Items from Storage and Other Odd Tales

We are lucky at The College at Brockport in that the Department of Theatre has a large storage space for our old sets, costumes and lighting equipment.

So much room in fact that sometimes it is too much and we save things that we will never use again.

I have built entire sets with the old walls and platforms from our storage with little need to build anything new but just altering a few things here and there.

Those shows are rare and the set for our current production, Coyote on a Fence, is a mixture of old and new set pieces.

http://www.brockport.edu/newsbureau/1698.html

COYOTE ON A FENCE

Most of the platforms and walls are from stock as well as some steel step units made back in 1990 for a summer production of 42^nd street.

Special for this play we did have to make 5 new 4x8 flats, two jail cell doors, two ship’s ladder stair cases and two small stage extension platforms on the side stage areas.

Much of this will go into our stock and fill up our space a bit more.

Back during the recent renovations to our building I was able to throw out a great deal of old stuff but somehow it has filled back up.

I am always surprised but what I still find that I did not know that we had saved and many times I wonder why we saved something in the first place.

Back in October I wrote about our production of Androcles and the Lion and how we still had the raked platform stage that we made for the production.

Recently I found a foam tree that was part of the show and after 25 years the foam has deteriorated to the point that it will crumble in your hands with little effort.

I took one last photo and it is headed for the trash.

We have some set pieces and furniture that seem to get used all the time just because they are just the right size.

There is a small settee that was here when I came and has been used endlessly.

It have been every color in the rainbow, stripped and repainted many times, had pieces added to it, broken, rebuilt and still lives on.

There is even a matching chair that gets used only about half as much.

Other popular pieces are always appearing onstage from our collection of bentwood chairs and small tables, both square and round.

The most difficult thing to find in our collection is four matching chairs.

People will sometimes donate things to the Theatre, but rarely is a full set.

I have added a number of wonderful  “Roadside Antiques” to our collection over the years, you know, junk from the curb.

Wait Until Dark

The second show of my second summer at Brockport was Wait Until Dark for which I designed the set.

Here at Brockport we just did the show again in April of 2011 as part of regular season with the same director as in 1984, Dick St George.

I cannot really tell which production was better because of the large gap of time and my memory of the acting has faded, but I  can honestly tell you I had more fun on the summer production of 1984 because I was more involved with the production.

For the most recent production I just served as the Technical Director and had a student Lighting Designer so I had less input into how it looked.

Scene Designer for WAIT UNTIL DARK, 1984

The summer shows were always lots worked mixed with lots  of fun and the student workers did a great job and we all had lots of fun building and running the shows and also during the all important cast parties.

I do not recall that when we did the summer show that we had too many problems except with the noise of the broken refrigerator which is import to the action of the play.

This past year we had a professional sound designer and the show had a “Soundscape” with music that was a bit too melodramatic and other odd noises important to the special plot moments of the play.

Back in 1984 we had a real door buzzer wired into the set and used the shop air compressor as the sound of the refrigerator.

It had to be covered with old stage drapes to muffle the sound a bit but we just turned it on when needed.

The thrown knife effect was done about the same way in both shows and unless you were looking in the right spot you never saw it.

The knife used in the first play was mine and it was a real Buck Knife I had gotten for Christmas.

It turned up missing after one of the performances and we had to buy a new one and it is the same knife that I have with my tools to this day.

The husband of the main character is a photographer and there is a dark room onstage important to action of the play.

The changes that have happened with the passage of time could clearly be seen with the photographic props.

Back in 1984 we just moved equipment from the department dark room onstage and plugged it in and used it, but for last spring’s production they had to hunt for an enlarger, safelight and the other items needed.

We did use the same old front loading washing machine in both productions.

I think we even used the same oven that has been a piece of crap that we should have thrown out years ago.

In both productions we used crew people with costume changes to walk across the platform that was outside of the set’s windows at different during the play.

For our recent production I used about 15 to 20 student and about five to six weeks to build the set, back in 1984 I had about 6 helpers and we built in less than 10 days.

WAIT UNTIL DARK, 2011

It is amazing how more help can actually slow you down sometimes; but back then on the summer productions we did work at least eight hours a day seven days a week but  because it was the summer the students did not have to run off to classes.

