‘Twas the Night before Christmas, 1995

Because the planned renovations to the Tower Theatre Mainstage was behind schedule we changed our Christmas show from A Christmas Carol to a children’s version of ‘Twas the Night before Christmas and moved the show to the Dance Theatre in Hartwell Hall.

The set had several restrictions put on it in order for it to be able to be used in the Dance Theatre.

It had to be small enough to build in Tower and ship over to Hartwell and be easy to be set up and taken down each day so dance classes could be held between rehearsals.

Because the dance theatre has a Marley floor we could not nail or screw anything to the floor.

In addition all of the set pieces all had carpet pieces attached to their bottoms as not to damage the floor.

The set was fairly simple with a few pieces of furniture, a door way, a large fireplace and of course a Christmas tree.

The one big special effect was a plywood cut-out of a silhouette of Santa in his sleigh with reindeer that flew across the sky.

The cut-out was about 18 inches to two feet long and rode on some cables from one side of the stage to the other powered by a stagehand turning a drum with cable that pulled the Santa through the sky.

The kids loved it and it was a big monument in the play but not as big as at the end of the play “Santa” came off the stage and met with the kids and passed out mini candy canes.

The actor who played “Santa” seemed to have candy canes in his pockets for months after the play.

We moved the set and costumes over to the dance Theatre at the end of November on a day when we got hit with an early Artic Blast.

It was only about 14 degrees plus wind, ice and snow.

A simple job of unloading the truck took three times as long as everyone’s fingers were numb.

I do not recall the same problem when we brought the set back to Tower a few weeks later.

Cast onstage

It was not the greatest piece of literature ever written but the sixteen students in it and the many backstage all did a good job and had fun doing it.

Again we had student lighting and sound designers for this show.

The spring of 1996 was up next and a return to the Mainstage Theatre after six months of renovations.

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