The Making of... #10

Posted by Catherine Dudley

In these short videos Steve Kohler, Hans Paul, Matt Landwehr, Adam Tiller and Derek Dumais are focusing lights for Peter Pan. It's a pretty cool process.
Good to have you home Steve!

The Making of... #8

Posted by Catherine Dudley

For the last few days Matt (our Master Electrician) and Derek (our Sound Engineer) have been hanging lights for Peter Pan. For days they have been journeying up into the fly rails and then back down onto the stage, lugging extremely heavy equipment- all while being careful not to fall out of the rafters (or a genie) or almost drop a par can on the blogger's head! (Thanks Matt!)

This is what some of the process looks like.

Each of these lights have to be individually hung and focused.

Matt smiles as Derek spots.

An incredible amount of hard work goes into lighting a main stage production. There are lights everywhere. There are numerous rails above the stage filled to capacity, front of house trusses, side light trees, the front of house booms and box booms, electrics onstage and several free standing spots- all of which have to be hung and focused by our hard-working production department. Wow!

No Clever Title Tonight- RD

Posted by Billy Christopher Maupin

Dawn holds to the philosophy that the more times you get to run the show the better. Which can be very frustrating early on, when the whole piece is a mess, as opposed to having one thing down really well, but at this point, it's really rather fantastic to have the whole show getting settled into our bodies, minds, voices, etc. Especially with the many, many, many costume changes (and some of them incredibly fast!). So glad to have Renee (our dresser) backstage along with a really terrific backstage team: Jason, Robert, Eddie, and another whose name I'm forgetting....arrrgh...I'll post it when I learn it! Shame on me!

Tonight after the very stop-and-start run (which included several new props, new blocking, choreography, vocal tracks, costume pieces and more) I believe Dawn referred to the "theatre goblins" attacking the show because so many things went awry in tonight's run. But the really cool thing is that IT'S ONLY TUESDAY!!! We have until Friday!

The show is in such great shape that it was probably incredibly helpful to have a really rough run to keep us on our toes. It's definitely coming to the time when everyone (or most) is getting nervous as the opening gets closer and closer with each passing moment (cue eerie music), but still for the most part, all of that is being navigated very gracefully. It's so fun to work with a group of such talented and kind people (and FUN!).

Oh, oh, oh. I would be totally amiss if I didn't mention that the costumes look FABULOUS! The sets are HUGE and FABULOUS! The lights are FABULOUS! The special effects are TRES FABULOUS!

Derek Dumais (sound engineer) helped us lay down some backup vocal tracks today, as we have a much more intimate-sized cast compared the the production in the Edinburgh Festival and also in the workshop (one of which, I believe had 26 people). So several of the cast members (David, Cathy, Gigi, Corey, and I) just recorded a couple of the numbers to boost the sound a bit. The tracks that Julie Fulcher (recently seen in A Christmas Story at Theatre IV and Smoke on the Mountain at Barksdale Theatre at Hanover Tavern) are FABULOUS! Oh, so beautiful!

Everyone involved has really poured themselves into this. Wendy Vandergrift and Bruce Rennie have been doing some awesome tech support. Ginnie Willard, pinch hitting as properties mistress, is doing some incredibly fast and FABULOUS work. All the carpenters and painters have built this HUGE (oh...already said that) set.

OK...I should stop. I'm really excited about the show. It's really gonna be a ton of fun for us once we're able to navigate all of our costumes, props, etc. And I'm really excited to see how it plays with an audience (ON FRIDAY!!!). I really think it's gonna be a FABULOUS show!