"Oleanna" and "The Crucible", Spring 1996

Our first play back in the Mainstage Theatre after the renovation was David Mamet’s Oleanna, not my favorite play.

I think it was the pathetic weak-willed nature of the characters rather than the subject that made me dislike the play.

I did not LIKE either of the characters and did not care what happened to them.

The two person play had a single set made up of many bookcases suggesting a round office.

After the show many of the bookcases wandered off to various staff offices.

Our spring production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller was a much more interesting production.

Written in 1953, the play was a reaction to Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare of the late 1940’s but the play was set during the Salem witch trials of 1692.

Our Director chose to set the play to the 1950’s during the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings.

At first I was not sure about it but the play was over 40 years old at that point so the time shifting seemed to work fine.

The settings were fragmented suggestions of locations, with the courtroom have the most detail.

 In the courtroom we had two large TV monitors with a video feed coming from a 1950’s looking TV camera.

The TV camera was made from a 1950’s effect projector mounted on the heavy base of an old Strong Super Trooper follow spot.

A small video camera was hidden in the unit with a cable running out to the two TV’s.

The camera was focused on the accused who was facing upstage and the judges.

The effect was great and added to the tension of the trial scene.

 It come as no surprise to my regular readers that we still have the makeshift TV camera down in storage.

Several local adult actors supplemented the large student cast for a strong and powerful production

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The Department had done a production of The Crucible back in 1967 and those past cast members who were located were invited to the newer production.

One returning cast member was a former minor local TV personality who unfortunately passed away soon after his visit.

Another former actor with a degenerative disease came in a wheelchair and her family said that she was just so happy to have been invited and return to Brockport.

The other returning cast members enjoyed the show but enjoyed seeing each other even more.

The show ran fine and another school year was done.

After a two year break it was time again for summer theatre at Brockport.

Coming up: Barnum.

Renovations of 1995

The main goal of the renovation of Tower Fine Arts Mainstage Theatre in 1995 was to remove and replace the drop ceiling over the seats which contain tons of asbestos.

Also done at that time was the instillation of a new lighting catwalk and two access ladders up to the cove.

The original fire curtain, also full of asbestos, was replaced.

During the renovation all of the seats were removed and the original purple fabric was updated to a nice boring grey.

Now almost twenty-five years later it might be time to replace the seating fabric.

Scaffold in the Mainstage over the frames for the seats.

One day during the renovation work several of my tech students working in the shop practicing their welding skills.

One of the construction workers who was passing through the space stopped to see what the students were doing.

He gave them an impromptu ten minute master class in welding; showing how to adjust the welder, hold the MIG gun and what sound to listen for when making a good weld.

Frying eggs.

In just a short time the students learned more than I could have ever taught them as welding is not one of my strongest skills.

The students thanked the man and continued practicing and making much better welds.

When we got the Mainstage back in January of 1996 we had to explore the space and see what changes were made and to see what we had to do to get ready for another semester of plays and music concerts..

The first thing we found is that the stage floor was ruined.

During the asbestos removal they had built a clean-up shower right in the middle of the stage and a good deal of water had leaked out.

The original stage floor was covered with ¾ inch particle board and the water had swelled the floor panels so much that it was almost 18 inches off the sub-floor in spots.

The worst panels had to be removed and replaced but still much of the rest of the floor was in bad shape.

Somehow and someplace money was found and we replaced the whole stage floor during one of the next free summers.

Soon we all had to see the new lighting catwalk and found that the floor was steel diamond plate with raised texture bumps.

Not good on the knees when working on the lights.

New Catwalk

It did not take too long for us to find and put as much scrap carpet as we could to cover the floor.

My students worked hard to replace the lights to the cove and learn how to work with the new lighting catwalk and the extra pipe added to allow the lights to be focused on the stage.  

    

The first event of 1996 was a music concert at the end of the second week of classes which did not take too much effort but the real test would be the first play a few weeks later.  

* * *

‘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.

* * *

The Voice of the Prairie, Fall 1995

The summer of 1995 we had no show at the college for the second year in a row.

I spent my time trying to make sure the renovations of the Mainstage Theatre were going well.

