Peter Pan and the Summer of 1985

The work on a play often starts months ahead of the actual performance and if a play is part of a season of plays it may be selected more than a year in advance.

Musicals can often take a bit longer to plan than straight plays and our summer musicals were no exception.

In the summer of 1985 we were to do Peter Pan and sometime during the school year I went with the rest of the production team to see a local production of the play and get a backstage tour after the show.

The producers wanted to make sure that the flying was safe and that it was an expense and challenge that we wanted to undertake.

Twenty-seven years ago, and still today, the best choice for safe and easy flying is to use Flying by Foy.

http://www.flybyfoy.com/

After the play was over we got to see the equipment used and talk to the staff about how easy it was to run and if there were any problems.

The set needs to be designed with the flying in mind and the backstage crew needs to be able to see the actors and be able to hook the cables to the actors with being seen, both of which are not too hard to do if planned ahead of time.

Also safe places for Peter and the other actors who fly to take off and land are needed.

In addition to learning about the flying the producers also like the girl who played Peter Pan and she would end up playing Wendy in our production that summer. 

The musical calls for some fun scenery in addition to the flying.

The play starts and ends in the nursery of the darling children,  Act II is in Never Never Land and most of Act III is on The Jolly Roger .

The realistic set for the nursery was flown out to reveal the underground lair of the lost boys.

We build a 30’-0” wide, 8’-0” high cave platform that was stored way upstage and was rolled downstage for the scene.

The boys could climb on top and slide down a fireman’s pole to get into the lair.

We needed to make a tree stump that was to be the chimney of the underground lair.

It needed to have a little trap door on top and give off some smoke.

Today we could use a small battery powered fog machine but that was not available back then.

To make the puff of smoke I used a rubber hose filled with talcum powder that was attached to the bulb of a turkey baster.

As one of the actors came up to the stump they stepped on the turkey baster and PUFF we had a little smoke.

It was not a great effect but it worked.

The stump was classic scenic construction: Plywood top and bottom, 2x4 frame covered with chicken wire and papier-mâché.

Like many other items it would stay in our stock for years and was used in many other plays and acting projects.

The Pirate Ship was a side view with the ship’s railing and ropes hanging down form unseen rigging and masts.

We did have some canvas hanging down too but I do not have any photos from this show so I do not remember all of the details.

One of the Pirate actors did make his own prop telescope.

It was a simple, a couple of pieces of PVC pipe, but he had a plastic eyeball at the end that he could have move side-to-side. 

A few weeks before the show a technician from Foy came with the equipment and set up all of the flying rigs.

He taught us how to run it and take it down after the show.

The equipment was well made and easy to use.

It was designed to do one thing and one thin only and that was to fly people in Peter Pan.

The company has made many changes and improvements to the flying systems since then and that can be seen in many shows today.

The flying went well and we had no problems, well that is until the last show and one of the last fly cues.

Before a flying scene the actors would move upstage by the window curtains where there was a small hole in the wall from which the crew could attach the cables before the flying scenes.

The hook was simple, just a metal bar that slid out of two drill holes and was snap back when the cable eyelet was in place.

The high-tech method used to hold the bar in place was a rubber band, yes just a rubber band ! ! !

In the last scene time has moved on and Wendy has grown up and now has her own daughter Jane and Peter Pan returns and flys off with her.

Jane was played was played by the same actress as Wendy.

Just before her last fly cue the latch that hooked the cable to the flying harness jammed open and we could not get it to lock.

With only seconds to attach the cable I made the decision after what seemed like minutes to tell the actress the just fake it.

The young actress turned and went on with the rest of the scene, jumped up on the window sill and then jumped into the air to fly away.

She would fell flat on her face on the mats we had upstage of the window.

We all ran in to see if she was OK and as I got to her I thought she was crying, but when she turned over she was laughing uncontrollably.

Without the pressure of the show it took just a few seconds, and a pair of pliers, to free the latch and hook her up for the curtain call.

Do not feel bad for the actress, she was OK and would return a few years later to be in our production of A Chorus Line and then go on to have active career on Broadway and is directing a play this summer at The Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Check out Jessica Stone’s work on her Internet Movie and Broadway Database pages:

http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=74951

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0831953/ 

It seems we had another local Star in the cast and the guys on the crew all got a good laugh when they found out that the actress who played Tiger Lily was a featured dancer at one of the local strip clubs.