Now being 30 years older than most of my students instead just 4 or five years older, I do not get as close to them as I did when I first started working at Brockport, but I still enjoy working on the plays and teaching the students how it is done, even though I no longer get to go out drinking with them.

Two brothers who were both in the summer production of the play and happened to grow up in Brockport were back in town and came to one of our fall productions.

It was nice to see them both, but it was a shame that they missed the newer production of Wait Until Dark.

.

The Crazy Lady

 There are not too many groupies waiting outside the stage door for the level and type of Theatre that I have worked on over the years.

On the Rock Concerts that I have worked there was usually a crowd waiting eagerly at the stage door, but even on the professional Theatre Productions I have done the crowds have been small and well behaved.

This does not mean that we do not have regular patrons, who attend our productions, but most times it is just friends and family who wait in the lobby for the actors after a play lets out.

There are some exceptions.

It was about the time that I was working on My Fair Lady that I became aware of who we would come to call “The Crazy Lady”.

After one of the performances I was running around backstage checking on those things that I check on when I saw this woman “playing” with props on the table we had in the cross over hall.

She was handling the 50 cent pieces that we had painted gold for use in the play.

I said something intelligent and forceful like: “ Can I help you? Please leave the props alone”.

She said that she was not stealing them rather she was looking for dates on the coins that she did not have in her collection.

I asked her nicely to leave.

The next time I noticed her she was sitting in her car in the parking lot with her window down listening to the actors talking and having a few beers after the play one night.

She just sat there off to the side in the shadows, listening and living vicariously through what was said.

I would see her again and again over the years and learn a bit more about her, not really knowing what was true.

Evidently “Mrs. T” had worked at the college and was now retired and liked to come to all the events at the college and especially enjoyed opening night receptions and her bag was always a bit larger going home then when she arrived.

I cannot complain too much as I survived college at times on the cheese I got from a few receptions.

Over time she got to know me and everyone who worked in the Theatre and would like to talk and tell us about her daughter and then her granddaughter.

I was told by someone that at one time the college president had an assistant whose job it was to keep her away from him at receptions.

Once she knew who you were she loved to talk and talk and talk.

After years of listening to her stories I finally figured out the easiest way to deal with her.

When I would see her I would go up to her first, say hello and ask her how she was doing and after just a little small talk I would excuse myself and tell I was needed elsewhere.

She has been a loyal patron over the years and saying hello is not too much of a price to pay.

She must be in her eighties by now and not in great health but she still shows up from time to time.

It took me a while but I finally realized that she was harmless and just a very lonely person.

I saw her car one day and it was packed solid with an odd mixture of junk and it looked like it belonged to someone on “Hoarders”.

 I can only imagine what her house must look like.

My running joke lately that when she goes to the “great reception in the sky” she is going to leave the college millions and we will get a new Theatre.

We do have a few regular patrons, former college employees and other locals, who come to our production and I always try to thank them when I see them in the lobby before or after a production.

One couple’s daughter worked for me one summer about twenty years ago and over the years I got to hear stories about her life as she went to college, got a job and eventually married.

I must admit there are people who come and talk with me; ask how I am doing, about my wife and even our granddaughter but I have no idea who they are, but I am happy to see them and still glad they came.

Back during my first few summer productions at Brockport there would be a bar in the lobby and the second act of the plays always went better.

Unfortunately with the changing drinking laws have a bar in the lobby of a college theatre would become a thing of the past.

We never had problems with drunken patrons but did have several occasions have groups of loud drunk students pass through the lobby on their way to or from the bars in town.





*

My Fair Lady

I felt confident and good going into my second Summer Arts Festival at Brockport.

Having gone through two school years and a summer I knew what was in store and I had built up a good working relationship with the students who were staying to work on the two plays.

We did have a few non-students who worked on the production but most were theatre and other students who stayed in town for the summer.

Some students would get course credit for working while most would get a small paycheck for lots of hard work.

Although the rehearsals and set construction would begin in June the planning of the production would begin months earlier when the production team was put together, sets and costumes designs prepared and auditions were often done as early as March.

The department faculty designers did not always stay for the summer plays and for My Fair Lady an outside set designer was hired.