I met several times trying to ensure that the new lighting catwalk’s problems could be overcome.

I addition to the many issues of the building renovations there were going to be big staff changes in the fall of 1995.

In addition to the sudden loss of the scene designer we also lost our production manager/shop foreman who left to take a new job at Ithaca College.

A temporary scene designer was found and a search for a full time replacement would soon begin with me has the chair of the search committee.

The choice of The Voice of the Prairie by John Olive worked well for our first fall production in the Black Box theatre.

Note student working up on the Old Grid.

There were only four actors in the cast and the scene design used a unit set with several moving pieces to change the look of the space.

I remember that all of the students did a good job both on and off stage.

The scenic design was mostly a large barn-like wall with a large sliding door and a smaller door that had to fly in and out in a space without a fly system.

I worked with several of my advanced students to make the several scenic challenges, including the flying door, work smoothly.

The show had both  student lighting and sound designers who did a good job.

We had used the Black Box Theatre for three “Mainstage” productions my first few years at Brockport but it had been a while since we had used it.

After our more recent renovations forced us to use the Black Box Theatre again,  one director found that he liked it and has used it several times even after the renovation were done.

Some productions work much better in the intimate Black Box Theatre than on the larger Mainstage.

The building renovations along with other issues made it was a difficult time for the department.

Because the Arts for Children faculty were made into their own area for a few years, our department was down to just four full time faculty, several adjuncts, a guest designer and myself.

We could have had more issues with unhappy students because of the loss of a popular teacher and other staff losses, but our low number of majors at the time and the fact many others had graduated left few hold overs who might be unhappy but they all stepped up and help keep things going.

A Disturbance in the Force

The shows in the spring of 1995 should have been more eventful to me but there was several distractions going on at that time.

One of our teachers was up for tenure at the time but he seemed to have several some personal troubles at the time and choose to leave Brockport.

This of course became a Disturbance in the Force of our department as we figured out what was going on and what we would do to continue on.

At the same time planning for the long awaited renovations to the theatre were underway.

This first renovation was to remove the dropped ceiling over the main seating area because it contained lots of asbestos.

A metal lighting catwalk and laddered up to it were to be installed.

The original plan called for the work to be done over the summer but it was expanded into the fall semester.

I remember that a year or two earlier some “suit” with a clipboard and tape measure showed up one day and was looking around the theatre so I asked him what he was doing and if he need some help.

He talked about some upcoming renovations that no one else had heard of yet and I forgot about until a few years later when it came to pass.

As more information about the renovation became clear I had to fight with the college to make some changes to the planned new catwalk as the one designed would not be usable.

The new metal catwalk would be very safe as it ran across the lighting cove opening but the problem was they was no place to hang the lights.

There was to be safety rail every six inches from the bottom to the top.

They suggested adding a pipe outside the railing to hang the lights but when I asked how we would get them there they said that they would get back to me.

Not waiting for their answer I went to the University at Buffalo and took photos of the lighting catwalks in their new theatre to show what was needed.

As changes were made but a second problem came up.

The planned new drop ceiling would extend out so far from the lighting catwalk as to block the stage lights from being able to be focused on the stage.

Instead of cutting back the ceiling their solution was to weld another pipe a foot outside of the catwalk forcing my students to lean out of the catwalk to focus the lights.

So much for safety.

I would finally get the college to cut back the lip of the drop ceiling 20 years during another round of renovations.

To accommodate the renovations we had to make changes to our productions as we could not use the mainstage theatre and moved the first production in the fall to the Black Box Theatre.

The selected season included another production of A Christmas Carol but that could not be done in the Black Box.

The department arranged to do our second show in the dance theatre but A Christmas Carol was too big for that stage and so we change the show to Twas the Night Before Christmas a children’s show.

Through some negotiations we ended up producing the play in the dance theatre in Hartwell Hall.

After we chose our season of plays I had a ”Vision” for a concept for the design for the poster for one of the plays.

Being a stamp collector I happened to see a set of Australian stamps that honored the golden days of radio of radio.

I worked the concept into designs for the other three plays and submitted my rough designs to the college design team that produced the final posters.

