Another Antigone, 1994

Our third and last show of the season was Another Antigone by A. R. Gurney.

The set was designed by Ellen W who had designed the set for the first show and because she also designed the lighting we hired an outside scene painter to help with this show.

More about the scene painter later.

The casts for the first two shows were professional actors who had been auditioned and hired out of New York City.

Another Antigone was prepared at the University of Michigan were the director and leading actor taught.

The director’s wife and brother-in-law were also in the cast along with a recent Michigan graduate.

They all came to Michigan after I had been a student there.

Like the first two plays I thought the set for this show was great.

The play is simple, a student writes a play, an updated version of Antigone, rather than the formal critical paper the teacher required and the fight over it.

There was not a classic box set with walls of the teacher’s office and other locations, but rather a minimal amount of furniture.

The office area, downstage center, was surrounded by tall Greek columns on both sides and amphitheater seating in a skeletal form upstage.

Behind all of that on the far sides and along the upstage of the acting area there were tall burlap panels hanging.

Lightly painted on the panels were buildings representing a large college campus.

By the last show my small crew and I were working well together and were ready to take on the new challenges of the show.

The large columns were not an issue as I had just ordered and used large Sonotubes for a production a few months before and knew what to look for in dealing with them.

Large foam pieces were cut and glued together then placed on top of the columns as capitals.

The burlap panels were just long fabric pieces which we hung with simple sandwich battens that offered just one problem, we had to fireproof them.

Fortunately the weather was on our side as it took several days to lay out all the fabric, spray them with the fireproofing liquid wait for them to dry, test, and then reapply.

The fireproofing liquid even came with a Bic lighter and a simple instruction sheet.

Keep applying liquid until fabric does not burn.

It took three applications.

The amphitheater seating structure gave me some difficulties at first, but after some thought I figured out what to do and we built it without any problems.

If a set does not offer some challenges then it is not enjoyable to build.

As I mentioned above that we needed to hire an outside scene painter and it became my job to find one.

I did not know where to look for scene painters in Connecticut as first but remembered that two former students were working fifty miles away at the Goodspeed Opera House.

I made a call and unfortunately one of the formers students had just left to move to California and the other was not available nor did she have any leads on another painter.

Almost giving up my assistant mentioned that another former student was working at Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, NY which was not too far away.

Another phone call and I had a painter who was happy to come over and paint for a few days and make some extra money.

Over the years the Emelin Theatre is one of those places where I have had several former students end up working.

Although the set had a few tricky elements it ended up looking good and was fun to work on.

There was just one special scenic element that was more challenging than anything else the whole summer and I will talk about that in the next post.

* * *

Pump Boys and Dinettes, 1994

Typical of most summer stock theatres, we had very little time to build the shows.

We had about three weeks to build the set for the first show, Pump Boys and Dinettes.

Maybe more of a concert, it was a small musical in which the actors played all off the instruments onstage.

Knowing the space well, the scene designer did a great job fitting the set into the space while working with all of the needs of the play.

As is the case for many good looking sets, it looked deceptively simple but it had some interesting elements and was not too difficult to build.

It was a unit set with four main parts, a small diner and gas station unit on either side of the stage, a forced perspective road running upstage to the painted horizon and a large curved false proscenium covered with 6 inch wooden planks.

Luckily the producer bought, rented or stole most of the props and set dressings form another production of the show.

Because of that we did not have to make the counters, swiveling seats or advertising menu signage for the diner set the build went fast with few problems.

The false proscenium was the only thing that gave me a concern.

As I was not sure how, with a limited crew, that we could put it up but as I continued to work on the construction drawings it came to me how to divide the unit into smaller pieces that could be easily handled.

The pieces of the upper part of the proscenium were joined side-by-side and then the hanging hardware and cables were attached.

After the top section was flown out the two narrower side pieces were stood up and attached.

It is a great feeling when the vision of how to get something done right and safely comes to you, but until it does there can be some moments of anguish.

Fortunately past experiences and learning from earlier mistakes (someone else's, not mine off course) makes each new project a bit easier and less stressful but still there always can be some difficult moments on any production.

The set required some nice touches as we made a "Diner" sign that lit up and hung a big round "Gas" sign on the other side.

The “Gas” did not look quite right and I thought that the pole holding the sign needed a little something at the end.

Of course the something that I thought it needed was back in my shop in Brockport so I called one of my assistants who was back in town to go into my shop and mailed me a 8" pointed metal finial.

It came in time for the show and I think it was the right thing to finish the set.

The set looked great and I think everyone was happy with it.

There was this one little distraction during the run of the show.

As I did not run the shows, I spent most show nights either in my room or drafting working drawings for the next production.

On show just I got back to my room there was a large BANG and the lighting flashed.

