Our All Write Week Play this year was a 1 hour version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream that we staged in the Black Box Theater. It involved the whole department and allowed us to share our work during the festival.
Check out the video of the show on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/0P7RdULI8_0
Playbill designed by Aidan Kurtz
The show was proposed by Basil Sessen
and she student directed a majority of the production.
NOTE: All the photos for this show's blog page
are provided by Mr. Schaefer and Zeke La Manti
(or the school's database)
We presented the play for three evenings and for three daytime performances for English classes. It was a wonderful production in the end, and the audiences loved it!
Watercolor poster design by Sisi DeSuza, and her draft from Tech class
The 3rd Hour Advanced Tech Theater Class provided banners around the school as well
T-shirt design by Aidan Kurtz
The Cast and Crew of WGHS Drama's
Spring 2019 production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
The crew for this show worked really hard and delivered some really amazing effects!
Stage and Company Management
Fiona Carton and Elsa Serfas were in charge of managing the cast during rehearsals, being on book for line, organizing the snacks, the t-shirts and making sure everyone was where they needed to be for entrances. This was not an easy job for these two, but they did a great job!
The DESIGNS
We started with a production meeting in December and had all of the designers in one room to look at pictures and to go over the initial concepts and ideas for the show. Then we came back for a read through with the cast. Adv. Tech Theater class was very involved with the production. They drew up some ideas for the set, the set pieces and props. They also teamed up to accomplish larger tasks.
PROPS
The Lanterns were initially designed by Sisi Desuza
They turned out great, we had one for the lovers and one for Moon in the play within the play
The lanterns were entirely hand made!
We even had magical props for the show!
The Flowers were made to glow with LED lights and had to be used a lot in the show!
Oberon (played by Rahman) places a spell on one of the lovers with the flower...
Puck (Danny) plays a trick on many of the characters in the play
Other props...
The map used by Lysander... The scripts used by the Mechanicals...
...were all made by Eva Berger.
Trying to keep it all together... ...and Puck never helps.
Basil Sessen drew up some designs for the head that she was seeing, and Eva went to town making it come to life for the stage. She worked on it mostly at home. It took many hours of labor. It turned out great!
Eva Berger (Props) fashioned this beautiful prop for the show, by constructing it over a baseball hat and dress with wire, tape, paint, hot glue and sticks.
Titania is placed under a spell and falls in love with Bottom...who is an ass.
The SET Design
The Scenic design involved a lot of different ideas...
These are the set ideas from the Advanced Technical Theater Class
Claire McCarthy designed and built the columns with construction help from some other students.
The set started with a basic skeletal structure and evolved into a forest scene with lots of levels and places to stand, sit and hide. The Advanced Tech Classes worked for three weeks on the structure of the set, the trees and the columns.
They built almost the entire set and dressed most of it during class hours.
The completed set for the show - made with all sorts of wood, paper, yarn ,cheesecloth, x-mas lights, cardboard, masking tape, metal brakets, screws, staples and paint
It was a very fun set that allowed for the fast paced scenes to come in and out fluidly. We also used part of the loft to give Puck (Danny Chura) a place to hideout and watch the action.
The show was done in thrust, which was new for us. It allowed for a raised stage and three sections of stadium seating to be built for the audience to see the most action as possible.
We ultimately sat 65 for each performance.
The sun was only out during the daytime scenes.
REHEARSALS
The production started in the Drama Room. We held auditions and the first couple of rehearsals. Then it was mostly used to polish scenes with small groups.
As the set was being built, the rehearsals used the Black Box to block and stage the movement. It was not an easy show to block. There was a learning curve in interpreting this particular cutting and working with Shakespeare's text in general. This production had a lot of new actors plus a new director in the mix.
As always... blocking and memorization is hard work!
Being able to work on the set while it was being constructed helped the cast and crew work through problems and make adjustments to the staging. Audience on three sides makes it difficult to keep the scenes open for everyone.
We had also considered at one point having the first row of the audience on pillows...
It didn't end up working out and we used chairs instead.
Fairies trying to take care of Bottom...
Rahman (Oberon) and Danny (Puck) shared a lot of stage time
Basil showing Josie how to let Quinn (Demetrius) drop her after a slap...
