Scene Shop, Guest Actors and Christopher Walken

I spent my first year at Michigan working in the scene shop.
At the start if each semester we would have a day when all the undergraduate stagecraft students would come in and get a crash course in the shop; the power and hand tools and how to use them and basic shop safety.
The Graduate Assistants were all assigned a group of tools with stations set up in the shop and the students would move around the shop getting a short lecture at each table.
I got to demo the Boring Tools, drill bits, and it was too exciting for words.
In my present job I get to explain all of the tools at the beginning of each semester in my now famous “This is a Hammer lecture”.
To date I have given it 56 times.

Working in the scene shop was pretty basic and nothing too wild happened while I was there.
I do remember that I was assigned the very important job of building all of the special platforms and flats for the set of the Inspector General.
It turned out that all of the special platforms and flats were small in size averaging about one foot square.
The set was a collection of odd shaped walls and levels and my crew and I had to fill in all of the gaps.
I had one very important contribution to the action of the play.
There was a pair of large doors that were the main entrance into the stage and a small sliding door cut into the door to act as a peep hole.
As a joke, after it was made, I added a rubber band to the back of the door to make it spring shut.
The director happened to come through the shop and thought it was so funny that he added it to the business of the play each night an actor would get his nose slapped by the springing back of the little door.

Each of the Guest Artist Series productions had a professional actor, director and/or a designer and my first semester at Michigan when we did Richard II Christopher Walken was the lead.

Richard II, Scene Design by Steven Gilliam

Although all of the other guest artists were good, Christopher Walken turned out to be the most famous.
Back in 1979 Walken was still mostly a stage actor, although he had done a few films by that time.
He seemed a bit distant to me, he had just finished filming the Deer Hunter, and when I later saw the film I could see why.

Richard II with Christopher Walken