Time to take on additional work was rare in the midst of graduate school but I did manage to find time to do a few projects here and there during the past few years. Here are a few highlights.
The DiGorno Pizza High Five Challenge
Chicago Scenic
Chicago Scenic helped organize the "DiGiorno High Five Challenge" in Pittsburgh for the 2011 Super Bowl between the Steelers and Green Bay on the Thursday before the game. The lunchtime rallies, which featured free slices of pizza, set the stage for local fans attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the most simultaneous high fives (I don't believe they succeeded).
This two day install/strike was a chance to work with a high-profile commercial shop doing something definitely not theatre but very theatrical. We unloaded and setup booths, banners, and a few games for fans to play before the big High Five. It was a great and different experience.
It was also bitterly bitterly cold.
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| If you look REALLY hard, I'm probably still not in this picture... |
The Way Back Home
Flyspace Productions & the Pittsburgh International Children's Theatre
This production began as a class project to take a less-than-clear client's jpegs and napkin sketches and turn it into an actual, working bid. Once we had put a bid and a budget together, we were then asked to create working drawings, still only as a class project.
It was only after that was completed that we were told this was an actual production which was coming to Pittsburgh which would TOUR throughout the area in the coming months, and that, if we were willing, the client wanted to hire us, as a class, to build and ship the entire package.
A challenge and an exercise in collaboration with my classmates.
(production photos by Stuart Slavicky)
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| "DESIGN DRAWING" There were a few drawings on graph paper; but aside from that & some pictures from their previous set, this was all we had to go on... |
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| My contributions to the the technical package, the two side cabinets. |
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| Detail plate for the side cabinets |
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| (pictured: Adam Bampton-Smith and Charlotte Cooper) |
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| (pictured: Adam Bampton-Smith) |
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| (pictured: Adam Bampton-Smith and Charlotte Cooper) |
Lattice Work for Tigers Be Still
The City Theatre
City Theatre needed some CNC work done and they contacted Boevers about using ours, or rather about our using ours for them. I drew it up, tool-pathed the design, and ran the router in 3/4" MDF. This is a good example of Time vs Labor (or Money, if you prefer). The lattice could easily have been cut out with a jigsaw or some other tool, but they needed it quickly and their shop was already behind. To my mind, this is the reason tools like a CNC exist. I never made the time to see the production and as luck would have it, no productions photos with this piece in it exist, so I'm not even sure if it was ever actually used in the show.
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| Design plate by N. Hatcher |
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| My cut-out drawing plated; since it was CNC'd the only reason I included any dimensions at all was so City's shop guys could integrate the rest of the piece ahead of time. |
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| Final product, ready to be picked up |
Cut-outs for Zanna Don't!
Pittsburgh University Repertory Theatre
Sort of the same as above a year later, this time for Pitt's Zanna, Don't! Lots of oddly-shaped curves that could have been cut by hand, but labor was again an issue; this time in the form of it didn't exist (they were short-handed). So it made sense to use a machine in place of people. My involvement was pretty much the same: tool-path it, cut it, load it onto a truck. Easy-Peezy.
