Carpentry
Scenic Painting
Mary Poppins Jr
Mary Poppins Jr marks my second production as ATD for Huntley HS and with it came more opportunities to learn. The most notable learning experience came in the form of trying my hand at paper mache with a questionable degree of success.
Little Women
Little Women was my first production as Assistant Technical Director at Huntley High School which meant plenty of other firsts came with it. This would be my first production where I not only had to figure out how to make everything work within our budget, but also having to communicate the specifics of how everything needed to be built to a crew that had varying experiences with scenic practices.
WagonWheel
I'm just going to combine all of my experiences at WagonWheel Center for the Arts into one because of how much went on during that season. It was my first time building sets truly in the round, I got a full appreciation for how intense and demanding theatre can be, and I got to expand my knowledge of the many techniques and thought processes going into the work that we do.
Grease
With Grease being my last show in undergrad it only makes sense that it had the most opportunities of growth. On top of my regular carpentry responsibilities, I was offered the challenge of assisting my TD by drafting part of the set and leading certain aspects of build and strike. Though my favorite part of this production was assisting with the installment of the pneumatic system on Greased Lightning.
Salome
Salome was mainly a challenge of consistency and accuracy. The set was in a very intimate black box venue so there was very little room for error. This show was also my first time painting marble for an actual production rather than for a class.
Charlie Brown
My main responsibility for Charlie Brown aside from carpentry was designing and fabricating the practical effect for when Snoopy's dog house gets shot down. To achieve this I attached a series of plugs to an activation string and added another activation string attached to a small smoke grenade.
25th Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee was a simple set to build in the fact that it mainly consisted of one single behemoth of a wall. However, there were still a variety of challenges mostly surrounding the assembly and installment of that wall. This experience gave me a better understanding of how to strike the balance between structural strength and meeting the needs of the set.
The Producers
The Producers offered the challenges of scale and mobility. Each Scenic unit would take up most or all of the stage and most had to be built in a manner that they could be two separate units that would line up in the middle.