “Putnam County” have been delivered to the TD — though I have to start in on paint elevations this week. Last week we started thinking about “Animal Farm,” and by the end of the production meeting, we’d begun to explore stadium style seating.

And I then worked up a rough 3D model:

This afternoon, the director, the publicist and I will have a meeting to talk about seating, ticket sales, and how many seats (if any) we can afford to lose.

I’m also plunging into the grading of the Intro to Theatre’s costume design project. It was in a neat stack on my office floor before I spread them out to show off the students’ work for this photo:

In the rush to get “Putnam County” drafted and begin preliminary work on “Animal Farm” I forgot to post pictures from the final dress rehearsal of “Public Enemy.” So, here they are.

Directed by Mary MacDonald Kerr. Set design by Eric Appleton. Lighting design by Aimee Hanyzewski. Costume design by Tracey Lyons. Sound design by student Emily Ottinger. Props manager student Allison Lozar. Stage manager student Abyra Schneeberg. Thanks for Josh Schmidt for working with Emily on developing her sound design.

Scenes One and Two: The Stockman home:

Scene Three: The newspaper office:

Scene Four; The Meeting Hall.

Scene Five: The Stockman home:

This past week, one of my favorite Intro to Theatre assignments was due — a costume design for “A Raisin in the Sun.” The students pick a character from a moment on the play, do research, write a statement supporting their choices through the text of the play and their research, and do a costume rendering. They’re always surprised at how well they manage to do!

Here the projects are, on the wall of the classroom, prior to presentations and discussion:

Some photos from the final dress rehearsal of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Set design by student Lilliana Gonzalez. Costume design by student Kat Middleton. Props by student Jordan Meyer. Stage managed by student Alex Cary. Lighting design by Eric Appleton. Technical direction by Ruth Conrad-Proulx. Directed by Charles Grover, to bookend his years at Whitewater. Sleepy Hollow was the first show he directed when he started his position here, so many years ago.

Preset:

The Storytellers:

Outside the Tarrytown Tavern:

Ichabod learns about the bridge:

Ichabod hobnobs with the ladies of the town:

Ichabod and Brom vie for Katerina’s attentions:

Brom and Katerina:

Ichabod gets ready for the dance:

All they could find was his hat and a shattered pumpkin:

Brom and Katerina tie the knot:

Friday afternoon was spent finishing up “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” We opened on Saturday and sent it off on the road. Here are some pics from that final afternoon in the shop.

Students adding leaves to the background flats:

Painting the trees. The Fall (non-spooky side is facing us):

Touching up the black on the side flat trees:

Final painting of the stools:

TD Ruth working with TA Nathan on some sign hanging technology:

Waiting for the evening’s tech rehearsal to begin. The trees on stage, Fall side out:

And then student stage manager Alex kindly flipped them to spooky side out so I could get a shot of that:

We are heading into tech for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and we are behind, but catching up. The set is designed by student Lilliana Gonzalez. I’m doing the lighting design this time around.

Here are the tree-trunk stools, ready to get painted:

Intro to Theatre students applying gaff tape over the gap between the two halves of the trees:

Making headway on the painting of the backing flats:

These half trees are done (except for painting the framing black). They get attached to the side masking flats to frame the playing space.

The trees on stage, as we get ready for rehearsal:

Light board operator Stephanie doing some programming at the tech table:

The view over the monitors during the run:

And then coming in bright and early this morning to continue texturing the trees with Lilliana, and putting lots of fans on them in the hope that they will be dry by tonight.

During the last couple weeks, Mason has been working on a set design for “Fool for Love” in the intermediate design seminar. We’re now moving into lighting, so I built a small version of his set for the light lab:

Which we then used to construct a preset for the play:

This past weekend we had tech! Sunday was first Dress, and tonight, Monday night, is final Dress. Here are some photos from Friday afternoon through the weekend.

The pie shop second act counter, with cask:

Students installing the pie shop shelves:

Some of the posters that will appear all over the stage:

TA Joe leading students in raising Pirelli’s wagon after attaching the flat to the platforming:

Getting reading to practice the trap door business:

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ASMs under the platforming, waiting to catch actors as they come down the slide (engineered by TD Steve Chene). Safe as possible, and works like a charm!

Stage manager Allison, calling the show during one of the runs this weekend:

And a shot of the stage as Toby begins to play barker:

My personal moment of triumph was discovering that I could use sea sponges instead of springs to allow the harmonium pedals to be pumped after I detached them from the bellows! Yay, low tech!

Friday. We’re now less than a week from first tech. Our TD, Steve, will have another rare Saturday shop session to keep moving forward. There’s still a lot to be done, but on the other hand, I confess that I was quite feaful we would not be as far as we are after only about three weeks of build (remember, except for the two Saturday sessions, the shops are only open from 1-5 Monday through Friday).

Here’s a pic of the stage Friday afternoon. Hang is still commencing, though later in the day, Steve started focussing.

In the Hicklin, Allison got more pieces based and I lined them. Here are the walls for the pieshop wagon and the parlor wagon, nearing completion.

One of my day’s side projects was to work on the trunk in which Pirelli’a body is stashed. We have a large Pirelli, which meant building a larger trunk. It was built a few days ago and they’ve been using it in rehearsal. Here it is, at the midway point of decoration. There’s a little fabric covered slot for his hand to poke out at the near corner.

On Thursday, I built a spigot for the pie shop’s ale cask. I’m rather happy with it.

Finally, here’s Shauna, a member of the Intro to Tech class and part of the prop team. She’s painting the birds cages she designed and built for the bird seller.