Romeo and Juliet and The Foreigner in Rep, Spring 1993

For some reason in the spring of 1993 the department decided that it would be a good idea to do two shows in repertory.

The two shows could not have been more different; Romeo and Juliet and The Foreigner.

Faculty designed and directed Romeo and Juliet was a beautiful production.

Romeo and Juliet

One show alone there was enough to keep us all more than busy but we had two to take care of.

The students had been taking stage combat instruction from a guest instructor for two years and were very excited to have a chance to use what they had learned onstage.

Some of the young women were very good fencers and were used “In Drag” for the larger fight scenes.

I designed a moody but appropriate lighting for Romeo and Juliet and needed to do a gel change between shows for the front light.

Of course we forgot to change the colors for one show and could not figure out why the lighting for The Foreigner seemed so dark.

The Foreigner was designed by a student and directed by an outside director who we had used for several productions.

Romeo and Juliet

The set was simple enough but offered technical challenges the biggest of which that both it and the set for  Romeo and Juliet had to be able to be taken apart and moved out of the way several times during the run.

For The Foreigner we got to reuse the Dracula elevator to make KKK member melt into the floor.

Of course the biggest challenge was that in the middle of the run we took the set for Romeo and Juliet apart and put it in a truck and brought it to East High School in Rochester so that we could do a matinee and then brought it back and put it back together for the rest of the run.

It was a crazy idea and lots of extra work but the students did a great job even having some fun along the way.

The Foreigner

The Production Manager/ATD was being very diligent about labeling all the set pieces so we could put the set back together.

Just for fun the students made some extra brace pieces, labeled them and put them in the truck.

They got a good laugh watching the PM/ATD  try to figure out where the extra pieces went.

Both productions went well and even though it was lots of extra work it was worth it.

Updated June 7, 2017 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Dec 1992

For A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum the scene designer and I switched jobs as I designed the set for the production.

It was a lot of fun and we had some unique problems to solve.

The set design itself was rather straight forward and offered few challenges except where to put the orchestra.

The Brockport mainstage has an orchestra pit and has been used many times but the director wanted the actors closer to the audience so I designed a pit cover the would go over the pit.

There was a cutout downstage center for the conductor and a few of the musicians had to sit down under the stage.

We would use the pit cover a few times over the years, Hair in 2008 and in 2010 when we did A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum again.

I designed in four grills so the orchestra could have a feel for what was happening above them and to let out a bit of the sound.

The pit reused in 2010

The "Air' Grills

At the time I told everyone that the grills were to let fresh in into the pit.

I was lucky that the scene designer and his students painted the set for me.

I was more than able to paint the paint elevations but do not know if I could have paint the whole set as well as fast as they did.

My painters elevation

Just for fun I put a well with real water and a fountain in the center of the stage.

One student spent hours playing with water pumps and nozzles trying to get a good stream of water.

The director had the main Lovers do a scene going in and out of the water. 

Updated May, 23, 2017