Shakespearean Sitcoms

This summer I’m working on three or four shows. But the one I’d really like to mention quickly is “Merry Wives of Windsor.” I’m teaming up once again with my good friend John Regis, whom I started working with on “Wizard of Oz” last Spring. We did “Fiddler on the Roof” with the 8th graders this Spring. But over the summer he does the high school program at Calhoun school in NYC, and he asked me to come and work on Merry Wives for lighting and sound.

The kicker? It is set as a ’70s sitcom. Complete with laugh track. Yup. It’s different and zany, and we’re having fun with it. The end scene, where the whole cast pranks Falstaff…we really pull the full Dumbo, with the trippiness of music, dance, ballet-style dance lights (the entire stage is a thrust, so the audience is getting hit with lights too) and gobos galore. Lots of fun.

My digital prompt book is easier this time around, because John presented me with his whole edited script as a Google doc. I don’t really watch the show – with no SM, I’m bent down scrolling my iPad, my other hand on the Qlab “Go” button, firing lights and all of the laugh track cues. My long train commute is giving me all the programming time I need.

-brian