UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

I’m taking a break from painting scenery to forge ahead with paint elevations so I will know what to paint on upcoming scenery. Here’s a shot of the stage as it was at the start of shop yesterday, with the under-walls for the upstage platforming in place. That’s director Jim Butchart’s fainting couch center, which we’ll be using for Judge Turpin’s parlor.

In the shop, Quinn works on the framing for one of the roofline flats:

While Lilliana lays out the details of the next one:

Down in the costume shop, work is also continuing apace. Here shop supervisor Tracey Lyons shows Shelby how to thread the serger:

Meanwhile, Bridget works on one of the dresses:

And I return to the drafting table for the rest of the afternoon:

This past week Tracey Lyons and I (with occasional appearances by Jim Butchart, since he lives in Milwaukee) spent five days at the KCACTF Region 3 Annual Festival, this time hosted by UW-Milwaukee. We took about ten Irene Ryan nominees and their partners, three stage managers, a costume design, and a sound design.

Here is most of the group, shortly after the stage management presentations:

And here are our three stage managers, Brianna, Emily, and Allison:

Here’s the unrealized costume design presented by Katie Krueger:

While none our students moved forward in the competitions, much was learned and they had the chance to present their work to complete strangers, as well as check out the work done by their peers at a number of other institutions. We’re pretty darned proud of the work our students presented and hope they take the things they learned and push on even further in their work during the coming year.

We always encourage (well, force) our students to be as active as possible at the festival. Even if they don’t move forward in their respective competitions, we expect them to attend seminars and get involved with things like Design Storm and the play readings. Our costume designer joined the critical writing program. We had four students cast in the staged readings of new plays.

Joe (in the middle) gets ready for a one-act:

Abby (second from the left) waits while the full-length is introduced. Quite frankly, I though this full length student-written play was the most satisfying piece of theatre I saw this festival.

For some reason, I can never get our students to do the Tech Olympics, even though they’ve all learned how to do it all in Intro to Tech, and most of them continue to do shop work. Sigh. Finally, here’s Tracey hiding behind her coffee as we wait to see the design presentations.

Oh, on a totally different note, I was interviewed by Gionofer Fields for Milwaukee Public Radio’s Lake Effect program on scenic design and our upcoming “Sweeney Todd.” The interview can be found here!

http://wuwm.com/post/fleet-street-comes-alive-through-thoughtful-set-direction

The day before Thanksgiving was the day the Intro to Theatre class’s costume design products were due. We spent the class period looking at them, and yesterday I dug in and started evaluating them. This is one of my favorite Intro projects, as the students do something they never before thought they were capable of doing.

There was also the push to get the groundplan of “Sweeney Todd” into the hands of all concerned:

Then, the fastest way to get more info to our technical director is to launch into the 3D modeling:

Activity continues on the department’s production of “Radium Girls.” New things this week include the beginning of the light hang. The lighting is being designed by student Joe Berman, and TA Quinn is the ME on this show. Here is Quinn looking at Joe’s plot:

Intro to Theatre students Brent, Dustin, and Jane hang the first light on the second electric:

Then a bit later, after more of the position has been hung, and Jane consults the plot:

In the shop, base painting furniture pieces continues:

Tomorrow, we’re going to start in on painting the deck.

Yesterday, Milwaukee scenic and costume designer, as well as puppet designer and builder, Brandon Kirkham visited our Intro to Design class and brought a bunch of stuff to share, including his model and research from the production of “Boeing Boeing” we worked on together last summer. Here he is talking to the students:

He was so inspiring one of the students is now considering shifting her BFA emphasis to scenic design. Thank you, Brandon!

This morning the second half of the puppet workshop with Dan Katula takes place. Here the students pose with the puppets they worked on last week:

And Dan then gets the session rolling. Today will be less about fabrication than about manipulating the puppets.

And finally, some boring photos. “Radium Girls” is deep into rehearsal, and since the set is fairly stripped down and simplified (both to serve the play, and to allow us to take it apart, store it, and then put it back together while the Wisconsin High School Theatre Festival descends upon us in two weeks), I’m actually getting to work on “Sweeney Todd.” We’ll start the paintwork of “Radium Girls” next week; everything in the photos is only base coated.

The rolling factory table, multi-purpose table, and reclining bench:

More benches:

And the platforming:

This morning, Dan Katula, a Milwaukee-based actor and puppet maker led a workshop on puppet construction. Part two will be next week.

