Saturday, October 7, 2017

Our Town, October 1993

Our Town by Thornton Wilder is a popular play and often produced by schools because it has a larger cast and simple technical requirements.



In the Great Brockport Tradition we found a way to make it harder.
The cast of twenty-four was made up students and several faculty and had a small choir that was needed to appear by magic in front of the stage.


We built a complex series of platforms and steps that allowed the choir to come up from the orchestra pit and appear waist high at the front of the stage.
I am not sure it was worth the time effort and cost.



We had a new student play the part of Emily and everyone was pleased with her performance and of course she transferred to another college.


Forty years ago while in college in Buffalo, I traveled with some friends to see the previous production of Our Town at Brockport.
It was a nice play and we stayed in town after the show and partied with several cast members that we knew.

Neither production was extra special but both were well done and the audiences enjoyed both shows.


* * * 

Back in the present we just opened our in season with Deathtrap and it turned out very well.

"Deathtrap" 2017, Technical Director/Lighting Designer

As it turned out I had worked on another production of Deathtrap thirty-eight years ago.
I wrote the following in a previous Blog post:

I also worked the load-in and load-out for the tour of the play Deathtrap.

The most interesting part of that show was that the road boxes that held the various weapon displays, an important part of the play, that were lifted up and fitted directly into the walls of the set. 

The lockable cover could be taken off as needed and easily put back on and locked up after the show.

There were many knives, swords, axes, guns and other fun props that they wanted to keep safe and away from curious hands and stop them from walking away.


I will write more about this production in the future.



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