I have enjoyed writing about all my past plays but I am
still working full time and my current work has kept me very busy as of late.
Our musical this year was Avenue Q, you know the
dirty Sesame Street style show complete
with Muppets.
It was a big, two levels and lots of detailing.
It looks like Sesame
Street, three building fronts and many windows.
Most all of the flats and windows had to built special for
the show.
I was able to re-use the doors and some masking flats, but
all of the flats facing the audience were new.
Luckily I did not have to build the puppets too, the costume
designer a two students did most of the work on them.
The scenic designer was from outside Brockport, the same man we used last year on Mauritius.
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| Bad Idea Bears |
I designed the lighting, helped set up the sound, projections
and some of the set pieces and props.
The students worked very hard to master working their
puppets.
Many hours were spent in front of mirrors in addition to the
regular rehearsals.
The director had a good deal of experience working with
puppets having spent time touring with a well known puppet theatre group.
Also a workshop was giving to the actors by a real Muppeteer
who happened to be a friend of one of the actors.
The play was a hit, played to big audiences and was well
reviewed by outside adjudicators.
Just before the last show we found out that we were selected
to perform at the regional Kennedy Center, American College Theatre Festival held
at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.
The play was performed at Brockport just before and after Thanksgiving.
When we struck the play we saved it knowing that we would
use it again.
Before we took off some time for the Christmas break I had
my crew make some changes to the set that I knew we had to do before the tour.
The stage in Pennsylvania was about the same size as ours, but we would not be allowed to
nail or screw into the floor.
Because of the limited set-up time at the festival we had to
cut out the platforms used for the second level of the set.
Those platforms had been used to support the walls and now I
had to find a way to put up the walls and make them free standing.
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| Setting up at the Festival |
Also, just to make things more fun the stage we were going
to use was raked, not too much but enough to mean that the walls might be
leaning a bit.
The solution was simple as I used traditional stage braces
that were bolted to 2'-0" x 2'-0" plywood squares and each loaded
with over 100 pounds of stage weights.
After a four week break everyone came back to have
rehearsals and practice put the set up and down and loading in a truck.
Because one of the actresses could not come on the tour
another actor had to take over her part.
He did a fine job as did the rest the actors.
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| At the KCACTF |
So with the truck loaded everyone took off for the 360 mile
drive.
Although we did not have much snow to deal with it was very
foggy most the trip there.
There were a few issues but we all got there fine and the
set went up without any trouble.
It turned out that they had sent me the wrong patch for the
lighting board and all of the 212 lighting cues I had set back in Brockport
did not look right.
After a few moments of panic I spent 20 minutes had patching
the lighting board.
When that was done my lighting cues looked better.
I ran through as many as I could fixing levels as I went.
I did not have enough time to review every cue as much as I
would like and when we ran the show there were a few cues that did not look
right but I fixed them the best that I could on the fly.
Sound was a bit of a problem as the wireless mics that we
had rented were not available and we had to others which were different and our
sound guy had never used that type before.
But even with some issues we just kept moving toward curtain
time.
More than two hours before the show theatre students from
other schools attending the Festival starting lining up to see the play.
About 800 people filled the theatre and were eager to enjoy
the play.
The festival audiences are always great as many already know
they show, I even heard some people singing songs from the show as they came
in.
Well no matter problems
we may have had, the show went off great, the cast did a fine job and the audience
loved it and gave them a standing ovation at the end.
The next morning we came back to strike the set and we got
all down and packed into the truck in
the hour and a half time that they gave us.
It was crazy at times and I was not sure how it would go,
but I was so happy and relieved that it went well and the drive back home
seemed to take only half as long as the drive there.
This was the forth festival we have gone to in the last ten
years and it was by far the biggest cast and set that we ever brought.