Not sure what happened I went back to theatre to find out that the building had been hit by lightning causing a limited power outage.

Although some power and lighting was restored the stage lighting was out.

After an almost hour delay the producer decided to continue the show with just two 1000 watt work lights on the stage.

The audience was offered tickets to another show if they did not want to stay but after arranging for baby sitters and a nice dinner out nobody took the offer.

The audience who stayed had a very interesting evening that must have stories to talk about for a long time after.

The stage lighting was restored the next day and the rest of the run went off without a hitch.

* * *

Getting Started

I had work to do even before I left for Connecticut.

As Technical Director I needed to help hire a shop staff for the summer.

The producer sent me several resumes of people who had applied to work at the theatre.

I was told I could hire two additional staff as there were several others that had already been hired.

I had tried to hire one of my recent students but he told me he already had plans for the summer.

There were not too many great choices in the resumes but one stood out as a promising prospect from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and I offered him a job.

Dickinson College is a very old college with a long history including a former president and the early home of JenniCam a ground-breaking website in the evolution of the internet.

If you do not know about JenniCam you need to Google it as it is not the subject of this blog.

I was having a hard time finding another person for the shop as some of the candidates had taken other jobs but I was lucky that my former student’s summer plans had fallen through and was available and willing to work with me.

Soon after driving to Connecticut and moving in I met the rest of the staff and began work on the summer season.

I  had only two full time shop staff workers but the were both excellent and worked very hard.

They would make a little extra money serving as the run crew for some of the productions.

I will talk about them in more detail and what happened to them in a future Blog post.

Dean Adams, the producer of the festival and director of one of the plays, was a teacher at the host school and had run the festival for several seasons.

An interesting and talented man, he was originally from Seattle and went to high school with Bill Gates.

Dean’s sister-in-law was his assistant and kept the budget in line among other duties.

Like most theatres it seemed that everyone had duties beyond their job description with the goal of putting on a good production.

The scene designer, Ellen Waggett,  was a talented young woman just out of college who had been a student at the Westminster School some years before.

Ellen went on to work in NYC and continues to have an excellent career in  Theatre and Television and has designed for both the Tonight Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Summer Theatre has little extra time and I had to start right away on the first two music events and the first play.

I worked with my staff to set up the shop, order supplies and ready the stage for the first music events by day and did set working drawings at night.

Although I had just started working a bit with CAD I drafted my working drawings by hand.

The opening Gala event was very simple with just a grand piano onstage.

Watching from the back of the house I was shocked when I saw the condition of the piano as it had many small chips in the paint, so much that it looked like it had been hit with birdshot.

Before the next event I spent my free time coloring in as many of the chips as I could with a black sharpie.

It was not a proper fix but it looked a hundred times better the next time it was onstage.

There were a few local recent graduates of the school that worked with us that summer and we would get a bonus worker later in the summer that I will talk about in future Blog posts.

Finally it was time to build the set for  Pump Boys and Dinettes.

 * * *

Centennial Theatre Festival, 1994

I have enjoyed working at The College at Brockport but my position is a twelve month appointment and I do not have the summers off like those teachers on nine month contracts.

In the early days I was very busy with our Summer Arts Festival with both a musical and straight play production and occasional dance concert as well.

The second play which ran only one weekend was held over and performed again the first weekend of school in September.

After my third summer the second play production was dropped and we would just musicals until the festival ended.

I enjoyed doing the second plays because I got to design the sets for them which included Bus Stop, Wait Until Dark and The Good Doctor.

We often did not start building the sets for the second plays until after the musicals opened and we had only about a week to knock the sets together.

Because of the summer shows and my other duties I have had little time to work outside of Brockport over the years and I found this frustrating at times.

In the summer of 1994 there was to be no summer musical because of planned construction work in the theatre so I wanted to do something else outside of Brockport.

Once I cleared that I could be away I looked for an interesting summer theatre job.

I landed a job as the Technical Director for the summer season of the Centennial Theatre Festival in Simsbury, Connecticut.

The festival was housed in a very nice theatre at a private boarding school, The Westminster School, and the season consisted of three plays, two music concerts and a dance performance.

It was a great summer for me as I got to work in a new space with some talented people and was lucky that I was able to bring one of my recent students as my assistant.

It was one of the best decisions I made, he worked hard and he made me look good.

There was one pesky thorn in the mix, but I went with it, had some fun with it and went on to have a great experience that made me better in the long run.

Every production I have worked on is unique but I have found many stories in my  recent posts may have gotten a bit repetitive, but I had many new and fun experiences that summer in Connecticut.

I have an outline of things I may write about with over twenty topics so I am sure I will have several posts about the summer of 1994.

To begin with I had to make plans to be away for the whole summer, having my mail forwarded and other such things.

