“School for Wives”

After the Fairfield University gig wound down, I got a call from the University of New Haven to come in a TD their big spring show: “School for Wives.” This is really the first show I’ve had to oversee and build, on this level, by myself. Most of my shows are tours, and when I get them, it’s just needing to be hinged and coffin locked together. For “Dancing at Lughnasa,” Mary took lead on the set pieces, and I handled more of the electrics and audio. So this was a big shift, starting with a shop that had a pile of wood covering the floor that was as high as my knees, and having to make sense of that. Here is the before, including a panoramic photo:

This is literally what I walked into on the first day. So, before we could build the show, we had to build a shop!

Much better! Organizing things is a big part of what I do and offer, and this was a fun challenge.

They already have an adjunct who takes care of the lighting, and, being a school with a very strong music and studio program, a very capable student who takes care of the audio end of things.

When I first met with the designer, who is a student, I was told that there would be a wall, and towers & scaffolding, grass, and a moving water feature. Well, this has been quite the adventure, and flying a wall that big (well, flying half of it and assembling in the middle, since we don’t have a fly space and we were rigging to the battens for stability) was a chore. But hey, we had towers we could climb to get into positions we could work on the wall from.

Why yes, that IS mirror fabric you are seeing, and high gloss paint on the deck.