Here he is showing the students some of his work. First, a superhero rod puppet:

A sock-based puppet:

The rod controlled bird he built for a production of “The Secret Garden:”

An in-progress spitting snail he’s building for a friend’s film project:

A bit later, I popped back in to see how things were progressing, and found even fellow faculty member Jim Butchart building something:

Sam Burkardt seems very happy with her puppet:

On the “Radium Girls” front, the platforming has been legged up, and TD Steve Chene will now turn the shop’s attention to benches and tables as I start researching “Sweeney Todd.”

Oh, and did I mention that costume shop supervisor and my team teacher for Intro to Design Tracey Lyons and I are writing a book? The first quarter of it is due Monday.

More progress on “Three Excellent Cows!”

I finished the barn floor tiles today:

While much priming occurred elsewhere. Here’s Intro student Julia working on the rail fence:

And then joining Austin to prime the picket fence :

Here’s Intro student Alex cutting boards for the crate in which the frozen yogurt machine is delivered (I’ve forgotten the name of the student working with him. Darn all these new names and faces to remember every year!):

In the Barnett, student lighting designer Quinn focuses his area light:

Tech director Steve Chene works on the the vegetable stand, which is covered with parts of “I Hate Hamlet:”

While TA Bruce completes the election speech lectern for Mrs. Crumpley:

“I Hate Hamlet” is up and running, and “Three Excellent Cows” has been in rehearsal for a little while. Since the scenery is rather slight (it’s our touring children’s show and must fit into a van), it’s more important to get rolling on the plethora of props I wrote into the show. Darn that playwright.

Here’s the hat El Superdog Grande makes for Daisy to wear when she runs for president:

And the start of one of the wings for Rupert’s attempt at space flight:

In the costume shop spray booth, Intro to Theatre students Alex and Anthony glue newspaper onto Felix’s yogurt stand hat, complete with giant spoon.

Costumes for the show are being designed by student Stephanie Ruch, and work on those continues in the costume shop. Here’s Emily (who is also stage manager for the show) and an Intro student working on a piece:

Bergen cuts out a pattern for Felix’s vest:

And Bridget works on what looks like Miss Bigglesby’s dress:

We headed into tech this week, and here’s a photo from last night’s first dress rehearsal. As you can see, there’s still a lot to be done on the set, but at least it’s mostly detail. This is what happens when you lose a lot of experienced TAs to graduation, the TD is also the lighting designer and you, him, and the director all forget a cardinal rule: Don’t do a realistic interior for the first show of the season. This is because the first show has two weeks less build time than the shows later in the semester. Still, everything the actors need is on stage, and when we finish up Tuesday afternoon, I will be fairly happy with it.

During rehearsal I wandered in and out the shop, painting doors so they could get installed before the next rehearsal. This is the door to Barrymore’s rooftop hideaway:

Classes, of course, continue, and in Intro to Design (team taught with costume shop supervisor Tracey Lyons, who is inc charge of the costume third of the course), we had presentations on designers this week:

And in-class work sessions so students can get feedback on their upcoming final costume design project:

And next week, we move right onto getting “Three Excellent Cows” built. I’ve also got to start getting “Radium Girls” going, and we will also have our first production meeting for “Sweeney Todd.”

Good heavens, that’s a lot.

This past week, we went to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region Three’s conference in Milwaukee. Five of our students brought costume projects — and of course we had a group of actors participating in the Irene Ryan auditions. We had one student get to the Irene Ryan semi-finals, and one student make it to the costume design semi-finals. While having students move forward in the competition is always nice, it was particularly exciting for tech and design that four of the costume designers were not only first time presenters at the conference, but presenting what for them was pretty much their first costume designs.

Here are Kiley (behind) and Bridget (right) setting up their boards. Bridget is the one who made it to the semi-finals, with her design for Shakespeare’s “Pericles.”

Kiley brought a design for “Rashomon.”

Stephanie pins up her work for O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night.”

Liliana hangs her design for “Sweeney Todd.”

The one realized design we brought was Claire Kinder’s work on the department production of “Come Back,” earlier this semester. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a photo of her boards. Also to be acknowledged is the work of our costume designer/costume shop supervisor Tracey Lyons, who mentored all of these projects.