The posters were already finished by the time we had to change the Christmas play and a new design and poster was made.

The 1995-96 season would start with the Mainstage theatre under construction, a new scenic designer and some other unforeseen challenges.

So for Brockport nothing new.

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 . . . .

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ``            

 * * *

Rise of the Machines

Back in 1995 computers were becoming more common place in the day-to-day world and the college did not want to be left out.

With that in mind the college put out a call for applications for Technology Incentive Grants for the purchase of computers to be used as part of teaching or research.

 I received a $12,000 grant to purchase a state-of-art computer, an AutoCAD program and 36” wide pen plotter plus other accessories.

The purchasing office called me to double check my order.

First they wanted to know why I did not want the new Windows 95 operating system and I told them that AutoCAD was not ready to run on it yet.

They also wanted to know if I really wanted and needed 12 megabytes of RAM when most computers were coming with only 4 megabytes at that time.

I would soon add even more RAM before my next computer upgrade.

My current computer has 4 gigabytes of RAM, a thousand times more than the average computer of 1995.

Around the same time I signed up to take several AutoCAD classes at the local adult education program that helped me learn the program and I really enjoyed it.

I was nice to be back in a classroom on the student side again and even better to go someplace away from the college once a week and be with some “normal” people.

Because I had the computer and program I had an advantage over most of the other students who did not access to the equipment outside of class.

I have looked for another class to take but I have yet to find something that interested me or I wanted to take.

It took a while, but not too long, for me to do all my working drawings and light plots on the computer and put away my drafting tools.

I really enjoyed drafting by hand but enjoy more the time that the computer freed up for me.

Even after using AutoCAD for 20 plus years I am far from an expert and only use just a small portion of the programs capabilities.

The Pen Plotter was nice to have as it printed out full size working drawings, it was fun to watch but slow by today’s standards.

It could take an hour or more to print out a full lighting plot.

Architecture firms at the time would hire special staff to work overnight to stay and print out large and complex drawings that could take hours to print.

A few years later we would replace the Pen Plotter with a wide Desk Jet printer that printed out much faster and also allowed us to print out other items, not just draftings.

Soon we would use the printer to produce reproductions of paintings and other pictures to use on sets.

Each year there is another use for computers in our Theatre productions.

Back in the 1990’s we first used computers to burn CDs for our sound effects and music used in plays and soon people forgot how to use Reel-to-Reel tape decks or more importantly how to splice the tape.

The BBC sound effects library on vinyl records was soon replaced with sounds on CDs and then through internet sites like Find Sounds.Com.

With the birth of Napster in 1999 and then I-Tunes in 2001, finding music for plays became very easy, but questions for paying royalties still linger.

Soon after the turn of the new century I received another technology grant, this time for the sound playback program SFX and a dedicated computer and sound card to run it.

Since that time we use have used a computer to run our sound effects and music for our various productions.

At first it took some time to train students to run the computerized lighting and sound boards but it has gotten much easier in recent years as most student have grown up using computers and smart phones their whole lives.

Computers now can do many things in theatre from controlling the movement of scenery, production communications, box office sales and much more.

Several of our recent productions have used computer generated images projected on the stage.

We have a 3-D printer here at the college and although we have yet to use in it a production but I am sure we soon will.

It is amazing that the $175 tablet that I recently bought is hundreds of times more power than the computers we bought back in 1995 and can do everything they did plus even more.

Who knows what computers and other technology we will have available to us in the next five, ten and twenty years ahead and where they will take us both on and offstage.

Should be interesting.

* * *

Cinderella, 1994

The last play I worked on in 1994 was Cinderella.

I am sure it was a wonderful production but I have few clear memories of it.

I do not have a copy of the program and few photos of it but mostly my haziness of the show was caused by the death of my grandmother just before the show.

She was 102 and had lived quite an interesting life.

I wrote about her in an earlier blog post and will write more about her as I recently came into more photos and paperwork about her early life.

https://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2012/03/oh-boy-by-jerome-kern-and-p-g-woodhouse.html

So what can I tell you about our Cinderella.

