UW Whitewater Theatre/Dance Department

The students in the Introduction to Theatrical Design presented their final projects (lighting design) this morning. Lots of good work. Most of them found themselves surprised they actually rather were getting into lighting. One of the senior acting students even said that he wanted to do more lighting!

Since we only have five weeks on lighting in the course, we focus on the start of the design process — from script analysis up to magic sheets and purpose lists.

(yes, she knows she misspelled “Rashomon.” And yes, she was suitably embarrassed. . . )

And despite it being finals week, work continues on the Spring productions. Here’s a thumbnail of “The Furies,” with Athena. . .

. . . and where we’re leaving off on construction for “The Tender Land” as we head off to break. The floor is painted, the platforms are in place.

One of the projects I assign my Introduction to Theatre course is a costume design. We’ve used “A Raisin in the Sun” as a text for a lot of the course discussions — script analysis, scenic design, etc — but now the students get to connect the dots. They have to analyze the character, do research, and then put it all together in a rendering. For most of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever done something like this, and for many, the first time in a long time they’ve even been asked to draw. Every year, they surprise themselves and turn out some nice work. Here’s a smattering of the projects, laying on my office floor as I grade them.

Off to the right, there, you can see my sketchbook with a few doodles for our Spring production of “The Furies.’ We’ve got our first production meeting this morning.

Construction continues on the upcoming UW-Whitewater’s production of “Clybourne Park.” In the shop, TA Quinn assigns some of his fellow students their tasks.

While in the Barnett, TA Thad considers his work on the escape stairs.

Down in the costume shop, Amber works on the doll. . .

. . . while costume designer and costume shop supervisor Tracey Lyons advises Leann (hidden behind the dressmaker’s form) on how to build a pregnancy pad for use in rehearsals.

Amber also built a mini-Nate puppet, which is now hanging proudly in the shop.

This is a little on the old news side, but down in the theatre corridor, the bulletin boards are filling up with work from the Introduction to Theatrical Design course. On one side, we see the students’ first attempt at a model, their quick and dirty presentations of the short play “Return of the Living.”

On the other side, we see their boards for their costume design final projects. They worked on either “Jeffrey” or “Rashomon.” Strangely enough, no one picked Shaw’s “Getting Married.”

Here are some students hard at work in the design room. It looks like Kat’s doing something for either Intro to Design or Make

Finally, the groundplan for “The Tender Land” nears completion on my drafting table.

Some photos from the final dress rehearsal of the UW-Whitewater’s touring children’s show, “Nate the Dragon.” The set design was by student Thad Kraus, lighting design by student Joe Berman, props artisan was Alison Lozar, costume design by faculty member Tracey Lyons.

Preset. Since this was a new play by a local author, this rehearsal was taped, and there are cameras everywhere. . .

The opening. Eva the Beaver notices the audience.

Joey the Duck hatches, but can’t get out of his shell.

Nate the Dragon flies to Dragon Island but is intercepted by one of the emperor’s wasps.

The Dragon Isle side of the rotating back flats for “Nate the Dragon.” Originally, the central rock was supposed to be off on the left — when we laid this side out, we laid it out with the flats upright on stage, thinking that it would easier. None of us realized that when you rotate the flats, the images flip, so while the Treegrass Isle side was fine, the Dragon Isle side no longer matched up. Thad, the student set designer, panicked for a moment, and (since I couldn’t be at tech that evening) then set to work adjusting the image to work (this is his first academic set design). He did a fine job of sorting it out on his own.

Tonight was first dress rehearsal, and here’s the stage under worklights, set for the top. This is a traveling show, so we have a single performance on campus and then it gets loaded into a panel truck with all the costuming and driven around to area schools. Since we never know what the spaces will look like until we get there, the set has to be flexible enough to accommodate libraries and gymnasiums, as well as actual stages.

This is also the first show with puppets we have done. The puppet bodies were purchased, but faculty member Tracey Lyons designed the costumes for them.

A photo from dress rehearsal. Student Joe Berman is the lighting designer.

And Dragon Isle, during dress rehearsal.

Meanwhile, work begins on the next show, “Clybourne Park.” Here’s Intro student Tanner stapled scabs onto legs for the platforming. That show is being designed by guest designer Keith Pitts.

As focus continues in the Barnett (that’s student lighting designer Joe Berman over there to the left), working on scenery continues in the shop. Here’s student scenic designer Thad Kraus stopping for an overview of the Treegrass island flat.

As Intro student Matthew installs casters on the bottom of the flats.

And then, a bit later, Thad experiments with the shading of the dragon eggs on the wing masking flats.

Painting continues on “Nate the Dragon.” Here are two photos of student scenic designer Thad Kraus painting in the sky:

And this is where we left off at the end of shop today. There is still some work to be done on the mountains, and I’ve sent Thad back to do more research on water, since the image he adapted this piece from had some rather odd water.

Meanwhile, props artisan Allison Lozar works on dragon eggs.

TA Quinn works with two students on attaching jacks to the back of the bushes.

In the Barnett Theatre, student lighting designer Joe Berman focusses, using stand-in flats for scenery.

And finally, Steve, our TD, shows students how to mix a five gallon bucket of paint.

“Come Back” has been struck and next week we head into tech for our children’s production, “Nate the Dragon.” The scenic design is by student Thad Kraus, who is new to scenic design.

Here’s Thad considering a color chart in order to figure out how he will mix colors to match his image.

At the start of Wednesday’s shop session, this flat was at this point. . .

By the end of the day, we were here. It may not look like much change from a distance, but a lot was done.

At the same time, the masking/framing flats were getting base colors.

Some production photos from last night’s final dress rehearsal. My set, lighting by student Nick Skaja, costume design by Marshall Anderson, sound design by student Joe Berman, directed by Angela Iannone, assistant director Jen Samson, Keri Ryan and Alyssa Krantz props artisans. Marguerite Frey, stage manager.

Benvolio and Romeo.

Lady Capulet, the Nurse, and Juliet.

The Nurse and the Montague toughs.

Benvolio and Mercutio getting ready for the fight with Tybalt.

Mercutio stabbed.

Nurse delivers the bad news to Juliet.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/mxv7I1r.jpg?1[/IMG]

The Capulets decide to marry Juliet off to Paris.

Juliet is told she’ll marry Paris.

Romeo about to drink poison.

Romeo drag Juliet out of the tomb.

Juliet and Romeo, dead.

With “Dancescapes” done, the set has been moved into the Barnett. The units have been relocated and the forestage addition is in process of being built.

In the shop, now that I’ve finished the stained glass, I am turning my attention to the brickwork. There was some confusion with the mixture of fieldstone and brick panels. At first, our TD thought that it would be a one to one swap out — anything that was light brick would become fieldstone. After I said that I would like all the the columns to be brick, regardless of color, what got painted what became more complicated. Add to the issue the labeling mishaps when the facing was removed from the units, and we’re probably not as far along as I would like to be. Oh well.

In the Design II seminar, we’re turnign charcoal light renderings into no-color looks in the light lab. Here, Keri and Joe set up one of Joe’s looks. Since the Design II seminar has more time to spend on activities like this, I decided to spend some of that time focusing on value and distribution (thus the charcoal). Consensus among the students was that they wished we had done the black and white version in Intro to Design and saved color for this class. Looks like I will be revising the lighting section of Intro to Design this Fall!

This is the look we built from Joe’s sketch. We’re using Tony Kushner’s short play “Reverse Transcription.” This is the look just after the moon has been switched on by one of the characters.

In the previous session, we built one of Keri’s looks — this time before the moon is turned on. I think Thad’s phone takes better photos than my camera.