Romeo and Juliet and The Foreigner in Rep, Spring 1993

For some reason in the spring of 1993 the department decided that it would be a good idea to do two shows in repertory.

The two shows could not have been more different; Romeo and Juliet and The Foreigner.

Faculty designed and directed Romeo and Juliet was a beautiful production.

Romeo and Juliet

One show alone there was enough to keep us all more than busy but we had two to take care of.

The students had been taking stage combat instruction from a guest instructor for two years and were very excited to have a chance to use what they had learned onstage.

Some of the young women were very good fencers and were used “In Drag” for the larger fight scenes.

I designed a moody but appropriate lighting for Romeo and Juliet and needed to do a gel change between shows for the front light.

Of course we forgot to change the colors for one show and could not figure out why the lighting for The Foreigner seemed so dark.

The Foreigner was designed by a student and directed by an outside director who we had used for several productions.

Romeo and Juliet

The set was simple enough but offered technical challenges the biggest of which that both it and the set for  Romeo and Juliet had to be able to be taken apart and moved out of the way several times during the run.

For The Foreigner we got to reuse the Dracula elevator to make KKK member melt into the floor.

Of course the biggest challenge was that in the middle of the run we took the set for Romeo and Juliet apart and put it in a truck and brought it to East High School in Rochester so that we could do a matinee and then brought it back and put it back together for the rest of the run.

It was a crazy idea and lots of extra work but the students did a great job even having some fun along the way.

The Foreigner

The Production Manager/ATD was being very diligent about labeling all the set pieces so we could put the set back together.

Just for fun the students made some extra brace pieces, labeled them and put them in the truck.

They got a good laugh watching the PM/ATD  try to figure out where the extra pieces went.

Both productions went well and even though it was lots of extra work it was worth it.

Updated June 7, 2017 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Dec 1992

For A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum the scene designer and I switched jobs as I designed the set for the production.

It was a lot of fun and we had some unique problems to solve.

The set design itself was rather straight forward and offered few challenges except where to put the orchestra.

The Brockport mainstage has an orchestra pit and has been used many times but the director wanted the actors closer to the audience so I designed a pit cover the would go over the pit.

There was a cutout downstage center for the conductor and a few of the musicians had to sit down under the stage.

We would use the pit cover a few times over the years, Hair in 2008 and in 2010 when we did A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum again.

I designed in four grills so the orchestra could have a feel for what was happening above them and to let out a bit of the sound.

The pit reused in 2010

The "Air' Grills

At the time I told everyone that the grills were to let fresh in into the pit.

I was lucky that the scene designer and his students painted the set for me.

I was more than able to paint the paint elevations but do not know if I could have paint the whole set as well as fast as they did.

My painters elevation

Just for fun I put a well with real water and a fountain in the center of the stage.

One student spent hours playing with water pumps and nozzles trying to get a good stream of water.

The director had the main Lovers do a scene going in and out of the water. 

Updated May, 23, 2017

Buried Child, 1992

The 1991-92 season was very successful for our program.

The productions were all large in scale and drew a record number of audience members.

At that time we had a good core of technical students plus hard working other students and staff who all worked hard in the building, painting, lighting, sewing and running the plays.

The 1992-93 would also turn out to be an exciting and successful season which again offered us some very demanding problems to overcome.

The season began with Buried Child by Sam Shepard in the fall and the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in the December slot.

We tried something new in the spring by doing both of our productions in repertory of three weeks instead of the usual two.

The two shows in Rep were  Romeo and Juliet and  The Foreigner.

If just mounting the two shows at the same time was not crazy enough we toured Romeo and Juliet to a Rochester high school during the middle of the run.

The production of Buried Child was performed on a large unit set that did not have one right angle.

The raked stage floor ran diagonally upstage and the walls leaned in at various angles.

Even the door, which was over-sized, was lopsided and was custom made.

It is all the various challenges of a show like this that makes it fun to work on.

