Shrek: The Musical was the second show that I designed and built at North Port High School, I tried to address several issues that I had with my first set for Around the World in 80 Days. The most glaring issue is that I felt space swallowed the very small set we build for 80 Days. In comparison this set was massive. I made an attempt to challenge myself and the students with complicated paint treatments, large set pieces that had to be stored in the backstage area and the fly loft. 

I enjoy movie musicals, I think that they can enhance the story in new ways that wouldn’t work in the film. However, there are challenges associated with just about every movie musical that I have ever had a chance to work on. Most prominent is the amount of location that they cover throughout the story. When filming these challenges are being dealt with by location scouts and construction crews. I’m not saying that it is easy to work, but theatres rarely have enough room for us to create the scenery for fifteen different locales to be visited in one show. In a high school setting space is an issue, but so is budget. At North Port High School, we operated on a budget of $1,400.00 per season, this was divided into two, $700.00 payments. Building four shows a year on $1,400.00 is always a challenge but filling a stage that measured 50’-0” wide by 30’-0” tall and deep required a lot of creativity. 

Rotating Story Book

Shrek takes place in a fairytale wonderland. We leaned hard into that concept. We were able to use stock scenery to build a good portion of our set. Shrek’s house and outhouse were both double-sided. They pulled double duty in Shrek’s Swamp, but also as the torture chamber in Duloc and the gingerbread house in the second act. Fiona’s tower was used as Farquad’s balcony. The forest and swamp were made with 12’-0” tall trees that could be moved around the stage to create new locations and upstage there were to ground rows that represented organic and castle locations. We made these choices in order to save space backstage, but even doubling up all of our scenery made for a cramped workspace. We spent time with our students teaching them about backstage management. I drill consistency with them by running shift change rehearsal everyday the technicians are called. We would spend 10-20 minutes running complicated set changes to iron out any wrinkles and trim seconds off their best time. Every move was choreographed and every student understood that they had a specific job to do. Each student is assigned a specific piece and mark to hit on the stage. This was a departure from their previous system, and took some adjustment during this process. Without this type of discipline, scene changes would have been chaotic, and dangerous.. 

Choreography

It may seem weird to think of yourself as both a Technical Director and a Choreographer, but it’s not that much of a stretch. When it comes to running a show everything should be choreographed. The complexity of this choreography generally depends on the production, but I have found that when working with student crews you always follow a few simple guidelines.

No phones is a given. Phones equal distraction and distractions lead to mistakes. Understanding the hierarchy helped eliminate every small issue coming to my desk. It also empowers my Stage Manager to do their job and manage the crew. This doesn’t mean that I can check out. I am still paying attention to the crew and any issue that arise, but I’m letting the students try to resolve their own issues. If I step in it’s generally to nudge them onto the right path. You’d be surprised how little that has to happen once you’ve got a good culture established with your students. They begin to teach each other. “Consistency is all I ask”- Tom Stoppard. Once the students know their track; then we drill it over and over again. I always have an idea of how long I think the set hang should take. At North Port High School  I would give the students time to try to hit for a complicated set change. Sometimes this goal was achievable, sometime it may have been just a little out of their reach. We would spend our time practicing the complicated changes aiming to beat the time. I knew we had gotten the set change down once they started hitting a consistent time even if I told them 10 seconds I would expect the change to happen in 12-15 seconds as long as it was consistent. Every practice was followed with heaps of praise and a discussion of where they thought they could do better. If you see a problem, say something. You can’t fix issues if your students are too afraid and timid to speak up. If there is a traffic issue or a crew member is too busy to go from one change to another, then that’s when the choreography needs to change, we don’t want anyone to be running around trying to make changes. Don’t run. Whether backstage on onstage we want the crew to be moving with purpose, but at a safe pace. On stage a running crew member makes the audience think that there is something wrong. As long as it is safe on stage, nobody on the crew should be running.  Following these guidelines helped me have some really great experiences with student crews from middle schoolers to college students. Shrek had so many moving parts that we spent extra time working specifically with our crew on the set choreography. It was an incredibly rewarding experience to see the students engaged and learning a new system. 

