During the past twenty-two years, ACT I has created the illusion of theatre with imaginative sets and lighting -- often in the past under very trying circumstances; with limited resources, facilities, and budget.  Here is some of the best work that our technical department has created during our past seasons.

Without question the largest set ever constructed by ACT I was for Noises Off in 2004, a set designed and built by Kevin Bookmeier for the Michael Fryan farce which called for a two story set with multiple doors on each level which must be completely mobile, so that the entire set can turn around to show a completely new face -- the opposite side of the same setting -- on the other side.

This play within a play showed a play production from both the audience side in the first and third acts as well as from the backstage side during the second act.  The massive set, when it began to move, looked something akin to a large ship docking!

For the May, 2005 production of Sir Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, Kevin created this beautiful interpretation of an English country house interior.

Another of ACT I's biggest sets ever was this one created by Kevin Bookmeier for our February, 2002 production of Romeo and Juliet.  The pictures following the shot of the finished product trace evolution of this undertaking.

Kevin and his crew constructed a tower in front of the Palace sound shell, known as "the wall."  The floor of Juliet's balcony was seven feet above the stage floor, with a "hands off" medieval parapet creating the rail.  The tower was built of wood, covered with chicken wire and faced with a veneer of papier mache.  It took 135 pounds of flour to complete the papier mache.  (Whole wheat or white? Kevin never said, but presumably whole wheat would have given the set more fiber.)

The capstones around the tower door were actually Hardees boxes!

The wall was covered with wheat paste splatters for texture, with sections of it painted to look like brick to create the effect of crumbling stucco.

One section of the wall was removed to create the effect of an alley for exteriors or a passage to another room for interior scenes.  At right is the view from Juliet's balcony, which took the actors quite close to the Palace rafters!

Platforms across the back of the set gave added levels and additional stage space.

A job well done, Kevin!

Set designer Mary Horst, creating the visual effects for shows she directs, has a reputation for great originality in devising unexpected and visually pleasing constructed pieces.  Perhaps Mary's most amazing creation was our fourteen foot high tower for our July, 2005 production of Let Your Hair Down, Rapunzel.

Mary also designed the set for our 2005 production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, creating a three-dimensional collage suggesting a small Iowa town in 1912.

For American Hysterical she created, among other things, a ship, an over sized juke box, and an over sized radio, seen below.

But Mary really outdid herself for her 2004 production of Mother Goose Memoirs, which she wrote, directed, and designed.  That set featured a giant red tennis shoe, large enough for actors to enter.

This whimsical set piece was the eye popping focal point of the production and featured clever detailing detailing such as pie plates for eyelets and webbing from an old lawn chair used as a shoestring.

A Streetcar Named Desire

For our 1999 production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, technical director Joe Trelor created this expansive set on the stage of Tilford Middle School in Vinton.  The set portrayed two separate interior spaces as well as the balcony staircase outside the Kowalski apartment.

Bridge to Teratithia

This show provided a unique challenge to technical director Mary Phillips.  Director Steve Arnold wanted the set to resemble a stone mountain, with additional interior scenes to be played in an open space in front.  An addition need of the production was for a usable swinging rope passing over a ravine.  Between the two upper level platforms at the sides of the Old Creamery Theatre stage, Mary created a huge structure with irregular steps to the top for the mountain.  The ravine over which the rope was swung was an illusion.  Below, the wooden framework of the set awaits a facing of papier mache.

The Terabithia set generated a huge amount of debris during strike!

The Sound of Music

Our November, 1995 production of this popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was one our simplest and best sets ever; three arches on a marbleized floor on the main stage of the Old Creamery Theatre in Garrison.  The director ordered a set with no moving parts for instantaneous scene changes, with only a few pieces of furniture moved in and out as needed for both interior and outdoor scenes.  Technical Director Mary Phillips created this perfect solution for a show whose technical demands have caused numerous community theatre productions of this show to have scene changes that drag on forever!

Below, Mary Phillips begins the strike process on our set for
The Odd Couple.

Life with Mother

In June of 2000, at the end of our first season in the Palace, technical director Kevin Bookmeier was faced with the challenge of creating two elaborate box sets for the Victorian period comedy Life with Mother.  The first two acts were set in the Day family's new country summer house, with the final act set in the family room of the Day's Manhattan townhouse.  That second set had to be a re-creation of what ACT I had built two years earlier on the Tilford Middle School stage for Life with Father, a play featuring the same setting and characters.

Kevin succeeded, and the ten minute scene change during the second intermission of the production kept the audience in the auditorium to watch this extra show and earned Kevin's crew an ovation when it finished!

Behind the scenes, Kevin finishes the scene change.

Harvey

A year after creating the set for Life with Mother, Kevin proved that he could not only build two box sets for a single show at the Palace, but also that the two sets could be changed in less than two minutes!

Bye Bye Birdie

Our September, 1998 production of Bye Bye Birdie, staged at the bandshell at Riverside Park in Vinton, was our first and until June of  2002 our only outdoor production.  Technical director Jay Appleby used the band shell as the starting point, then created two additional side stages flanking the shell to give co-directors Mike Williams and Joan Cooling additional playing spaces.

The bandshell was used primarily for indoor scenes while the rest of the space was used for the many outdoor scenes.

A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum

This whimsical yet provocative set for this October, 2001 production was designed for ACT I by Erica Grindle and built by Technical Director Allen Lueckenotto.  Three houses resembling eggs were built in front of the curtained wall, with balcony space on the upper levels of two of them.

Henny Penny

Another set created by Allen and Bonnie Lueckenotto was this one to their own design for our production of Henny Penny, ACT I's first ever puppet show, presented in July of 2001.

It Runs in the Family

Technical director Mary Phillips created this realistic set for the Ray Cooney comedy It Runs in the Family for its May, 2002 run at the Palace.

Mary's set included this floor, creating the look of tile with spatter painting an magic marker.

Hansel and Gretel

One of our lovliest sets ever was this one created by Kevin Bookmeier, Austin Karr, and Matt Salger for our children's theatre adaptation of the Humperdinck opera Hansel and Gretel presented in the Palace Theatre during its inaugural season.  The sets were beautifully decorated with detail painting designed and created by Beth Haring and Nancy Feldman, but without question the favorite part of the set was the huge oven, complete with its cavernous glowing and steaming interior into which the witch eventually ended up!

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