The Mechanicals
There were many moments that required much of the cast to be present in order to get the blocking figured out and then polished. If someone was missing in rehearsal it became very difficult to get the work done. We had to switch some actors around as we approached opening due to actors needing to miss rehearsal. The show must go on!
Everyone has to do what Theseus (Christian Grey) says...
LIGHTING
Amelia Griesedieck 
was the lighting designer in training for this production.
The Black Box is still finding it's groove when it comes to tech. The grid, the circuits, and all of the cabling had to be cleaned up before we even got started with this show's design. Once we cleaned up the grid and numbered all of the circuits, we hung and gel'd the show.
Amelia's Plot for the Black Box hang
The lighting did a nice job taking the audience into the night scenes
The design also allowed for bright daytime scenes with a warm glow.
This always helps with selling the comedy in a show.
There was also an LED board and a spot light used in the show. The LED lights allowed for some special lighting during magic moments, and it also gave our night scenes a more vibrant blue.
The Spot light was used to highlight Puck's magical moments mostly.
The Spotlight and LED board were operated by Seneca Mahan.
COSTUMES
The Costumes were created and built by:
Tea Gardner and Caroline Gillow
They were assisted by Samantha Massena
The show required them to build three sets of characters for the story. All of them had to come from the same world of the play, but needed to stand on their own as a look. The costumers did an amazing job with the task and they produced some great looks!
The Athenians
The Themes played on the military, late Victorian, and even Charles Dickens-like styling
The court had warm tons from mostly daytime scenes and it carried a more "modern" style of dress.
Yet it still pulled inspiration from various time periods, creating a wonderfully rich story that fit the fantasy theme in the cutting.
The costumes in the show had to be easy to take on and off, had to endure rather physical blocking, and had to fit the character in the story. It was not an easy task for the costumers, but they did a great job.
The Magical Characters
They also used ribbons, tool, sequins, flowers, hot glue and glitter to add even more magic to the effect of the clothing under the lights. The fabrics all had very clear character relevance and the magical characters all felt very cohesive in the end.
The fairies were light colored and all had a bounce and flow to the clothing when they danced
Puck was costumed in a woodland creature inspired pant built by Tea Gardner
The department keeps a good stock of crafting items to use
and this show definitely took advantage of that!
There was always a nod to Elizabethan clothing, and also a timelessness about the costumes that really helped modernize the story for the current high school student to associate with and understand better.
The Magical characters also had elements of nature incorporated into the designs as well. Things like leaves, vines, and metals were used as themes throughout.
These themes were carried through the set and the props as well...
The Mechanicals
The costumes for the Mechanicals were the most true to an Elizabethan style. They were dressed in clothing to make them seem like poorer folk. They were warm tones and were left a little rough around the edges.
Ready to perform for you!
The clothing was loose and easy to move in, and this was needed for the physical blocking some of the Mechanicals had to do. The clothing had hints of plaid to keep them casual and there was an obvious red tone that ran through their costumes and tied all of their outfits to the same show.
Bottom tries out for every role in the play...
Aidan getting ready for his big scene...lots of lipstick
Aidan Owens (Lion) gives a good scare and wimpy roar...
Mel (moon) with her dog and Pyrimus Aidan milks his death scene...
MAKE-UP
The Make-up was designed by:
Sam Norem and Maddie Mckeown
The cast also helped apply their own as well.
There was a really cool element of magic in all of the makeup and the actors loved the way they looked. The colors were picked with the costumes in mind and the metallic accents added a glow to all of the characters. It was a big job and they did great!
Photo credit (Zeke La Mantia)
SOUND
Sadie Moore was the designer, live trumpet and board op.
This show had a lot of cues and to get them to run smooth it required the sound operators to practice quite a bit. We added a ton of sound effects the last week of the rehearsal period and the sound team kept up like pros.
She had help from Charlie Richardson on the levels and Sam Toskin with additional nature effects. These included frogs, birds, owls...etc. Sound for this show was very complicated.
We couldn't do this without the Audience, so THANK YOU!!!
The tickets designed for the show
Director's Note written by: Basil Sessen (student director on the show)
The blue baby says "GO SEE A PLAY!"
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