Some of the goys talked about going to see her in action but I am not sure if anyone really went to check out her show. 

That summer was fun and we had a good group of workers, many who had worked on previous summer productions.

We worked hard and played hard too.

Parties, Wednesday Barbecues on the loading dock and a little time away up at the lake.

I think it was that summer that I saw baseball cards at the store and said: Gee I haven’t seen these in years.” And of course bought a few packs.

The next year I bought a few more packs and the next year a few more and . . . .  well ask my wife as I have too many card now, but that is for another Blog, or better yet E-Bay.

.

All the World’s a Stage

I have been working in Theatre for about 40 years and I have worked on less than a dozen full productions of Shakespeare’s plays.

Loves Labor Lost

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Richard II

Richard III

A Midsummer’s Night Dream (twice)

Much Ado About Nothing

As You Like It

Romeo and Juliet

Twelfth Night

In addition I worked on the musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona and Bride of Shakespeare Heaven, a compilation of monologues and scenes cut and pasted together into a show.

Seems to me that I should have done more of Shakespeare’s plays but they typically have large casts and are more costly to do.

The plays can cost as much as musicals to produce but do not often draw as large of an audience.

Public schools have cut back on field trips and we no longer do as many school matinees as we have done in the past. 

The final play of my third year at Brockport was a production of As You Like It.

We did our usual six performance plus three school matinees, or as many Theatre veterans call them: Creature Features!

To begin with school matinees start early in morning, 10 AM is an average start time, plus the kids are often noisy, rude and have been known to throw things at the actors.

We had to stop a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank and move some students to the back because they were tossing candy at the actors on stage.

This may seem extreme but I remember seeing a film of an early Beatles concert where the girls in the audience were throwing jelly beans on stage because they wanted to “Touch” them.

I our case the kids wanted to mess up the actors and that school was banned from future productions.

As You Like It  was the last play of the school year and the last play for our Lighting Design teacher who was leaving at the end of May.

Like most of Shakespeare’s works the play called for multiple scenes jumping from Court of Duke Frederick to the Forest of Arden.

It is a fun play with lots of action with characters running through the woods, wrestling in the court and women disguised as men.

It also has one of the most quoted speeches from Shakespeare,

no not To Be or Not To Be,

but the following:

JAQUES: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

The set was fun to build and I enjoyed the forest scene the most.

We had three layers of trees starting with real trees onstage with cutout trees behind them and finally upstage was a painted drop with even more trees.

The first forest scene starts in the Winter and we had special trees and bushes that had spray snow on them and we had white foam peanuts on the ground for snow.

At the next scene change the crew ran out to pick up the snow and turn and the bushes around so the spring flower side would show.

A few nights there was little snow showing but it still looked good.

During the recent building renovation I found that we still had the May Pole that was used in the last scene of the play but after 27 years the ribbons were faded and a bit dirty.

I got to paint some of the set and remember that I had a good time working on the show.

After it was done and school ended I would have a few weeks off and then start working on our two summer shows.

With the departure of the Lighting Design teacher and with my taking over most of his duties I was not sure what was in store for me ahead in the coming school year, but for the first summer production we had an outside Lighting Designer.

Flying up next is Peter Pan.

The Shadow Box

After a wild time with the Sci-Fi adventure the next play was completely different.

The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer won both the Tony and Pulitzer for best play.

A powerful but difficult play to enjoy it tells three overlapping stories about families dealing with a member dying of cancer.

It is set a cabin like building used by a hospital as a hospice or halfway house for families if the sick patients.

The Shadow Box

For the second time that year I got to be both the Technical Director and Lighting Designer.

The old Lighting Design teacher was still there, but I sure he was busy trying to figure what he was going to do after May when his job ended.

They may have given him a break so he would have time to apply for a new job which he did get, but did not stay long at.

 

The set was not a bad design and did not offer too many problems to build, unlike this year when I had only 3 students in my Stagecraft class, back then I had 15 students plus several work-study and temp-service workers.

As he often did, the Scene Designer cut some live trees down to put on the set and he would do it again for the next show and again the next year.

The Shadow Box,  Lighting Design

The biggest problem with the set was the material that the Scene designer had chosen.

Back then we were still mostly using traditional canvas covered flats but for that production he chose to cover the walls with paneling.