The production was a true “Town and Gown” production with a mixture of students, college faculty and staff and a variety of local actors appearing in the play.

The audience looked forward to the productions each summer and some of the local actors became crowd favorites over the years.

The Scenic Designer they hired worked at Geva Theatre, the local Professional Theatre in Rochester.

I guess because of that connection I had been hired to do some freelance set construction work over spring break in March and for about a week I helped build the set for a production of Born Yesterday, working mostly on a large curved staircase.

I enjoyed working there and always wished I had more time to work there and do more outside jobs, but my job my job at Brockport requires me to work on or supervise all of the Theatre and Music events at the college and it has always been hard to find the time to in fit outside work into my schedule.

My Fair Lady was going to be a large traditional set with many scenes and a number of painted backdrops.

Five or six brand new backdrops were ordered ahead of time so that they would be ready to paint as soon as we began working in June.

One of the first things we did when the crew came to work was to clear everything out of our Black-Box Theatre and stretch out and staple down two of the new backdrops to the floor so that they would be ready for the designer to paint.

As soon as the first two backdrops were painted we would take them up, hang them in the Mainstage Theatre and place two fresh ones down.

Unfortunately the backdrops sat unpainted on the Theatre floor for weeks.

We were busy building the many flats, stair units and other set pieces required for use in the set.

The biggest set was Professor Higgins' house that was made up of many of many walls and a large staircase unit that rolled on and off as needed.

Some of the students asked the designer when he would paint the backdrops and if they could help but he would always put them off and said that the work would begin soon.

One drop was eventually painted and looked very good and it reassured everyone that things would be done on time.

The first painted backdrop was the hallway in Professor Higgins' house that used for the many crossover scenes, but nothing else was done for a long time.

My crew worked hard every day and all of the set pieces were done on time but unfortunately not the backdrops.

Opening night we had only the one painted backdrop and I had to hang just black curtains and one white unpainted backdrop to fill the stage.

For the "Ascot Gavotte" we had nothing but the actors in front of a black drape and for Eliza’s big moment at the “Embassy Waltz" we had a nice double stair unit but just a blank backdrop behind it.

For the romantic scene of “On the Street Where You Live" we had a nice front door and steps of the house but nothing to go around it and were forced to hang some black drapes and pin one up so it would go around the doorway.

One night the stage manager, another crew member and I got stuck behind the unit as the curtains got caught up on the door unit and we could not get off with being seen as the scene went on.

The Stage Manager still had her headset on and called the cues the best should could.

The second weekend of the production the backdrop for this scene was painted and we hung it.

Even with the set problems the show went off well and the audience enjoyed the production.

I liked the Set Designer and he did good work, I know he was going through some person issues but I never found out why he waited so long to get started on the painting until it was too late.

The summer plays were always a lot of work and we always had fun.

We did take time to set off the Fourth of July fireworks as we had done the summer before and I remembered to wear my hearing protection unlike the first year.

After the dress rehearsals and performances the cast and crew always went out for a few drinks and some nights there was even some “Tailgating” as one of the cast members would have a cooler of beers and they would just party in the parking lot.

This was 28 years ago and although drinking and driving was bad then, people did not take as seriously as we do now and that fact that more people did not get into trouble was just luck.

 *

Sky King

By the end of my second year working at Brockport I had fallen into a vacation pattern that I would follow for about the next ten years with little change.

I would visit my family on Long Island three times a year; I would spend a week to ten days at Christmas time, in May right after school ended and before beginning work on the summer shows and also in August after the second show was done and before school would start again in the fall.

During my time back on Long Island I would often make time to go into NYC to see a Broadway play.

As I had done back in college, I would wait at the TKTS booth and buy a ticket for whatever I thought would be the best or most interesting play to me.

My second year had been good and I enjoyed working on the plays and felt more in control than my first year.

I was looking forward to the summer shows, My Fair Lady and Wait Until Dark, but with the Lighting Design teacher not getting tenure I was not sure how he would react and what would happen that summer or the next year.

Because of the way of our Union contract is written, the Lighting Designer had a whole year left to work before he was out of a job and I was hoping it was not going to be a year of hell if he was pissed off and would take it out on the students and everyone around him.