First thing is that we rented, bought or stole the set from another local college who had recently done a production of the play.

Cinderella, 1994

I do not think that they were the same script, one of them might have been a musical version, but I am not sure.

It took at least three trips, 25 miles each way, to move the set to Brockport.

The large pumpkin seen in the photo above was stolen by some college boys who saw the show but we got it back and yes we still have it, now under lock and key.

Here is a photo of me carrying a big foam nose that was part of a giant face you can see on the fireplace.

Me carrying in the Nose.

I do remember that we had a carriage for Cinderella that was able to fly in from across the stage and land on the ground and roll off the other side.

As I recall, Colin, my ATD did most of the rigging to make all the magic work.

I think we used a trap door from which Cinderella’s ball gown would rise up.

That is about all I remember, I do not even know if I designed the lighting or even saw the finished show.

For all the many little things that I remember from shows from even longer ago it is surprising how little I remember about this one.

Well they did not close down the department or college so it could not have been all that bad.

On to 1995 and some new adventures.

* * *

The Glass Menagerie, 1994

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was  directed by guest James Steinmeyer whose daughter Joleen just happened to be the stage manager for the show.

Joleen was a talented student who would go on the design the set for a Mainstage production the following year.

The Glass Menagerie has only four characters and does not require a large or complex playing space.

A memory play, the action takes place in a small apartment in St. Louis in the 1935.

In our production two rooms were seen, the living room which was downstage center and the dining room which was mid-stage.

The rest of the apartment was indicated upstage through an arch and doorway.

The somewhat small set on the Tower Mainstage was surrounded by most of our stock of large flats and window units to represent the surrounding tenements.

Most of the window units were distressed with broken glass and boards over some of them.

To enter the set the actors walked on a raised sidewalk that started upstage left, came downstage to the lowered pit and back around to stage right ending outside the front door on a steel framed fire escape platform.

Of course we still have the fire escape in stock.

After the actors were in the set the lighting for the surrounding areas was lowered and the focus was just on the two rooms.

The set had several lighting practices but I wanted something more.

The biggest lighting moment of the show is when Laura shows The Gentleman Caller her menagerie of glass figurines lit with just a candle.

I wanted to be able to add just a little fill light to the scene but there was no good place to hide a lighting instrument.

Working with Drew the scene designer I told him what I needed and suggested making a box in the front of the pit to hide the light but thought it would be too low to the ground.

After some thought Drew designed two posts that would be added to the edge of the sidewalk in which I could hide a small light.

The posts looked that were always part of the set and light was just in the right place.

I was afraid of having the old horror movie effect that when people were walking in the dark with a lamp there would be in a spot on them and you would see the shadow of the lamp on the wall behind them.

That did not happen as I added just enough light to fill in the actors faces.

The combination of all of the elements, set, lights, costumes, acting and direction, made this a very successful production.

* * *

Transition

For me the 1990’s was a time of transition.

Teaching at a college there is always change as new students come while others graduate and the staff changes, maybe a bit slower, but still always seems in flux.

With my return from Connecticut in the fall of 1994 the world itself was changing a bit faster than it had in recent years big changes were about to happen but I could not see them at the time.

Computers had been around for a while and we were slowly using them more and more each year and with the coming of Windows 95 and the growth of the internet we would became more reliant on technology more and more in the years ahead.
I will comment more about computers as they were integrated a little more each year to productions and daily lives.

Maybe it was because I was getting older, all of thirty-eight in 1994, but I saw the world and what was happening through a different, perhaps a more mature, perspective.
x

In the summer of 1993 I went to my last Grateful Dead concert in Buffalo with tens of thousands of fans at the old Rich Stadium.

Just a side note, the three women I went to the concert with had all been to Woodstock as young teenagers, I did not go.

In the fall of 1994 I saw the Barenaked Ladies in the college ballroom with just a few hundred people.

I was just a few rows from the stage during the “If I had a $1,000,000” song and got to see the boxes of Mac and Cheese flying towards the stage along with clouds of cheese mix in the air.

They returned a year later and played to a sell-out crowd of several thousand in the gym.