I would spend many hours at the drafting board trying to figure out just how to make something work only to change it later because it did not look right or the designer or my assistant had a better idea.

(Note: I would begin to use Auto-CAD by the end of that season but at the time of this show I still used my T-Square and pencils. Cad does make everything easier but I miss the satisfaction I got from hand drafting.)

 One night during the rehearsal of the play and actor almost died.

The actor playing the father was a very large man and spend much of the play slumped over next to a couch.

At one of the breaks in the rehearsal they crew found that the actor was passed out and not breathing very well.

Fortunately the actor recovered the show went on without further incident.

* * *

Things Change

Over the past five years I have enjoyed writing my Blog and have tried to write on a regular schedule but work on current productions would often get in the way of my retelling of shows of the past.

My resent gap in writing has been caused by several health issues.

Two and a half years ago I found out that I had prostate cancer.

After talking with several doctors and a visit to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo I decided to opt for surgery.

Although I had lost fifty pounds in years the doctors wanted me to lose more weight before they would operate.

I had hit a plateau and could only lose a few more pounds.

My PSA numbers continued to raise and my regular doctor suggested that something needed to be done sooner then latter and this past summer I decided to try radiation therapy.

Not wanting to have to drive to Buffalo every day I saw a doctor at the Wilmot Cancer Center at Strong hospital on Rochester only twenty minutes away.

After new rounds of blood tests, cat scans and bone scans it was offered to me that radiation therapy plus hormone therapy would be a good option for me.

In July I received the first of six monthly shots that would help shrink back the cancer.

The drug has several side effects but not too bad on its own.

On September 8th I began my radiation therapy and finished my last treatment today as I write this post.

I wanted things to be normal and choose to keep working at the college and work on the first show of the semester.

Things went well but as time went on I started to feel the effects of the drug and radiation and it got harder to work on the production.

After struggling to get the show done I decided that I would use some of my sick days and take a leave from the college.

If it was just the radiation therapy I might not needed to take off buy I also have a very bad arthritic hip that needs to be replace.

The hormone drug plus the ongoing effects of radiation sapped my strength and made it harder to do my job.

So I plan to take three to six months off and take care of my health.

I already miss working but know that I have to get better before I can effectively get back to work.

I expect now that I will have more free time I can get back to Blog, but we will have to see.

The staff at both hospitals were both great.

What was unexpected to me was meeting some incredible brave and strong fellow patients.

I met people who were much sicker than I ever was but these people were always upbeat, full of life and fighting their cancer as hard as they could.

These people helped me never to feel sorry for myself.

I have one more hormone shot in a month and will have blood test in February to see how it has all worked out.

I will let you all know what happens.

Geoffrey E. Guja

As we come to the fourteenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 I think it is important to take a moment to remember all of the heroes that we lost that day. 

I am concerned the my freshmen college students are too young to truly remember that day. 

I recently asked my college freshmen if they remembered 9/11 and some they said that they did, but they were only about 4 years old at the time. 

Soon we will have a generation who does not remember the world before that day and it is important for those of us who do remember the pre-9/11 world to tell them what really happened that day.  

I found out a few years ago that I had once met one of those heroes almost forty years ago while I was still in college.

He was the twin brother of one of my friends and I enjoyed a few beers and some laughs with him during a visit to Buffalo.

* * *

Please take a minute to remember him and all of those who we lost on 9/11.

Geoffrey E. Guja

Age: 47

Hometown: Lindenhurst, N.Y., USA

Occupation: Firefighter, New York Fire Department

Location: Ground, World Trade Center

LINKS

http://www.911memorial.org/

http://www.firehero.org/fallen-firefighter/geoffrey-e-guja/

http://longisland.newsday.com/911-anniversary/victims/Geoffrey-Guja

http://www.legacy.com/sept11/stltoday/Story.aspx?PersonID=94805&location=2

http://kapgar.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/did_you_ever_kn.html

Original 9/11 memorial in Brockport, NY

* * *

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.

* * *

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