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THE
FANTASTICKS, Quons-Hut Theater, Directed by Bo Rabby; Designed by Wayne
S. Turney

Bo staged this, his first play at OWU, in the 3/4 round Qons-Hut
where I was the TD so I had access to lots of platforms, etc. The Drawings,
if they ever existed, have long since disappeared, but I remember a small
US platform with poles at the downstage edges, and an assortment of benches
and stools and a ladder. The Fantasticks sign consisted of cut out letters
on a rope in lieu of a curtain as in the round, but we had real entrances
onto the platform from offstage, so the curtain was not really necessary.
My primary innovation was the use of a draped scrim above the small platform.
It gave me all sorts of excuses to play with fancy and bold lighting tricks.
I cross lit the thing with reds and blues and the whole effect was rather
like cotton candy clouds and quite magical.
Under
the influence of Ray Sovey and Bob Stegmiller, I used an inordinate amount
of steel blue and flesh pinks. It's a romantic comedy based on Rostand
for heaven's sake. Here Matt and Luisa are literally mooning about their
love bathed in several shades of intense blue. I wish 35 year old color
prints were accurate.
That
scrim also gave us a wonderful excuse to play the "mask" sequence
in silhouette behind the lowered scrim. Matt alone could be clearly discerned--when
he found his light.
I
also introduced OWU to the glories of the lobsterscope. The chase in the
now politically incorrect "rape ballet" was done in the herky-jerky
style of an old-time movie. I still prefer a lobsterscope to a strobe
light, because, for one, you can gel the light and control the intensity,
and for another, you can also control the rate of the blinking light.
Control of timing is very important to me and constantly relying on canned
music and computer boards to time lighting changes remove artists from
the process. This website, as wonderful as it is, if not at all like a
chat with yours truly. Live theater is still more exciting that a movie.
And, of course, it was my swan-song.
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