The Drowsy Chaperone
Cornish College of the Arts - 2021
Assistant Technical Director/Charge Paint: Andrew Long
Scenic Designer: Rebecca Strom
Lighting Designer: Robbie Matos
Technical Director: Sergio Vivas
Director: Rich Gray
Photographer: Rebecca Strom
This production was truly a challenge, not only because of this being the first “in-person” production since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, but because I was given the opportunity to be both the assistant technical director as well as the charge paint. The kicker was, that I had only had one semester in a scenic painting class to absorb as much knowledge as I possibly could to then apply it in a production setting. One big challenge was finding the balance between two separate jobs. I ended up, essentially, going all in on the charge paint position until Load-in, then dive in as the ATD to then switch back to charge paint for notes, then back to ATD as strike. While this seemed like an impossible challenge at the time, I was able to complete both jobs, to the best of my ability, with the help of my advisors and team members.
During Load-in, I was tasked with making the french doors an auto-close system. For that, we decided to use a simple counterweight system using a piece of angle iron attached to the back of the door, feeding the tie-line through a pulley, which was attached to the top of the flat, then feeding to swivel pulley which was attached to the #80 pipe structure we built for lighting. Below are two videos. One is of the operation from behind the set, and the other is what it looks like from the front of the set.
