After a wild time with the Sci-Fi adventure the next play
was completely different.
The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer won both the Tony and
Pulitzer for best play.
A powerful but difficult play to enjoy it tells three
overlapping stories about families dealing with a member dying of cancer.
It is set a cabin like building used by a hospital as a
hospice or halfway house for families if the sick patients.
 |
| The Shadow Box |
For the second time that year I got to be both the Technical
Director and Lighting Designer.
The old Lighting Design teacher was still there, but I sure
he was busy trying to figure what he was going to do after May when his job
ended.
They may have given him a break so he would have time to
apply for a new job which he did get, but did not stay long at.
The set was not a bad design and did not offer too many
problems to build, unlike this year when I had only 3 students in my Stagecraft
class, back then I had 15 students plus several work-study and temp-service
workers.
As he often did, the Scene Designer cut some live trees down to put on the set and he would do it again for the next show and again the next year.
 |
| The Shadow Box, Lighting Design |
The biggest problem with the set was the material that the
Scene designer had chosen.
Back then we were still mostly using traditional canvas
covered flats but for that production he chose to cover the walls with
paneling.
The problem was that the paneling he chose was cheap, thin
and would break very easily as we worked with it.
But that was not the real problem.
The paneling was made with glue that had Urea-Formaldehyde
in it.
It was banned for use in home insulation in 1982 but was
still in many products in 1985 when we did the play.
When we cut the paneling it released the Urea-Formaldehyde
and it caused many problems with the workers effecting some severely.
Burning in the lungs, rashes and other fun problems were
common and I threw it all away as soon as the play was over.
As I looked over the program for the play I see that at
least three of the former students have a hand in running theatres in
Rochester, New York City and Los Angles.
Of those that I am still in contact, mostly thanks to
Facebook, I know that many went on to do at least some work in Theatre or the
related Arts.
One of my Stagecraft students from that class came back to
school here last year and worked as our Prop Mistress.
The play went well and I was happy with how both the set and
lights looked.
Well one night we thought that the older actress in the play had really died as she sat slumped in her wheelchair, but I am happy to report she is still alive pushing 90 as I write this post.
We the subject matter, Cancer,
Death and a little Homosexuality,
it was not a play that people “Liked” but enjoyed and were glad to have seen
it.
The Scene Designer wanted a modern looking fireplace on the
set and I adapted two Linnebach Projectors to be the top and bottom of it.
I had actually used the projectors as they were intended to
be used when I designed the set for the master Builder back at Michigan.
Now that school is over for the summer I hope to catch up on
my blog posts and also get better scans of my slides.
No comments:
Post a Comment