When our Director told me, we would be producing William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream I ask her if we could approach this show from a less than traditional angle. We decided that we would not do a traditional set, and instead place the show in a Roman garden complete with a working water feature on the stage. I had never worked with a live water feature onstage and I wanted to explore what challenges we would face trying to implement that element into the set. I also talked with the director about incorporating LED lighting into the set. NPHS does not own any LED fixtures. I wanted to do some experimentation with adding LED tape to the set to see if it would provide enough lumens to be used in future productions. The budget was set at $700.00, but there was a little more wiggle room because we did not have to pay for rights and scripts. The final Challenge with this show was the stage itself. The North Port High School Stage is large it is 50’-0” wide by 30’-0” deep and tall. I wanted to set the show in a much more intimate space. This would be accomplished by constructing a black box theatre on the stage and seasons the audience on seating risers constructed by the students.



Water on Stage

To build a fountain on the stage, I had to buy a water pump, liner, and rocks to line the bottom. The water pump was inexpensive. Costing less than $50.00. I was purchased a roll of the plastic liner that would allow me to create a custom shape and I purchased smooth river rocks as a liner. The director had mentioned her intent to have students in the fountain fighting during the show, and I wanted to provide them with a comfortable and safe rock to step on.  

Water is very loud on stage. If you are going to put a water feature in a show you must make sure that the sound of the water is not going to overpower the sound of the actors or become unbearable to the audience. Luckily, our cheap little pump was strong enough to provide a light flow, nothing that would affect the audience's ability to understand the actors. We only ran our show for three days, so the water never had a chance to go stagnant. Our plan for draining the fountain was to use two shop vacs to empty the water. If your show were going to last any longer than a week; I would consider draining and re-filling the fountain or treating the water to avoid bacteria growth.  



LED Tape

The Design called for LED tape to be installed in the top of the structure. I wanted to get as much bounce as possible to help spread the light around in the space, so we used white paint to help refract the light. Each of the three sections received its own run of LED tape that was positioned on the upstage edge of the roof unit. The tape was controlled via DMX with the installation of a special computer that connected to the light board. To cover the gaps on the downstage ice we used a double layer of white cotton after completing the roof unit, I had enough water proof LED tape left over to do a separate run around the edge of the fountain and inside the apse in the upstage wall. The LED’s allowed for some magical lighting moments throughout the show.



Building a Theatre

Back in the day North Port High School was going to have a black box theatre. The new space was designed and approved before budget cuts turned the space into a dance studio. While the dance studio is an amazing space, it does not provide the theatre students with a blank space to create intimate works. For the last twenty years Theatre at North Port High School meant performing on a massive stage to a 1,000-seat house. At the beginning of our production process, I pulled record for all our fall plays for the last ten years. At no point did we sell more than 75 tickets on a single night. This meant that our students were performing to a house that was at less than 1% capacity. This can be demoralizing for the performers. I wanted to change that. I discussed it with my colleagues and after a lively debate, we decided to proceed with building a black box on the stage of the Performing arts center. The only stipulation was that we had to have enough seating for 100 people.  

Building a theatre space is not foreign to me. I had experience working with this type of setup at the Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT). At CPT we had 5 permanent spaces, but none of these paces had permanent seating or sound systems. At CPT building audience seating and re-defining a space was a regular occurrence. The plan was to implement those same practices at North Port High School. Our risers were all spaced on 6” centers. We spent the better part of a week installing legs and attaching all the platforms together before we began focusing on the safety railings. At CPT we had a set of railing that we would use for every show. You would piecemeal a railing system together and move on to the next step. At NPHS we were not so lucky, but we did have a wide selection of stock flats. We painted the flats black and began lining them around the back and sides as safety railings and masking.  

Because the Performing Arts Center space was used for more than one event at a time, we were unable to modify the light plot to fit our new seating arrangement. We were able to change some fixtures on the Mezzanine to provide front light, but our show was lit with wash fixtures from above the stage. We were fortunate that a good portion of the front of house fixtures were focused above the new audience on the stage. This meant we were able to include them in cues for our show.  

Building a booth for the new theatre was another unique challenge. In Cleveland, we had the equipment to add a light board and soundboard to any space that we modified. NPHS lacked the proper equipment to make this type of tech booth possible. The Performing Arts Center booth is located at the back of the house. It was built at a height that allowed the light board operator to still be able to see 2/3 of the stage. The soundboard was another story. We did not feel the need to mic the actors since the space was so small. This meant that would only need sound for music cues. We used a small two-channel board to run the sound off a laptop and patched the board into a portable sound system we setup using some monitors normally used for our concert setup. This provided more than enough sound to run the music in the show. The Stage Manager was positioned on the stage right side of the audience we built her a small room with a window so that she could see out. 

Losing my marbles 

I had done some scenic painting in the past. If you ask me now how good I am, I would be very honest and tell you that I am not that good, but I can get the job done if necessary. When I did Midsummer, I was a much worse scenic painter. I am going to chalk my attempt at marbling an entire set to blind hubris. I did a bunch of research on marbling; I understood the science behind it to a certain extent. This paint treatment nearly killed me. I spent a week painting the walls. My big mistake was painting each one separately. I should have approached the wall as an entire unit. Do step 1 on every wall before moving to step 2. My results were inconsistent. The wall ended up looking striped and less like marble than I wanted. I did enjoy the process though. Even with mixed results, this was the first major panting project that I was able to start and complete on my own. In the future, I was much more successful when I tackled major painting projects on sets are NPHS. 

Evaluation

A Midsummer Night’s Dream had an ambitious concept, but We were able to approach it with confidence after having tackled some big pieces in our previous productions. There were techniques that I felt I did not manage to master over the course of production, but my experiments with LED tape paid off in future productions. I have not had a chance to revisit water in any productions since but Getting through the production without any major leaks or water damage was something I consider a remarkable success.  

With Midsummer, the students had their prospective shifted. the idea of theatre they would get to perform was one dimensional. There was a stage and the audience separated by a curtain. Each had its own side. Now they had a chance to explore a new dimension. They got to play in the thrust. They weren’t 10’ away anymore, they were inches away from the audience. The kids really responded to the new setup. They liked getting to play to a small, packed house. There was a different energy. Striking the set for Midsummer was a little harder than most. We were not just saying goodbye to a set or a show, we had to say goodbye to our very own theatre.