Trees

The organic scenery like the trees and swamp buildings provided us with a chance to work with jute netting. We wanted to have trees all around the stage, but trees without tops would have just looked like poles. Luckily we had something in stock that would provide us with some inspiration. Years ago, there was a show produced in our theatre that had an 8’-0” tall tree that was made by cutting opposing slots into plywoods and sliding the opposing grooves together 

This time we made sure the trees were much taller. We raised them by 4’-0” and cut tops that were 8’-0” across. The tops of the trees were covered with jute netting and the bottoms were put on castors and loaded down with pig iron for additional weight to stabilize them when they were moved. The trees were so tall that in order to build them we had to use the hydraulic lift for our orchestra pit to lower the bases down to the sub-level. When we completed the trees, I was no impressed with how they looked. The jute just didn’t look the way that I had envisioned. We started playing with different ways to lay the jute across the frame, eventually messing with the jute started to gas it to break down. Pieces started to hang lower and lower and gave the impression of vines. It also gave the top an organic shape. This happened completely by accident, but it was a welcome surprise. The large trees bases were each able to be cut out of a single sheet of plywood. The 2 tops could be cut out of one sheet of plywood. The trees were expensive, but they were major set pieces that were onstage for the majority of the show. After the production wrapped the trees were kept in stick and loaned to other schools in the district.

Dungeons and Dragons

The Dragon’s Keep was one of my favorite pieces of the set. It was a 19’-11 1/2” wall hung just downstage of the cyc. Its position and shape allowed for some really nice lighting effects and the construction allowed for the students to practice their jigsaw skills. I was able to print a lot of the small edge pieces that made up the wall’s jagged silhouette on the plotter. We would adhere these drawings to the luan and the students would use a jog saw to cut them out. We had several gothic window flats in stock We used these openings to trace the new windows and then created the breaks by translating the lines on the blueprint to the wood before it was cut out. One of the most tedious elements of this build was the painting of the stones on the wall. Each stone was hand-painted by students under the guidance of my scenic painter the entire wall took several days to complete. We made sure to paint the same style of stones on the Dragon’s thrown. The wall was made from mostly stock flats making it a relatively inexpensive piece. It was a large time commitment, but the lessons the students learned about scenic painting gave us a base to try more complicated treatments in future productions. 

Height and Lines

For 80 Around The World In Days there were straight lines everywhere. On Shrek, there were very few pieces that had straight lines. The castle walls had straight lines, but dungeons and forests all tried to use broken lines and organic shapes to make the set more interesting to look at. The solution to implementing these design elements while not ruining our stock scenery was to make small flats to act as borders to outline all of the walls. At North Port High School we were fortunate enough to have a large collection of stock scenery that had been accumulated over the last twenty years. This allowed us to spend money on new scenery that was show specific instead of having to allocate a large portion of the available funds to building platforms and flats. 

For Shrek, We received gifts of lumber from local builders that helped us construct some additional flats and scenery. We also were able to procure some pallets that were broken-down and used as the treatment for all of the scenery in Shrek’s swamp. After donations, we were able to build this set and keep us at our season budget total of $1,400.00

Evaluation

This show stands out in my memory as a monumental task to complete. At the time I had not had time to fully train all of my students, and I was still learning about the time constraints that I had to work against in the high school setting. We were able to complete the entire set without having to make cuts. Painting the scenery took a ton of time. Our class periods were only 45 minutes long, so getting students started on a painting project during class time and having them complete it was a struggle. I ended up having to spend quite a bit of time learning to paint in order to ensure that the set could be complete on time. There were several nights when I had to stay late to finish some detailed work on the set after school. 

Shrek: The Musical was a fun set. It was ambitious and challenging. When I took the job at North Port High School I wanted to enhance the production capabilities of the theatre department and challenge myself to work on new skills. This set showed me that the students were up to the challenge of working on more complicated scenery, and it was really my first time painting a set where I didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming. From this point on at North Port, I did the lion’s share of the painting for my set, I didn’t have to rely on my significant other to paint my scenery for me. Adding this new skill to my skillset helped make me a stronger technician and instructor in the future.