Knowing that people may not get tenure, meaning maybe me, I felt about the same as in grad school when they kicked two of my classmates out of the program, uneasy.

As it turned out it he was cool and continued to work hard that summer and the next year, but I did not know that before hand and was always a bit on edge that third year. 

For some reason, time and/or cheap airfare, I flew home for my vacation and family visit that May.

I had a good time and the night before I was to fly back I went out with my younger brother to have a few drinks.

We had a good time and decided to drop in on one more bar on the way home and of course there was someone there who insisted on buying me a few shots that I did not need.

Not wanting to be rude I had those drinks and would pay for it big time the next day.

I got up with a hangover and all I wanted to do was get on the plane, sleep an hour, get back to my house and sleep.

Well things did not go as I had planned.

First of all the plane from Islip to Rochester was a small single engine model with about 12 seats and the pilot thought he was “Sky King” and I swear he did loops just for fun.

Needless to say my head was really hurting by the time the plane got back to Rochester and I got back to my house.

So finally I lay down on my bed and less than an hour later my phone rang and being a fool I answered it.

“Gary can you help me, I got kicked out of my apartment and need to move”.

I knew before my trip home that my friend Jane had to move and I had offered her the use of my extra room for a few weeks before her new place was ready.

So over the next painful six hours I helped move her shit to some other friend’s barn in the next town.

Somehow I managed to survive that day but I am not sure how.

Although Jane and I had a platonic relationship I am sure there were hopeful desires of a future romance that powered me on that day.

She was a cool girl and I had a lot of fun with her and you can read all about our advetures in my secret memoirs  -  if I ever write them.

I do not want to get too far off topic but Jane was a Theatre minor and did do some work in the Theatre so bringing her up is appropriate to this Blog.

There was this one day when Jane was annoying me and I tied her to one of the columns in Theatre and told the others to leave her there for a while.

Ah, the good old days.

There was a lot of work to do that second summer and lots of fun too as we worked on the two plays and we also got to set off the 4^th of July fireworks works again.

I did learn from the year before and remembered to wear my sound muffs that second time.

Show stories and more to follow.

*

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 The last play of my second year at Brockport was Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Like the previous play the set was large and had many challenges to add extra fun.

To start with the hydraulic stage lift in the front of the stage broke.

Because of a hydraulic fluid leak or other mechanical malfunction the lift was stuck just above house level and I was force to build platforms that would come up to the stage level before I could then start building the real set for the show.

Most of the set was taken up with the bedroom of the house with a little side room visible on Stage Left and wrap around veranda that came all the across the back of the set and down on Stage Right.

The main platform of course had to be raked (slanted) was about 16’-0” x 30’-0”.

Being young, foolish and over eager I over-designed the sub-structure and built an entire open wooden frame with the required angled legs first and then we put the stock platforms in place and attached them.

After the play was over I thought it would be good to save time and materials in the future and had the 4’-0” x 16’-0” frames covered with plywood and added them to our stock.

They would be used many times over the coming years and student would often bitch about moving them especially when they had to carry them up the stairwell when the stage lift was not available.

They got used many times and most are now gone after being altered many times to fit a current show’s needs but I think I may still have one at the bottom of our platform pile in the basement.

As much work as the platform was, the walls took even more time and effort to get done.

At this time, 1984, we were still using traditional 1x3 canvas covered flats and the scene designer had me remove all of the fabric from the frames.

The walls, 20’-0” high, were then covered with numerous 1’ slats of ¼” plywood that had been ripped down.

Again this was at a time before we used lauan plywood which would have been a lot lighter and easier to use.

I also had to make about eight to ten tall columns with 1x2 pine board strips to mirror the slats on the walls of the set.

Some of the columns were still in the basement until a few years ago when they were stripped down and the wood recycled into a new show.

Windows and doors were also made just for this set.

I also used some stock doors on the set that the scene designer had me cut slots into the door panels and I was a bit shocked when he took a hammer and smashed out some the pieces.

We also hung two ceiling fans over the main room with longer blades that we made so that would better fit the scale of the set.

But wait there’s more!

Behind the Cyc there was a lighted moon box that would be raised up a little bit at a time as the play progressed.

The moon box was attached to our then new Genie lift, a hand cranked Genie.

