NigHt of tHe pterodActyls, 1990

Well it is time to move into the 1990’s.

I had been at Brockport for almost eight years, had gotten a promotion and tenure and was fairly settled in.

There were big changes to come, some good and some bad, but life just keeps rolling on.

As always the spring of 1990 would be busy with several shows and music events.

First up in March was a production of NigHt of tHe pterodActyls by Julian Wiles.

It was a Youth Theatre piece with a few young actors added into the normal mix of college students.

NB: Fine and Jake were not in the play.

Plot?

Teenagers and single parents new in town, a young girls deals with finding her identity, young love and then messes it up by digging up Pterodactyl eggs in her back yard.

Ah, a normal play.

Most of the set was two rotating house units with exteriors on one side and interiors on the other.

They were tall and very detailed.

In front of the houses was a dirt pit in which the eggs could be found.

What made the show was the use of all the high tech items.

Behind the houses were plywood cutouts that were supposed to be a cross between construction equipment and dinosaurs when lit in silhouette.

To rotate the houses we just used people power with several students pushing the houses around as needed.

The best and scariest effect was of course the entrance of a flying Pterodactyl.

At the end of one scene a Pterodactyl would fly down from above the stage and out over the audience ending in a blackout.

The kids would all scream and it was fun every time we did it.

So what was the magic?

Our realistic Pterodactyl was simply two crossing pipes about 6 feet long with black plastic wings and a plywood cutout of the well-known Pterodactyl head profile attached.

The super high tech flying method was a simple.

The Pterodactyl was on a cable attached to a stage pipe measured out so it was arc down to just a foot or two over the floor.

On cue a pin was pulled to release the Pterodactyl which would quickly swing down and out over the screaming audience.

After the blackout a student crew member would use winch to quickly return the Pterodactyl back up into the flys out of sight.

Whether or not I liked doing Children’s or Youth Theatre, I liked the fact that we always gave them full mounted productions and did not skimp on the technical elements that I have seen done in other places.

We had both a student lighting and costume designer for the show and they both did very nice jobs.

There was only one weekend of adult performances and three sold-out school matinees for middle school students.

Soon after this production we had two music events and a student production to take care of before we would  do our spring musical.

* * *

Garth Fagan Dance, summer 1989

I have lists of titles and programs for most of the plays that I have worked on but I do not always have anything from many of the other events, concerts or talks that I have worked on and can easily forget some on them.

Many of these events are what we call “One and Done”.

A  event set up, performed and taken down all on the same day.

Before I move on the talking about what I did in the 1990’s I thought I do a quick review of the 1980’s.

The biggest thing I left out was in the summer of 1989 right after A Chorus Line when we had Garth Fagan’s dance company in for a show.

Garth Fagan was on staff in the dance department at Brockport and went on to win a Tony award for his work on the Lion King in 1997.

I had done a few little things with Garth over the years and knew him but he was here with his own design and tech staff so my staff and I just helped on the production.

Here is another case of it is a small world.

The lighting designer for many of Garth’s dances was C.T. Oakes who had graduated from the University of Michigan just before I got there.

I had met him a few times when I came there to interview and later when I came to look for a place to live.

When I came to Brockport C.T.  was working down the road at SUNY Geneseo.

After a few years he left and when to work for various lighting and theatrical supply companies and I would often run into him at some of the USITT conferences.

Now semi-retired it turns out that C.T. ended up here in Brockport and I run into him from time-to-time.

Small world.

So that summer we had to put down a dance floor and add side boom pipes and make the stage into a Dance theatre.

They performed in our theatre because it was July and the Dance theatre does not have air conditioning.

A summer or two later Garth Fagan came back with his company and set up everything again, but not to perform but just to tape a TV commercial.

It was easy, not too much pressure and everyone was a bit more relaxed.

As I review some of my programs I see a few of the many smaller events listed that I worked on and truthfully I do not remember all of them.

I remember that one of the  musicians who came in with an act hated to room they had for him in one of the reconverted dorms and left to check into a real hotel.

I saw some of those rooms and they were awful.

Today we normally send outside guests to one of the local B&B’s.

Over the years we have had every kind of music act, some good and some so-so, not too many bad ones.

Maybe a bit boring or they played too long, but never any truly bad ones.

Oh, except for the old dancer doing interpretive dance to these harsh poems being read by the poet.

That was awful, I hated it, the rehearsals were torture and I was never so glad to have a show done as I did that one.

As noted before I often helped with the student productions and Children’s Theatre shows.

Most of the other extra events I have worked on at Brockport have been Music concerts with a few lectures and puppet shows mixed in just for fun.

When the event is bad I just try to do the best I can and get it done, but when they are good I sit back and enjoy them as much as I can.

So what went on in the 1990’s?

Stayed tuned for many new and exciting posts.

***

Cyrano de Bergerac, 1989

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand was a big undertaking for us.