I loaded up my car with everything I thought I would need for the summer and headed out for my new adventure.

I was impressed by the look of the school buildings when I arrived.

Most of the classroom and dorm buildings had a classic Tudor style architecture look on a sprawling wooded campus.

There were no students there in the summer so it had an odd feeling with most buildings closed for the summer.

The actors and technical staff were housed in one of the dorms.

As I moved in I had the choice of any of the rooms but was advised I might want to try one of the rooms on the lower level (almost basement level) as there was no air conditioning.

The rooms were indeed cooler but they were prone to mildew.

Being summer theatre there is always little time to rehearse and build the shows so after moving in and meeting everyone it was time to get to work.

After two simple music events it was time to get to work on the first show of the season: Pump Boys and Dinettes.

* * *

Summer Theatre

I miss doing summer theatre.

This summer the only things going on in the theatre have been the weightlifting event of the Special Olympics and five sessions of the freshmen orientation for next fall.

I enjoyed the Special Olympics and was impressed by all the athletes, but I really did not have much to do for that event.

We used to do shows every summer but have not done one in over fifteen years.

As I look back at summer of my summer theatre memories I have included links to posts in which I have written about them in more detail.

I did my first summer production in 1975 after my first year in college.

I returned home and lit the local community theatre production of No, No, Nanette.

This was the production when I got the best insight and design concept from the director when he told me to just “Make it Pretty”.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/10/make-it-pretty.html

The summer of 1976, the bi-centennial, was my favorite and busiest summer of theatre.

Right after the end of school I went to NYC and for a month worked off-Broadway on four plays in rep.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/11/as-with-each-year-while-i-was-in.html

After just a few days off I went out to Gateway Playhouse for a true summer stock experience of which I wrote several blog entries.

It was a crazy and wild summer working hard, learning a lot and having a good time all the time we were bitching about everything.

Stories from that summer start with this post:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2009/12/gateway-playhouse-1976.html

The summer of 1977 was my first as a “Professional Designer”

I was hired to be the lighting designer for two productions at a small Long Island theatre.

The shows were Rogers and Hart, A Musical Celebration and The Sound of Music.

Details about the shows are in the following post:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-for-apple.html

The next summer was right after I graduated from college and I did not work on any play, well not directly.

This was the summer that I worked for Lycian Stage Lighting.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/04/summer-of-1978.html

I was soon off to Graduate school were we had four shows in rep each summer.

The first summer I designed two of the plays and the second summer I worked on my master’s thesis and did time as the master electrician for the summer rep.

Details about my first summer at Michigan can be found at the following link as well as mixed in 20 other post I wrote about my time at Michigan:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010/08/summer-1979.html

After Graduate school I returned home to Long Island and did what work I could find in the area.

In the summer of 1981 I was hired to be the Scenic and Lighting Designer as well as the Technical Director at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

The productions were the musical Candide, Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey and Da by Hugh Leonard.

The first of two posts about that summer is:

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2011/01/summer-theatre-in-new-jersey.html

I was out of Theatre for a year while I was working in a photo studio in NYC,  but in the Fall of 1982 I started working at the College at Brockport.

For the next seventeen years I worked on most of the summer production the college produced but I was giving a break the summer they did The Wizard of Oz.

I was glad to be off that year as they set off the fire alarms during every performance because they used too much flash powder and fog.

In the summers of 1994 and 1998 I got a chance to work outside  of Brockport again and do true summer stock.

I have not yet written details of those summers but they are coming up soon.

I the last few years that we had summer shows there a few that there was no show because of renovations to the building.

Cutbacks in funding and higher costs finally killed the summer productions at Brockport.

As I have gotten older I do not know if I could do a full summer of theatre as I did back in 1976 when I was 20 but I am glad I had the chance to do it when I did.

* * *

42nd Street, Summer 1990

42nd Street, Summer 1990

42nd Street, TD and Lighting Designer, 1990

42nd Street is a big, fun musical based on the 1933 movie with songs added from other movies of the period.

Of course it was hard for me to jump right back into the swing of things when I returned from my mother's funeral, but once I did get back to work there was something comforting about being back in the Theatre.

Drew had design a nice set that was a mixture of all new construction with a few pieces re-used from other shows.

We had a good crew including a former student who that I was able to hire as my assistant who  had come back home to Brockport after finishing Grad School.

Like most sets we re-used some pieces, altered some stock pieces and made some from scratch.

For one scene we re-used some of the mirrors from A Chorus Line from the year before.

The mirrors were hung in a semi-circle for one song in  42nd Street.

We also re-used some of the Rosco silver slit drape that I had used in Anything Goes a few summers before.

We did some welding of several step units, which yes we still have and I just used in our last production.

In building the train for the Shuffle Off to Buffalo number my assistant Jim suggested using stress-skin platforms something I knew about but never used before.

