Theater Arts

My passion is all things theater arts. I love creating and designing theater sets, and using my skills.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - MVHS November 2024 Production

The materials I used to create this rock facing stage: chicken wire, paper, ridge foam board, spray foam and zip ties. I then used a small pull saw and a Dremel. I then painted the foam a dark gray and then I mixed up 2 different lighter color grays with different undertones to dry brush over the dark gray to create more visual texture. This allows the texture to show up and not be washed out by the stage lights. 

For the construction and design of the platform I started off with a rough sketch of what I wanted this the platform to look like, no measurements. Then I meant and drew it to scale and I used chalk to help draw the sizing on the stage. I then drew out the layout and had people help me build the base form the platforms. The layers of the platform was perfect, it helped make it look more natural. 

The rocks were definitely a trust the process kind of project. I was really nervous of how they were gonna turn out, but honestly I'm really happy. I decided to try and reuse the extra rocks we had from a pervious production so ads more texture and save time. I think I was able to achieve both of these things.  The platform looked amazing. A learning experience from this is definitely that those little pull saws are the best things ever, you can use them for everything. There were some times when we had to change parts of the set to work with other groups like tech. They had a fog machine, it had to be moved and so we carved a spot behind the rocks so the fog machine could be hidden.

---

Experience:

I always stick to set, but I was excited for set for this show specifically because I expected us to have a more natural set. It was something I haven't done or attempted before. I thought about all the cool nature elements that be in the set. Something I haven't done in my 3 years in this class. I thought it would be fun to try a new side of set design

When we designed the set, my group all came together with ideas and we spent the whole block period sketching out ideas and communicating our likes and dislikes. But the end of this we had a concept or rough sketch of our design.

Using the set slides that we do before every production, we create basically a giant mood board. The we design and sketch out the set. After we create our design we start mapping out the stage and creating dimensions for platforms, etc, From then we had to plan for workdays, finding out how many more materials we need, paints, wood, bits, etc.