Views From Backstage: December 2018

Monday, December 10, 2018

Spring 1995 Productions

The plays for the spring of 1995 were fine but poorly planned and advertised.

Our two productions were Antigone and Another Antigone, yes the same show I worked on just a few months before.

Now you would think that would be an obvious PR opportunity and we could get some good and free press and a bigger audience.

You could think that but you would be wrong.

PR has never been our strong point and there have been many missed chances over the years.

Every once in a blue moon we do get some good press but it really has increased our audience numbers to our regular shows.

Musicals have always done better.

First mistake, Antigone was done as a traditional Greek Tragedy complete with period dress and in masks.

Great for teaching acting students, bad for drawing any audience.

We had a student designer who did a great job and the set looked fine.

The faculty scene designer did the lighting for the production.

The play was well done, looked good and even smelled good as they burned some incense onstage before each show.

I do not know how we came to do Another Antigone that season as it replaced another play that had been previously been selected.

The set was designed by another student and she did a fine job but it did not have the magic of the production I had worked on the previous summer in Connecticut.

It was not the students fault as she just gave the director what he wanted.

The setting was a literal interpretation of the functional requirements of the script.

The set had a turntable with two small box sets along with two curved brick benches, one on each side of the stage, that were used for several outdoor scenes.

Surprise! Yes we still have the two brick benches and they have been reused several times over the past twenty-four years.

I think we have an office desk that was made for the show as well.

The production was fine, not good, not bad just Okay.

I can not find photos of this play at this time.

There was much more going on at the college outside of these two plays that would bring major changes to our department over the next few months.

Big changes ahead . . . .

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Saturday, December 8, 2018

Recycled Set

I enjoy writing my Blog but often get side tracked as my regular readers can well note.

I posted photos from my last two productions at the college but I have no funny stories to tell you about.

The most interesting thing is how we were able to recycle the set from one into the other.

I have noted many times in my Blog how I have been able to reuse sets pieces from past productions.

This practice saves both time and money although there are times we choose to build from scratch as a teaching moment for our students..

The scene designer for the The Triangle Factory Fire Project design a set that was made up of approximately 40 two wide flats ranging in length from 1’-2” up to 12’-0”.

A little less than half of them came from our stock.

The scene designer for the next play, Prelude to a Kiss wanted to use a multi-panel projection screen and decided to re-use the flats from the previous production.

We cut some of the flats to new sizes and only had to make one from scratch.
We had to remove the newspaper that was pasted on the flats for The Triangle Factory Fire Project.
I bought special wallpaper removing spray and tools, but it was just plain old water and elbow grease that worked best.
Once dry, a bit of light sanding and a fresh coat of grey paint made the flats ready to use again.