Music, people, technology and the whole world around us is always changing but it is hard to see it as it is happening.
Time and distance, the magic of hindsight, gives of different, maybe clearer,  view of what we have lived through.

The first play of the 1994-5 season was The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams with an outside guest director.

I did not know it at the time but this was going to be the last production with the full design and production team that had created some outstanding productions over the past five years.

There were still many more wonderful plays to work on and some very talented students to mentor, but I felt obliged to mark this time as special.

More adventures ahead.

* * *

Biloxi Blues, 1994

Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues was our last play of the 1993-4 season.

This was a multi-scene play that had several smaller set pieces rather than one large set.

We had a student scenic designer and it was of the first plays that I did all of the working drawing on computer using a simple CAD program.

I would receive a grant for a new computer and AutoCAD program and takes AutoCAD classes in the Fall of 1994 but this was my first try at computer drawing.

Drawn with AutoSketch, this was also one of the last shows that I would use traditional flats before transitioning to Hollywood hard-covered flats.

The mostly male cast show was set in the 1940’s during World War II.

The need for period looking hair lead to a fun publicity opportunity when all of the cast were photographed at a local barbershop getting crew or “buzz cuts” as the actors had almost all of their hair cut off.

The photoshoot was also a good bonding experience for the cast who worked well together and put on a good production.

At the same time of the production of the play I was planning my first time away from Brockport in a long time as I was going off to Connecticut to be a Technical Director for an Equity summer stock Theatre company.

It had been eighteen years since I had first done summer Theatre as a twenty year old crew member but now I was going to be in charge of the crew and building the sets.

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Uncommon Women and Others, 1994

Uncommon Women and Others was directed by our then costume designer Deborah Rosenberg.

We had a student costumes designer, sound designer and technical director.

I designed the lighting and supervised the student technical director.

The set was deceptively simply which always means that there were hidden issues that allowed the set to look simple.

The design was a set of free standing French doors upstage center with four tall columns surrounding the playing area and steps going up and off each side.

The columns were made from large Sonotubes which had to be specially ordered.

The cardboard tubes are designed to be used as molds for concert piers assorted construction projects.

Most people may have seen them used in backyard patio deck or porch projects.

We needed larger size not normally used in home projects but more likely in bridge construction.

The needed to be cut in half the long ways and then covered with a grey plush fabric chosen by the scenic designer.

Without asking, yes we still have most of them in stock.

The play was not really my cup of tea but was well done.

* * *

A Christmas Carol, 1993

I have worked on A Christmas Carol four times over the years and the production we did in December 1993 is my favorite.

The production was big.

The cast was thirty-two plus a choir of eleven.

The set was huge with lots of extras.

We made money with the production two years before and thought new would do the show every two years and spend extra money to make a set we could use over and over.

Three years later we would do the show again but with a different director and designer and we did not reuse the set, but just pieces of it.

The show had every trick we could come up with: Fog, snow, an elevator up through the floor, Scrooge’s front door flew in and out, Marley’s image was projected and more.

There were moving platforms every place plus two large ones that had smaller ones that slid out when onstage.

We had a great staff and students at the time and most important I was still only thirty-seven and had the energy to work long days and late into the night.

Without a doubt the best part of the show was the ghost of Christmas Future.

As designed the Ghost was part of Scrooge’s bed curtains.

The actor/puppet moved away from the bed, his long arms stretched out and then his head popped up.

The student designers even made a long arm with a hand at the end that had fingers that moved so it could point to Scrooge’s grave.

The Ghost always shocked the audiences and on opening night someone loudly said “Oh Shit” as it came alive.

This was one of the best reactions I have ever seen working in Theatre.

I am happy to report the two students who worked on the play went on to successful careers working in Las Vegas and their work can often be seen at Comic Con.

With the show’s success doing A Christmas Carol every two years did not seem like a bad idea but of course things did not work out as planned.

Two years later we would not be able to use our mainstage Theatre because of asbestos removal and did a smaller Christmas show over in the Dance theatre.

Changes in the number of students, staff and money issues (read budget cuts) would make us decide not to continue doing A Christmas Carol on a regular basis.

I do not miss doing it.

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.