It had 30 people in the cast, period costumes and multiple sets.

This was only the second show here for Drew the scenic designer and very different from Jimmy Dean.

The large set had several rolling platforms that made up a stage-within-a-stage and balcony unit and there were also multi-use tall platforms upstage that framed the action.

A wire cable ran across the stage and a lightweight white curtain that was drawn open at the start of the play by four Mask characters.

All of the costumes were great but the four all white satin Mask costumes were extra special. 

Cyrano de Bergerac, 1989

We had a guest director for the play who did a very nice job.

There was something a bit odd about him at times and most of us did not know that he was dying of Aids at the time.

He had lots of great ideas but from time-to-time he just seemed to give up and would not push for what he wanted.

I heard that he managed to finish working on the next play after ours but died about six months later.

Aids has taken too many people including too many of my classmates from college.

A few years ago a friend from college gave me a list of those who had died and it saddened me greatly.

The recent production of The Normal Heart on HBO brought back memories of those I have worked with who are lost.

http://www.broadwaycares.org/

On a brighter note the show was fun to work on.

Sword fighting!

The students loved it and for a number of years they paid to hard the combat instructor come back to give lessons which would pay of big time when we would do Romeo and Juliet a few years later.

I really enjoyed doing the lighting especially the evening scenes.

I was very happy with the moonlight wash and gobos that I used.

I was also thankful that the actors knew how to use the light and would move into the small pools of light when they wanted to been seen and fall back into the shadows when they did not want to be seen.

It seems a simple thing to do, but often actors have no sense of the light when they are onstage.

Drew made some prop candelabras with small penlight flashlights that were pretty cool but I think now how much easier and brighter they could be with the new LED lights, but this was 25 years ago and we worked with what we had and often managed to have great results

.

So during one of the dress rehearsals there was a nice evening scene in which  Roxana came out with a lantern with a candle in it.

It had glass on three sides with one open.

As I watched the scene I saw that the open side was facing the actress and that her dress was too close to it.

I jumped up on the stage and moved the lantern away.

Before the next rehearsal I had put a door on the open side of the lantern.

I had seen Cyrano de Bergerac when I was in Paris back in 1972 and I wrote about it in the earlier post:

“While in Paris a group of us went to the Theatre.

 We went to the Comédie-Française and saw Cyrano de Bergerac.

 The theatre was beautiful, the stage was wonderful, the play was great and I didn’t understand a word.

 Because I really could not understand but a few words of the play I focused on closely watching the sets and lighting.

 The end of the play was classic; strong lighting and leaves slowly floating down as Cyrano died.

 I had to smile 15 years later when we did the same thing for our production at Brockport.”

Sometimes I wonder how we did some of the bigger shows, but when I look over the program and see the names of who we had working back then I know had we did it.

We often have good hard working students but some years we clearly have a few more exceptional students and we are able to do more and this period was the start of one of those special periods.

***

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, 1989

As I had noted in a post back in August there was a lot of staff changes in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

In the fall of 1988 we had gotten a new costume design teacher who would stay only two years before moving on.

In the fall of 1989 we got a new scene designer who was very much different from the previous designer.

Drew Francis was a very good designer and very skilled draftsman.

He had gone to Brockport as an undergrad back in the 1970’s and went on to Grad school for his MFA at Brandeis University. Before returning to Brockport he assisted Broadway Designer Howard Bay who had taught at Brandeis University.

For me it was a bit of a shock when I saw the plans for the first production when I got a complete set of designs and working drawings.

The previous designer often did not do drawings but just made models of what he wanted.

One time when I asked for a drawing he just busted up the model and photo copied it.

Needless to see it was not to scale nor was the pieces even and I still had to make a best guess what he wanted or what would work.

With Drew there was no guessing.

For me the biggest challenge was trying to figure out if we could afford to build it or if we had enough time or students skilled enough to build what he wanted.

We talked it over made some changes and the students worked hard to build some very nice sets that year.

The first play of the 1989-90 season was Come Back to the 5& Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

The play was set both in 1955 and 1975 with two overlap casts.

The set was big and fun to build.

Like many productions we were able to use a few pieces from pieces sets and made new walls and set pieces. 

We had floor tiles that had been made for Miss Julie about four years before but needed to make about 1/3 more.

Yes, we still have the tiles and they have been used many times over the years and I just saw the 5'-0” stack of them about two weeks ago when I was in the basement storage.

We rented a working jukebox for the show and after it was put onto the set it was decided that it was too big, too prominent.

To fix it we cut out the platform area under the jukebox and dropped it down about 8 inches or so to the floor.

It looked good, worked well as I remember it the glass on it got broken when it was being returned and we had to pay to replace it.

I enjoyed the play and liked all the small details added to the set.

This set and many of the ones that followed while Drew was here were much bigger and highly detailed, often more work, but in the end they looked great and were fun to work on.

***