At my high school in Toronto we just did waiting for Godot I created the designs and concepts for the show I ran the show i programed it and i called the cues there were only 4 of them we did it with out a stage manager and the size of the crew was two me and a sound guy we had a cast of 5 and they all got along they managed them selves and i learnd a important lesson never do shows with more then 6 people any more is a pain in the ass our past shows include the laramie project the crucible and can you see me yet we are a regular high school but the drama teacher and i decided to say fark it were doing shows we want to do and none of this buracratic bull crap and we are planing on death in the maiden for the up coming show our godot we set it at the end of world war 2 and vlad and est are two soldiers who are shell shocked don’t know the wars over potso is a Nazi and lucky the Jewish slave they were in full period army fatigue the music for the show was all Joy Division (the name of a Nazi camp for prostitutes) the stage was completely covered in poly snow up to about 3 feet was the highest mound the tree was a 16 foot piece of truss filled with truss warmers it represented in our them a radio tower the mound was made of arm cases for lighting I use only 11 lights even though I have access to a inventory of 40 I use 3 source fours and 2 par 64 plus the 6 truss warmers there were huge dark spots onstage intentionally I used the 2 par 64 for a wash in general areas where the action never really took place but it washed the stage and never brought it above 30% the S4 were used to high light the mound and the tree and up stage left where lucky stayed most of the show no light was brighter then 60% at any given time we received huge complaints from the haze from our neutron xs and lack of light on our actors faces the father of one of our actors a acclaimed acting teacher (his claim to fame is teaching the matrix guy neo forget his name speaks allot for his talent how to act ) yelled at me for 20 minutes my response to him was "do you always see things perfectly in the real world" he sent me a letter of apology and a gift certificate to one of his courses I got a lot of flack for making it dark but it was a choice I made to bring realism to my show how can u argue with a artistic choice.
Jon Hirsh
Black Horse Proudctions Ltd.
[email protected]
Jon Hirsh
Black Horse Proudctions Ltd.
[email protected]