The problem was that the paneling he chose was cheap, thin and would break very easily as we worked with it.

But that was not the real problem.

The paneling was made with glue that had Urea-Formaldehyde in it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea-formaldehyde

It was banned for use in home insulation in 1982 but was still in many products in 1985 when we did the play.

When we cut the paneling it released the Urea-Formaldehyde and it caused many problems with the workers effecting some severely.

Burning in the lungs, rashes and other fun problems were common and I threw it all away as soon as the play was over.

As I looked over the program for the play I see that at least three of the former students have a hand in running theatres in Rochester, New York City and Los Angles.

Of those that I am still in contact, mostly thanks to Facebook, I know that many went on to do at least some work in Theatre or the related Arts.

One of my Stagecraft students from that class came back to school here last year and worked as our Prop Mistress.

The play went well and I was happy with how both the set and lights looked.

Well one night we thought that the older actress in the play had really died as she sat slumped in her wheelchair, but I am happy to report she is still alive pushing 90 as I write this post.

We the subject matter, Cancer, Death and a little Homosexuality, it was not a play that people “Liked” but enjoyed and were glad to have seen it.

The Scene Designer wanted a modern looking fireplace on the set and I adapted two Linnebach Projectors to be the top and bottom of it.

I had actually used the projectors as they were intended to be used when I designed the set for the master Builder back at Michigan.

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

Now that school is over for the summer I hope to catch up on my blog posts and also get better scans of my slides. 

 

.

Another Wrinkle or two

I have worked on very few what could be called Science Fiction plays and A Wrinkle in Time was one of them.

As it turns the play that I am currently working on is the Rocky Horror Show.

What other plays have I worked on that might be called Science Fiction?

Little Shop of Horrors and if you push it Dracula and maybe the Wizard of Oz might count but that is about all.

A few other plays have had some Fantasy moments, but few have been true Science Fiction stories like A Wrinkle in Time.

The play is based on an award winning children’s book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time

So with a modest budget I had to show the story of a young girl traveling through time and space looking for her father.

The design was mostly a unit set of different platform levels and a few moving pieces.

Stage curtains were hung so only some parts of the set were revealed when one of the curtains was flown out.

A Tesseract moment

One of the moving pieces was a platform with walls that represented the “Real” world house of Meg and her family but it soon was moved offstage as the journey began.

So with just wooden platforms I had to figure out ways to make magic happen onstage.

To start on the stage floor I painted a spiral galaxy spinning outward they same way that the yellow brick road does in the Wizard of Oz.

We had some neon tubes so I mounted them under the platforms and it gave them an eerie effect for some scenes.

We rented some Black Lights and used some Day-Glo and Phosphorescent paints on the set and costumes.

The big Brain with a large frame filled with bubble plastic and small white Christmas lights behind.

The Man with Red Eyes had an old football helmet that had two red Christmas lights attached and it looked good when he was atop his tall tower.

To fill the space I used some old rope and scrim scraps to make a funky hanging moss type of drape.

The scrim was cut into long narrow strips and triangular cuts were made into them to give a leaf type effect.

The rope pieces were unbraided and hung down like twisty vines.

The final High-Tech touch was to hot glue just a few pieces of Christmas tinsel here and there on it.

We also had fog but needed something special for the Tesseract or time jumps.

The Lighting Designer had about a dozen photo strobes and camera flip-flash unit mounted to different places on the set and all the wires were run to Stage Right.

There on Stage Right was a nail board with all the control wires attached.

To trigger the effect a student would run a wire that was attached to a car battery along the nail board to set off the flashes.

Nailboard for SFX

It worked well, looked good and the kids screamed each time it was used.

There were a few other special things like some disco rope lights in a street light globe on gold painted garbage can.

The set was a lot of fun to work on but regrettably the acting was in a word Awful.

Now to be honest it was in part the script and the style but I just hated it and for years I could not even look at the show photos without hating it.

One of the lead actors was especially bad and when he was late coming in for a performance we almost sent someone on with a script in hand and knew he would be better but unfortunately he came in at the last minute.

**I do have more photos and will scan them soon**

Updated 3/4/18

A Wrinkle in Time

In December 1984 I design the set for A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

The following pictures are some of my original sketches for the design.

 

 

 

A Wrinkle in Time was a crazy production and I will share the stories as soon as my current production opens in a few days.