When it first came everyone thought it was great and it made things easier, well at first that is.

To rise up you would have to just use you two hands and crank yourself up.

Easy, no problem; well the first time at least.

Each time you needed to move first you had to crank down, be moved, then crank back up and then repeat and repeat.

After a few times you arms would numb and you could not use it anymore.

After a month or so the gear works got gunked up and it was even harder to use.

When it was replaced some time later with an electrical model it was a welcome addition.

To dress the set the scene designer went out along the Erie Canal and cut some bushes and brought them back and dressed the columns on the veranda of the set.

This was nothing new for him to do but what it unique for this production it that over the course of the production the plants continued to grow and both leaves and flowers bloomed but most had dies by the time of the last performance.

Just before the show opened the scene designer glued pieces of tissue paper behind the slats on the set that caught the light as it came through.

He told me that it was his gift to the lighting designer who of course did not like it but I think it made the set look great.

Most people who knew the scene designer at that time might tell you he was a bit wacky, odd or whatever, but this was one of his better sets that I worked on.

So if that wasn’t enough there is yet even more ! ! !

In the space upstage of the set and in front of the Cyc some special effects were used.

The lighting designer hung down from a pipe several electrical wires that had little homemade firework bundles attached that were fired off during the play.

They were made with model rocket launcher squibs, flash paper and a small amount of real firework “fixings”.

They looked great, but of course were a fire hazard and I had to seal in the back of the platforms after seeing sparks come under the set at the first set.

Somehow we did not burn down the theatre and everyone survived the play.

The production was well received and of course it looked great too.

It was a ton of work, crazy most of the time but lots of fun.

Note that the cast parties were numerous and fun.

Soon after the play was over the lighting designer got a letter telling him that he did not get tenure.

Needles to say he was crushed and the next year would be hard for him as it would be his last.

I did not know it at the time but things would soon change for me in ways I did not plan or see coming.

 *

  

The Threepenny Opera

The spring of 1984 brought two large productions.

The first was The Threepenny Opera by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill.

The actors enjoyed being in show, especially those paying the thieves and whores as it gave everyone a chance to let go and have fun.

I had worked on it just three years before at Theatre Three on Long Island and although it was a nice production the Brockport production was on a much larger stage and had a more complex set.

The Threepenny Opera, 1984

It was the first show that I worked on at Brockport to use the lighting bridge as part of the set.

The lighting bridge is a moving catwalk that spans forty feet across the stage just upstage of the proscenium and holds the first and second electrics.

I needed to build tall staircases up to the bridge from each side of the stage so that the actors could go up and cross over it as needed.

It would be used twenty years later as part of the set for the summer musical Cabaret.

The set had lots of moving parts; set units that rolled on, flew in or were carried on.

I was excited on opening night as a friend from college came out from Buffalo to see the show.

The Threepenny Opera, 1984

Everything was ready and set to go so I felt comfortable that I could go out to dinner before the show and sit with my friend in the audience.

Big Mistake.

Unbeknownst to me, at sometime in the afternoon the set designer (Richard) decided to dress the set and added many items from the prop room on to the wood beams that were flown in as part of Peachum’s shop.

Richard had poorly wired tons of junk on to the set and during the black out for the scene change I heard a big bang as the beams smashed into the floor and then several crashes as pieces fell of the set.

He did not tell anyone that he added the items nor did he re-weight the pipe that the beams were on.

I jumped out of my seat and ran backstage to see what had happened.

This is one of the big reasons that I do not like to sit in the house during performances.

We were lucky as no one was hurt as anything broken but it could have been worse.

I know that I cannot be everyplace that there might be a problem, but locked in a seat makes me feel trapped and it makes hard to run backstage or to the lighting booth to fix whatever problem that might arise.

Although made up mostly students, there were several college staff and community members who helped fill out the cast.

The role of Jenny (a prostitute) was played by the faculty costume designer and I seem to remember that some of the scenes with the student actors were a bit awkward.

As I think back to this show I recall that it had small double swing café doors similar to ones I need to hang ones on my current production’s set tomorrow.

After forty years in Theatre I find that things do repeat more and more often, but there are still many challenging and interesting problems that come up with each new production and that is what keeps me going.

 

.