On Saturday, Theatre Suburbia's previous show, "Deadly Murder", closed. I worked the house twice during the run, and both nights had a lot of people - around 50-60, which is great for Suburbia's 100-seat stage. If the other nights are comparable, it was a great run.
But the closing of the show means the next day, we start work on the next show -- "Play On!" of which I'm stage managing. It was a little difficult imagining some of the set before yesterday. Suburbia has only the one space - rehearsals have to share with the current production. Suburbia is also designed "in the round": audience members sit at the four corners of the space, with an entrance at each of the four sides.
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| Look at my crude, not-to-scale Excel drawing! :) |
Suburbia has a summer mellerdrammer that always uses the round. More often, during the season directors will opt for the thrust configuration. In this, the section closest to backstage (C) gets removed and the seats distributed on the wall between B and D (and among the remaining three sections).
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| My other crude, not-to-scale Excel drawing! |
We're using the thrust ourselves. The long wall has to hold three entrances (including the 'wings' entrance), space for a missing flat, and a wall safe. With the previous set in place, we've had to tell our actors rough generalities of where they will be - it also was difficult to articulate on paper. Sunday, we tore the previous set completely down, then started building it up from scratch.
It took a little bit of figuring out, but we managed to get most of the set in place! We need a few items out of offsite storage, including a 3'x4' flat that will be part of the raised upstage area, and we'll need to build the wall flat that will house the wall safe that the theatre already has (Yay!), but now we can point our actors to specific places! Plus, the theatre already had an outdoors mural that will be the 'garden backdrop' that actors will 'accidentally' run in front of several times.
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| Complete with director and assistant director measuring furniture. |
