Back to Work

It did not snow all the time and we did have time to work on many plays that year.
I enjoyed that I did many different jobs on the plays, not always doing the same thing.
As noted earlier during my Junior year at UB I worked as the Lighting Designer for Harold Pinter’s “Old Times", Technical Director for Euripides’ “The Bacchae” and the Stage Manager for Eric Bentley’s “From the Memories of Piteous Pilate” in addition to helping out on several other plays and dance concerts.

One of the lighting effects that people enjoyed in “Old Times” was the result of the set design and not my work.
The box set had a raked floor that ran upstage to the back of the Theatre and used the real window in the wall as part of the set.

Pinter's “Old Times”

It was high enough off the ground so people would not look in but you could see the lighted windows of other nearby building, street lights and even a stop light if you sat in the right seat.

Somehow the fuzzy seats used on the set ended up in our house after the play.

They were not really that comfortable put still fun to play with as you could flip them so you could sit from either end.
During the play plywood sides had been added to stop them from rocking.

As Technical Director for “The Bacchea” I enjoyed working with the Scenic Designer, a fellow student, and drafting out the working drawings, many of which I still have.
This is well before AutoCAD and all the work was done with hand drafting.
I starting drafting in high school and really enjoyed it, even winning an award at graduation as the best draftsman along with a special technical theatre award.

The Bacchea

It was during “The Bacchea” that an incident happened that changed the atmosphere for the rest of the school year.
A group of us had just come back from lunch in the student union.
There was some time to kill before the afternoon work call so I went into the tech office to work on the drafting for the play.
Unfortunately some of my friends choose to go to the basement smoke some Wacky Tabacki before the work call.
Of course they got caught by the faculty Technical Director and the two who worked for the department were fired.
I felt bad for them but I had to get on with the work on the show.

The set was a mix of ramps and platforms ay various angles and heights.
I had a hard time calculating all the leg heights because of the overlapping platforms in the design.
There were a few mistakes but easily fixed as we put the set in.

Just a year or two before we had lots of naked people onstage, (and backstage too) but by the time we did this show the cast was less willing to be naked in public.
The costume designer had designed costumes for the women in the chorus that were to be made of just a few layers of gauze and netlike material with the actresses naked underneath.
They were not happy and wanted to wear bodysuits under the costumes.
The designer said she did not want them to wear anything under the costume but said she would add a few more layers for modesty sake.
Well the actresses were still not happy and even more layers were added and the final costumes were very ugly highlighted by masks that had been crocheted.
Greek theatre does not always play too well today, but when the chorus came on the looked like a bunch of ragamuffins, and far from the sexy Bacchantes in the Designer’s vision, many people had to laugh.