The platforms worked out well and I have used stress-skin platforms many time since then.

As with many productions there are always a few small set pieces that are difficult to construct.

For this show it was large coins that are carried in and then danced on.

After several tries the finished coins were made of several layers of foam with 1/8" Masonite on the tops and bottoms, or should I say the heads and tails.

We're in the Money!

My crew, especially the guys, enjoy this shows as there was lots of naked girls running around back stage.

Sitting out front setting the lighting for the show I did not get to enjoy the view but I heard all about it.

As there were many quick changes the chorus girls would run off stage and into the back cross-over hall where they would disrobe, many time just wearing their panties.

As they ran along the hall they would pick up the next costume and run back onstage.

This happened mostly in the sequence starting in the train station with the Lullaby of Broadway and ending on the train for Shuffle Off to Buffalo.

As I was told the girls would run off stage and strip off most of their clothes and just put on a trench coats, go back onstage and do a number, again run off stage, drop the coats and this time put on 1930's nightgowns and underwear and then run back onstage and sing again.

My crew, always trying to be helpful, were always at the door to hold it open as the girls ran through.

Playing a smaller part in the show was the college-age son of one of our talented students.

Back then he was Scott L. Diggs but today he is Taye Diggs.

I remember a bit he did with an older character actor in the show.

We needed more time for a set change and the tow of them did a few minutes of improv about miss-matched socks or other earth shaking stuff.

 .

 

***

A Chorus Line, summer 1989

The summer musicals were always fun to work on.

Most everybody loves musicals; big casts, flashy sets and many costumes along with fun songs.

Musicals are also lots of work but A Chorus Line is a different kind of musical that has many special challenges.

The basic cast is made up of 17 plus 12 or more extras needed for the opening number.

After the opening number, I hope I get It, about half of the cast is cut and sent home.

In our production the extra actors would leave the stage, change and go home as they are not need again and did not get a curtain call.

A Chorus Line is different from the traditional musical that we had been doing in that all of the actors needed all had to be triple threats.

They had to be able to sing, dance and act, something not always easy to find in one person let alone the 17 needed for the show.

In traditional musicals there are always a few leads and then a mixture of extra actors who may sing or dance or just take up space on the stage and look good in their costume.

Although some Brockport students were used many in the cast came from the Theatre Rochester Community.

Our department scene designer had left and the new one was not yet on staff so the production manager from the Dance department designed.

A Chorus Line does not require a traditional set but Christian Tucker, a long time theatre designer, did a nice job on the set.

OK, most of the show the set is simply a white tape line along the floor but there was also a big decorative curtain used in the final musical number.

It was made up of various shinny and reflective materials from Rosco.

A line of mirrors along the back of the stage are the signature set pieces for the play.

The mirrors were not hard to make.

We used Rosco shrink mirror on special wooden frames.

The mirror is attached to the frames and then using a heat gun the mirror shrinks and tightens up leaving a glass like result.

The first few frames went fairly quick and we thought that this was going to be easy.

The second roll of the mirror did not shrink as easily as the first and we started to get little burn marks.

When we got to the third roll it would not shrink at all. 

Rosco is a good supply company and I have always had good luck with them but when we called them and tried to get a replacement roll but were told that they were in the middle of a big audit and could not help us.

WHAT!!!!

After another few frantic calls they told us that the California office could help us and they sent us another roll.

Well the new roll came and it shrank a bit better but it seemed to a stain or fog on part of the mirror.

Come to find out the backing used on the mirror was made by another company for some other use and the fact that it would shrink under heat was not important to its intended primary use.

Now this was 25 years ago and they still sell the mirror I can only assume they have worked things out.

The mirrors got done and looked very good and you would have to know where to look to see any of the burn marks.

Yes I still have a few of the mirrors and used one recently during the rehearsals of Avenue Q for to actors to practice working with their puppet.

Most of the mirrors were to be used again the following summer in 42^nd Street.

A mirror panel or two have been used in several other shows over the years and have been lent out to other theatres on occasion.

Although the set for A Chorus Line was not really too challenging for Christian would get a chance to design a fun set for Cabaret a few years later.

For me as the lighting designer there were a few challenges.

One of the iconic images from the show is the line of 17 actors all holding up their photos in little pools of light.

This called for 17 specials all focused very tightly plus 17 other lights used as back light.

It looked good when done.

The other issue was the follow spot.

Because most of the actors are always on stage when the spot was used it would light up the actors behind the one doing their solo.

To fix this I put a small follow spot up in the ceiling cove position which gave me a very steep angle and worked well.

It was very tough on my crew person because it was July and very hot and even though the AC was on in the theatre, we know that heat rises and it was locked in the ceiling.

The show went well and we sold out most performances