Shrek the Musical
The Herricks Union Free School district holds it's annual Middle School production in the beginning of each new year. Performed on the Herricks Community Center stage, it is a middle school production like no other. The middle school shows are musicals that are the full productions with a full orchestra and a budget that allows for there to be sets like no other....
I was graced with being the set and lighting designer for the 2017 musical, Shrek the Musical. My instinct for a design concept was to go cartoon. I wanted it to look as if you were watching a pop up book unfold on stage. This musical jumps around from place to place. The primary setting is exterior in the forest. Because each scene varied in the amount of actors on stage, I chose to create a backdrop that had the natural tones of trees but could also show the transition of time and give the height needed to tower over each set piece. I hade 3 @ 14' sections where the middle section was white muslin to be used as a cyclorama.
Because if the nature of the show, there were a lot of scenes where the set pieces would be used only once. This made it challenging to think of a good way to stage the show. I had to keep in mind the size of the wing space and the amount of backstage storage that was available. I made a lot of the units multi purpose. For instance Shrek's house for the swamp and the barn were on the same structure. That meant that the unit needed to be double sided. The castle walls were able to be split in two to allow for easy transitions between scenes and storage a lot easier. The castle was the largest item ever on stage coming in at 16' wide X 12' tall. The castle may have been the largest, but Fiona's tower was the grandest. I designed it to be a periaktoi so that as Fiona aged during her first song, the audience could see the tower evolve with her. Each section had more books and her calendar chalkboard was updated with her time spent there.
The set pieces were grand, but I also had several props to construct. Some items were also costume related. Some of the prop items I am most proud of are the 3 giant books for Fiona to rip apart, the milk cartons to torture Gingy, the skunk deodorant for Shrek to spray, and the dragons head and Pinocchio's nose (which were actually costume pieces).
I was graced with being the set and lighting designer for the 2017 musical, Shrek the Musical. My instinct for a design concept was to go cartoon. I wanted it to look as if you were watching a pop up book unfold on stage. This musical jumps around from place to place. The primary setting is exterior in the forest. Because each scene varied in the amount of actors on stage, I chose to create a backdrop that had the natural tones of trees but could also show the transition of time and give the height needed to tower over each set piece. I hade 3 @ 14' sections where the middle section was white muslin to be used as a cyclorama.
Because if the nature of the show, there were a lot of scenes where the set pieces would be used only once. This made it challenging to think of a good way to stage the show. I had to keep in mind the size of the wing space and the amount of backstage storage that was available. I made a lot of the units multi purpose. For instance Shrek's house for the swamp and the barn were on the same structure. That meant that the unit needed to be double sided. The castle walls were able to be split in two to allow for easy transitions between scenes and storage a lot easier. The castle was the largest item ever on stage coming in at 16' wide X 12' tall. The castle may have been the largest, but Fiona's tower was the grandest. I designed it to be a periaktoi so that as Fiona aged during her first song, the audience could see the tower evolve with her. Each section had more books and her calendar chalkboard was updated with her time spent there.
The set pieces were grand, but I also had several props to construct. Some items were also costume related. Some of the prop items I am most proud of are the 3 giant books for Fiona to rip apart, the milk cartons to torture Gingy, the skunk deodorant for Shrek to spray, and the dragons head and Pinocchio's nose (which were actually costume pieces).
