The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone was the last production that I was a part of at my high school. It was the first production that our theatre department was able to have with a live audience again during the pandemic. Due to the limited number of productions we put on this year, I was able to spend more time designing, hanging, and programming for this production.

While being stuck at home over the course of the pandemic, I spent time teaching myself new tricks and software such as Vectorworks and digging into EOS, and seeing what some of its more advanced features had to offer, as well as utilizing Augment3d in v3.0 of EOS. One thing I had been wanting to do for a while is to timecode a show. I know that typically, live theatre is not timecoded (and for good reason). However, with this production using music tracks rather than a live orchestra, I saw an opportunity to try it. Preparing to my show file to timecode a live show, however, was definitely a challenge. In the case that something were to go wrong during the show, I needed to be able to “take the wheel.” In addition, I had to account for inconsistent variables in the songs, such as vamps and pauses. All in all, the bulk of my programming time was coming up with solutions to these issues and troubleshooting new issues that arose from those solutions.

I was very happy that the director, Matthew Peters, and student director, Mica Swingholm, let me have full creative freedom over the design process. That being said, I very much enjoyed collaborating with the directors, other designers, production staff, and actors to bring together everyone’s ideas and designs. I worked very closely with our set designer, Clay Gunter, to implement our designs together. For example, the use of wall sconces and what they add to the show was a collaborative effort between us.

I am very pleased with how this production turned out and with how much fun it was to collaborate with others and see the culmination of all of our hard work and effort that went into this production.