Views From Backstage

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

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.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Dracula, 1992 (Updated 10/19/17)

Program Cover

Dracula was one of the biggest productions I have worked on while at Brockport.
It had a big set, many special effects and challenging lighting requirements.
The set was built with all hard covered or Hollywood flats.
The walls were mostly all custom size and built just for this show.
Incorporated into the set was a ledge for Renfield to climb up on, a section of stone wall that could be pushed back to reveal a passageway and a cave.

The cave was fun and not used until the end of the play.
As the heroes chase offstage after Dracula the main curtain came in and they find a trap door which they open and fog flows up.
The cave was built on the orchestra lift that had a steel framed platform covering it.
As the heroes are running out to the trap door the audience is surprised to see that the lift was rising up to reveal the cave.
The walls and posts holding up the platform were covered with spray foam to give the look of stalactites and stalagmites.
The designer and student helper got sick from the fumes given off by this early version of spray foam.
The result was great.

We had many special effects which included flaying bats.

A team came in from the former Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo to rig the flying bats.

They work mostly well but I always thought that they looked a bit more like black Jell-O then bats.

Blood.

It is hard to do Dracula without blood.

Two of my advanced students worked on multiple recipes for blood; including one that looked good under the lights, was washable out of costumes and even an edible version.

The Special Effects Blood Team, Rich and Ray, even made a large stake that shot out blood as it was driven into Dracula killing him at the end.

To my disappointment the costume designer insisted on having Dracula in a purple shirt instead of a white shirt which would have shown off the blood.

I wish I had just offered to buy six shirts, one for each performance, because the big killing moment just was not seen as well as it should have.

The play had many other special features and firsts for us like a score of original music, the use of a computer and video camera onstage, fog and more.

The play was a lot of work but lots of fun and sold well.

Updated 10/19/17

Brighton Beach Memoirs, 1992

Program Cover

Brighton Beach Memoirs was third play in our incredible 1991-92 season.

Each play was bigger and better than the last.

The design and production staff worked well together and we were lucky to have a great group of students in the technical area.

I looked back at the tech students we had then and many went on to work professionally in theatre.

The set was big and real.

We basically built a two story house onstage with a few modifications.

The walls were built with 2 x 4 and covered with lauan ply instead of sheetrock.

They became stud-wall legs.

The second floor was framed with 2 x 6 and was the largest “stress-skin” platform that I have ever used.

The base unit was 8’-0” x 16’-0” with supports only on three sides.

Other platforms were added over the kitchen and by the stairwell.

The 16’-0” downstage edge was open and unsupported.

Prior to the 1991-92 season we were still using traditional flats for most shows but after the season we rarely would use them again.

Traditional 1 x 3 canvas covered flats have become a thing of the past and building them has become a lost art.

We still have a few in canvas flats in stock and use them on occasion.

Thinking back over the last twenty-five or so years there are times I should have used traditional flats when I needlessly used heavy hard-covered walls.

If you look at the one photo of the set under construction you can see the cables that we attached to the platform frame.

Simulating a crane, we used four cables on four different line sets to lift up the large and heavy platform into the air and then the walls were put in place underneath.

After the walls and platform were attached some wiring was done for ceiling lights and the ¾” plywood was added to the top of the frames and then the rest of the set added on.

Looking back at the photos I can see that the set was mostly new construction with the exception of the stair landing platform.

It was a an exciting time building such a big set with new techniques but having confidence the other production team members that we could do it.

The set for the final show of the season, Dracula, would push our collective skills even further.

updated 12/04/17

A Christmas Carol, 1991

In 1991 we did a production of A Christmas Carol which turned out to be the first of three productions the show over the next five years.

It was a big production with 40 members in the cast and both a choir and chorus of 25 each listed in the program.

To be honest I do not remember what the choir and chorus did, I think we had some singers backstage, but not 50 people.

The cast had many college students plus a mixture of faculty, staff, alumni and young children.

There was also several musicians who walked about the stage playing during the show.

The set was a bit abstract with several levels of platforms and panels from Stamping, Shouting & Singing Home modified and reused.

Program Cover

To the translucent panels 1 inch strips of 1/4 " ply were added every few inches.

There was some special effects for this show but not as many that would be used two years later in the next production of A Christmas Carol.

There was at least one funny moment during tech when some of the effects did not work and it left Dick St. George, who was playing Scrooge, just standing there looking silly.

From the tech table we all laughed and yelled out "Just look scared Dick and it will be all right".

We did the 6 regular performances plus 3 school matinees of the show and made a ton of money, so much that we decided to do it again two years later.

I do not remember anything else special about this production but the one in 1993 would offer many more challenges and stories I will share as I move forward in my Blog.

If any of my readers worked on this or any other productions described in this Blog have any special memories or stories please share them in the comment box.

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Sunday, May 31, 2015

The Diary of Anne Frank, 1991

I have written many times here how much I have enjoyed working on a particular show and I know that I may seem that I loved all the shows that I have worked on over the years, but the 1991-92 season at Brockport was one of the best all-around seasons of plays that I have ever worked on.

Each play in the season was well done, had great casts and challenging sets to work on.

We were lucky at that time that we had a great core of tech students who enjoyed working on the plays.

I was the second time while I was at Brockport that we did The Diary of Anne Frank.

We had done the same show about eight years earlier and it should no surprise to readers of this Blog that we still had set pieces from that production in stock and were able to use several old pieces in the new set.

Program Cover

We used several windows and building top cut-outs on the skyline upstage of the set.

The same big sink was used and I am sure that some of the same furniture must have been used.

Although it was not really seen by the audience we welded a spiral staircase to the upper level.

It was one of the first pieces that we used our new MIG welder on.

Unlike today we did school matinees for many of the productions back then.

I think that year we were able to do matinees for all four productions which added nicely to our income that year.

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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

"Loose Ends" April 2015

Another school year is almost over and we just opened our last production of the year.

We have three more performances of Loose Ends by Michael Weller.

There are a few more musical performances to do before the end of the school year.

More photos from this past school year as well as many previous years can be found on the college's web site:

http://www.brockport.edu/theatre/index.html

The summer does not look too busy yet, we will host 5 freshmen orientation sessions onstage in July.

But first we will have an event that I have never worked on before.

I have worked on all kinds of plays, musicals, opera, dance, lectures and speeches, but June 6th we are hosting part of the summer Special Olympics.

The weightlifting events will be held on the Mainstage.

I just have to turn on some basic lights and a microphone or two.

We just selected our season of plays for the next school year.

The Foreigner

by Larry Shue
October 9-11, 22-24

As You Like It

by William Shakespeare
December 4-6, 10-12

Vanities

by Jack Heifner
February 26-28 and March 3-5

Assassins

by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman
April 22-24, 28-30

Details to all these events are to follow.