"Oh, Boy" by Jerome Kern and P G Woodhouse

I was always grateful for the support of my family when I decided to go in Theatre.

Some families are not flexible and have unyielding or inflexible dreams of what they want for their children.

I was lucky in that my family wanted me to be happy and successful if possible.

I knew that there was some history of family members working in the performing arts in the past, but I wish now that I had asked more questions of them before they passed away.

It turns out that both of my grandmothers spent some time on the stage, both in the same city but in very different parts of town.

My grandmothers led two very different lives and although friendly with each other they always addressed each other formally

It was Mrs. Musante or Mrs. Radgowski, never Ethel or Mea. 

My mother’s mother worked as a housekeeper for several rich Long Island families during the Depression but found time sometime along the way to sing in a Speak Easy during Prohibition.

She passed away when I was only 17 and the only story of that time she ever let slip out is that she saw someone knifed during a fight in one of the clubs.

For my father’s mother music was always part of her life.

I always knew that she had played piano on stage during the silent movie error.

She would play for during the holidays and when the movie The Sting came out and gave a resurgence to the music of Scott Joplin she said: “Oh, I know that” and then played a wonderful rendition of The Entertainer.

We always joked that she played liked she had extra fingers as she always seemed to add some extra flourishes to whatever she was playing.

My grandmother lived to be 102 years old and as older people often do she repeat the same stories over and over again, but surprised even my Aunt with several things that she revealed in the last years of her life.

When my grandmother was young she lived in NYC and it turned out that she lived across the hall from Dorothy and Lillian Gish the famous silent screen actresses.

It turned out that my great grandmother would babysit which ever Gish sister was not making a movie that day out in the Brooklyn film studios.

One day she tells my Aunt that she went out to the film studio some times and was in some of the movies.

My grandmother was in her 90’s and my Aunt was shocked to hear it.

There is no way to find out anymore as too many of the old films have been lost over the years and she had no memory of the title of any of those films.

Another shock was to find out that my grandmother was a replacement member of the chorus in a Broadway play back in 1917.

The play she was in was Oh, Boy! by Jerome Kern.

Post card for tour of "Oh, Boy"

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_Boy!_(musical)

http://www.musicals101.com/1910bway.htm

It turn out that my grandmother even had a stage name but I can find no traces of her being listed in documents I have searched.

Her name was Ethel Keefe, I am not sure when the family dropped the “O” from O’Keefe or if it was ever there in the first place.

My grandmother acted under the name of Baby or Babe Keefe or O’Keefe, my Aunt was not sure.

My Aunt did have a photo that appears to show my grandmother in postcard of the play, another copy I was able to find on eBay.

My grandmother?

My Grandmother, c.1920

I was able to buy a copy of the Playbill but it does not list my grandmother in it, but I will keep looking.

My Aunt also has a photo or two from that time period that shows some actors and my grandmother at a cast party.

Gee some things never change.

One of the actors went on to make movies and my Aunt would tease my grandmother that she should have married him then she would have a famous actor as a father.

I am not sure what my grandfather would have had to say about that.

Is it my grandmother on the postcard?

I am not sure but even if she was not in the play she did do many other wonderful things.

She was involved in music her whole life from performing in string quartets, playing for silent movies and accompanying on piano for my aunt’s music class performance well into her eighties.

Oh, my grandmother was also a hooker.

What, she made hooked rugs, what were you thinking?

My grandmother also taught me copper tooling and taught painting at the senior center to people 10 years younger then her.

Looking for something else I found my old copper tooling sheets that I made when I was about 14 or 15 years old:

My grandmother was active until her mid 90’s and even went to see Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway.

When I asked her about the play she said that she enjoyed it but the language was a bit rough for her.

If you know David Mamet’s plays he does use the “F” word a lot.

I would suggest to my readers to make sure you have all your own families’ stories written down so you do not lose your unique family history.

***

My 1st Lighting Board

Just for fun here is a photo of me standing in front of the Sayville High School Lighting Board.

The photo is from my from my junior year yearbook (1972-73).

It was an old autotransformer system with 15 dimmers, three masters and one grand master that could move all the handles at once.

My hand is on the main power switch and behind me is the operator patching system.

I learned a lot on that board and even did some basic maintenance replacing the brushes on several of the dimmer rotors.