K-Fest 2019 Lighting Designer, Master Electrician, and Board Operator
Keweenawesome Festival, affectionately called K-Fest, is an annual weekend long music festival in black box theatre on Michigan Tech's campus. It is organized by the student Radio Station, WMTU, and is staffed entirely by students from the radio stations and volunteers from the Visual Performing Arts, VPA, Department like myself. VPA students are given jobs for the festival based on their qualifications and interests. I participated in K-fest all 4 years I attended Michigan Tech. First as a Lighting Crew member, then as Lighting Designer, third year as Master Electrician and second Board Operator, lastly as Lighting Designer, Master Electrician, and Board Operator (with a seperate board programer). We also had a smaller budget for the 2019 than previous years. We partnered with a student org that set up Sound and lights for on campus shows, Student Lighting Services. In previous years we had rented most of our equipment from Light House in Wisconsin. Many of our VPA Department students have internships or careers with them. Below are photos from my final year as Lighting Designer, 2019.
K-Fest 2017 Lighting Designer
On The Verge, Lighting Technician - Jokingly called Emergency Master Electrician
I was jokingly called the Emergency Master Electrician of this production because over Thanksgiving break I was asked to come in with 2 of the professors and troubleshoot, fix, and focus the entire plot. Before this point I was a member of the lighting crew working under a different student who was the true Master Electrician, ME. The crew was entirely first year students besides myself, one other student and the ME. I had helped teach the first year students how to hang lights from the catwalks and then took one quadrant of the theatre to hang on my own so the ME could focus on the first years. I am not sure how the lights got to that point, but tech rehearsals were meant to start immediately after thanksgiving break. At the start of break we were so far from ready for tech, that the professors decided a full day dedicated to troubleshooting the lights was required. There were over 150 instruments in the black box space. I was up in the catwalks, the lighting designer called everything from the floor/stage, and the second professor sat at the board dividing their attention between the lights and drafting on their laptop. We went through the entire plot, instrument by instrument, comparing what was in the air to what was on the plot and focusing the light before moving on to the next one. We successfully prepared for first tech in a single day. I rehung approximately one quarter of the lights and focused every single one. Below is the Light Plot for this production.
Scenic and Properties
Scenic Solutions Project Manager
Below are pictures from Blue Man Group's North American tour, Norwegian Cruise Line Anchor's Away Parade, and Choir of man, and Drury Lane's Mary Poppins. The purple staircase for Mary Poppins contained automation equipment rented from Creative Conners. The automation was connected to a bicycle seat hidden in the railing to allow Mary to magically slide up the railing. I was asked to help design and set up the automation to let Mary ride the stair up like magic. A colleague had already been working on this part of the project, but had to divert their attention to a different project. I had to analyze what was already built, and ordered to figure out what was still needed and complete the design. Much of what I did as a project manager for scenic solutions was of that nature. Either analyzing a designers packet and creating a plan for executing the design to hand off, or receiving a project from a colleague so that we could redistribute the projects to better suit each manager's skills, or to adjust for a clients changing needs. See the comments on each photos for more details about what I did for the products in each photo.
Halloween Fun House - Properties
As a freshman in college, my dorm hall decided to participate in the annual Safe House halloween event. Each section of the dorms could decide to make either a little kid friendly fun house or a teenager targeted haunted house in their section of hallway. My hall elected to make a Frozen themed fun house. I took the roll of Special Effects master. I built a life sized olaf puppet that some of the kids hugged. The Resident Assistant and I operated it hidden behind colored paper walls I set up in the a dorm room. I created an alcove out of the paper so olaf was hidden within the room so he was a surprise for the kids once they got to the door. We did not want the kids to be able to see him the whole time they were walking down the hall. We also set up the first half of the hall to be the interior of Arendelle's castle and the second half to be walking around the town. Between the two, I set up a snow trick that was based on a traditional snow batten design. I used a strip of fabric the same color as the ceiling with slits cut into it. It was filled with white dots I collected from all the hole punch collection trays in the printers on campus. The actress playing Elsa did a flourish with her arm when told the kids to come with her into town. She would brush the snow strip and it looked like she magically created a little snow flurry for the kids to walk through. I also created the life sized Sven cut out we attached to a wall for the actor playing Christoff to interact with. Final, I unfortunately failed to get a picture before it was taken down, at the end of the hall were the kids could get candy there is a the floor to ceiling 20' wide window that looked in our common room/ kitchenette. I turned the window into a rear projection screen with thin rolled craft paper which we projected an image of the exterior of the castle onto. Our hall won best house that year dethroning our neighbors who had previously been number 1 for three years straight.
This is myself looking around the paper wall at my life sized Olaf puppet. I built Olaf out if Cardboard, Felt, Stuffing, thread, glue, and a little paint. I built him by myself on the floor of our common room.
Example Scenic 3D Drafting
The Images below are from a Paper project of Henry V. The concept was to losely design the set on a school playground as if the whole story was a game of make believe a group of kids were playing in the park. I was partial to playing pirates as a kid, but kings and queens was also a favorite with all the other kids in my neighborhood. Below are the 3D renderings of the platformed i designed and modeled based on wooden play structures you can find in many parks.
When You Comin' Back Red Ryder, Properties Master
I was the lone props department for When You Comin' Back Red Ryder. The show takes place in a diner in a small town in the 70s. This included being trained as gun handler. A gun firing blanks was used throughout the show and fired at the end of act 1. I also set up a deal with a local diner to provide all the food the actors ate on stage. I would plate the the food and keep it under a food warmer behind the pass through window.
Alpha Psi Omega Winter Carnival STEAM Themed Skit
As a member of Alpha Psi Omega, National Theatre Honor Society, I volunteered to make most of the props for our skit for Winter Carnival, an annual all campus celebration. It was the first year we participated, and we won first place. I built a mostly realistic, campy cardboard guitar to be thrown across stage; A cute fabric campfire, painted a cardboard mask i had already built for a different project. Finally, I made a life sized cardboard cutout of out of the actors who could not attend in person, we recorded his lines and played them back as voice overs. I also acquired all of the furniture we needed. Below is a video of the performance. Coincidentally, I am playing the villain with the black and white hair inspired by Dr. Frankenstein.
Costumes
Haunted Mine Monster
During my senior year, October 2018, I was the costume designer for a haunted house in an old mine. The story was created by the entire production team in a meeting. The Sound Designer came up with story and basic outline then we worked through it in a production meeting. The second photo is the labeled diagram we created in the meeting showing the events that took place in the mine. I was tasked with costuming all the actors, but mainly, my job was to create the large monster costume that the tour group would come across that forced them to turn around and head back towards the entrance/exit of the mine. The director wanted a monster large enough the block the 10 foot wide path and tall enough to be seen by all the audience even some members of the tour group weren't getting as close as we wanted. The monster was supposed to look like a pile of rocks on the group as if there had been a small cave in, but then it would come to life, glow, and stand up at full height and start reaching tentacles out at the audience. The director gave me photos of octopi, crustaceans, centipedes, and other creepy very varied creatures that I was to base the monster design on.
Victorian Christmas
In 2017 while I was president of my school's chapter, Alpha Psi Omega, National Theatre Honor Society began partnering with the City of Houghton for an annual Victorian Christmas event downtown. Our members would dress up in Victorian Era costumes and spend a few hours walking around downtown in costume and citizens who wanted to could wander around and do their christmas shopping and enjoy the Christmassy atmosphere. I was costume designer with another Alpha Psi member. We made an agreement with the theatre department's head of the costume shop, Mary Cyr, and used clothing from costume storage. We also raised a few funds to buy some accessories and materials. I made all of the fur hats and muffs, and the "christmas baubles" shown in the photos below. Christmas baubles are the floral accessories attached to the hats and collars of most people's costumes. The 4 people farthest to the right in the group photo are not Alpha Psi students. they are high schoolers who also volunteered with the city and came with their own costumes.
Miscellaneous Costume Projects
Block Printing Stamps I carved modeled after a Swag gauge and a Nicro Pressed wire rope eyelet.
A Dragon mask I made out of only cardboard and glue with a functioning jaw. I kept eventually painted this mask to use for a skit with Alpha Psi Omega. You can see the painted version in the video in the props section.
A tiny Top hat I made from buckram, costume silk, and lace.