Emily Dickinson

In the spring of 1985 before starting working on Peter Pan, Richard the scene designer asked me to help him on an outside project he was working on.

Richard was a unique individual, some called him odd, and he knew a wide range of people.

One day just outside my office Richard introduced me to Derek Wolcott, the Noble Prize winning poet, who was a friend of his.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott

I do not know why he was there, what he was doing and I am sure the college would have loved to have him speak while he was in town, but Richard never thought in that way.

Somehow got hooked up working on a film documentary series and convinced them to film it in the Rochester area.

The film was going to be part of the PBS series Voices and Visions which featured the lives of American poets and this was to be the Emily Dickinson episode.

Link to online video, it is poor in quality but you can still get an idea of what we did: http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html#

Emily Dickinson

At first I was asked just to make some simple furniture pieces needed for one of the scenes but soon I ended up on location helping out and doing much more.

The documentary was film in several locations in the Rochester area.

We filmed in several historic homes, a museum village and the building fronts of a local small town.

We used the Morgan-Manning House in Brockport, The Leroy House and its Carriage House, three buildings at the Genesee Country Village and Museum, the town of Lima, NY and several homes in the Corn Hill section of Rochester.

Extras in Costume

I assisted the designer on set doing many small things but my duties would greatly increase as Richard would disappear and I was asked to make decisions and fix problems on the spot.

Shooting in front of a house on Atkinson Street in Rochester, we added shutters to the inside of some windows, made the doorbell disappear with a little tape and spread 20 bags of peat moss over the modern street.

A horse and carriage was set to ride up to the house and several actors would get out and go into the house.

The cinematographer asked me to remove a No Parking sign that was in the way of a shot and as me and the other assistant George, who now works here at Brockport, tried to pull it out I was surprised as a cop came over.

I thought he was going to yell at us but he just helped us pull it out of the ground.

During the shooting I was given a Walkie-Talkie and asked to stop traffic on Plymouth Avenue, the main cross road.

So just out of sight of the film crew around the corner I stepped into the road with my trusty Walkie-Talkie put up my hand and stopped traffic.

I thought people would protest and be pissed, but when I told them that we were making a movie they all thought it was cool.



Film Crew

I quickly found out that when you are working on a movie you can get away with many things and people treat you as if you are special plus the food is much better than the doughnut or two you might get in a Theatre load-in.

In Leroy we filmed in both The Leroy House and its Carriage House.

We used several rooms in the old Carriage House, one was used as a Boston photographer’s studio and another became a 19^th century school room.

A dinner scene was filmed in the main house.

At the Genesee Country Village and Museum we used at least three of the buildings.

It is a wonderful place with over 40 buildings and many costumed interpreters that give you a nice depiction of what life was like back in 19^th century.

http://www.gcv.org/

We filmed in George Eastman’s boyhood home, the Hamilton House and one of the three churches.

It was in the Eastman home that the furniture that I built was going to be used.

In a scene the actress playing Emily Dickinson was to light an oil lamp.

Simple enough.

The designer gave me some fuel and asked me to fill the lamp but when I looked down I saw that he had given me a can of Coleman Fuel or what is commonly called WHITE GAS!

If you put gas in a bottle with a rag, or in this case an oil lamp with a wick, the result is a basic Molotov cocktail!

One little drop and B A N G !

Knowing that we had some back at the school I drove back and picked up the lamp oil.

Oh course the battery in the van they gave me was close to death so I pulled the battery out of my old Javelin and put it in the van so that I could finish the job.

This was in the time before cell phones so having a dead battery and being on the side of the road miles from home was not fun.

Later when filming in the Hamilton House the designer had me fill two oil lamps hanging on the wall and light them for one of the scene.

Hamilton House

One hundred year old, untested lamps, what could go wrong?

Fortunately nothing did and neither house burned down, but I am sure the people at the museum would have burst a gasket if they knew what we had done.

Guess they will never have us back now.

We also filmed in one of the churches and I got to be a sound assistant for that one.

I got to hold the boom microphone over my head for a while during the shooting.

Yes your arms start hurting right away and I was happy I was just filling in for just a short time.

The film crew took over the whole downtown of Lima, NY for a day and a half of filming.

The designer and I came in the night before to start prepping the town by putting up 19^th century business signs that we had made to cover the modern signage.

We got to stay in a funky old hotel and have a few drinks with some of the colorful locals.

http://www.americanhoteloflima.com/

The stores were paid to be closed all day and the film producers took over a local restaurant to feed the crew during the long day of shooting.

We laid down wood planks over the sidewalks and the peat moss was used for a second time to cover the street.

Fortunately I did not have to re-bag the peat moss this time as a local farmer watching us work offered to take it away when we were done.

As what would be the case with at least half of what we shot, none of the filming from Lima was used in the final film.

We did use the film shot in front of a local bible college for another scene of people arriving by horse and carriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elim_Bible_Institute

In front of the Bible College

That was a simple set-up and went very fast.

There was a nice wrap party at a local bed-and-breakfast that the producers were used as their home base during the shoot.

It was almost a year before the whole project was finished and our episode made it to TV.

The film is still re-run from time-to-time of some of the educational channels.

It was nice to see my name flash by in half a second during the end credits.

I was surprised to see that another person named Musante had worked on the film but I do not remember meeting them or if I did our family name never came up.

In all I worked in about twelve different locations for the film and I know that they filmed in several more.

There was a very tight filming schedule and it was always a bit crazy, but still it was lots of fun.

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Shakespeare Lady

In the Blog before last I was telling my faithful readers about the many extra events and projects that have kept me busy over the years but I forget to talk about some them and before I try to get back on my regular timeline I thought that I would try to catch up a bit.

Maybe by the time I write this all in book form I can put it in the right order but I can assure you that for the rest of this Blog I will jump out of order whenever it suits me and get back on my year to year path when I can.

Maybe.

Back in my very first year at Brockport, and within weeks of starting, my chairman came to me and told me that he was bringing in an outside show, an acting couple would do a play about the Shakespearean actress Fannie Kemple called Shakespeare Lady.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Kemble

The two actors were member of the Royal Shakespeare Company but this production was their own work.

It was not done in one of our two Theatres but on the small stage of the New York Room which is in Cooper Hall, the old campus school.

For the show I had to extend the stage  and used four to six  4x8 platforms and had them shipped over from the Theatre Building along with some other needed equipment.

The small stage had 10 PAR can lights and several household type rotary dimmers, which 29 years are still in use.

I focused the built-in lights plus a few more of our lights that I had brought over from the Theatre.

I taped some gels on a few of the lights and they left them on for years until the taped dried out and they fell off.

The lighting was simple with few changes.

It was not done as Dinner Theatre but as Dessert Theatre.

Rich Chocolate cake, Cheesecake smothered in cherries . . .

People liked the show but it did not make enough money.

Some years later some “New People” came in tried this kind of show again and they had the same limited success.

These “New People” came in, had new ideas, they know better than me and because they are not willing to learn from history, they were doomed to make the same mistakes.

If only they would just listen to me, believe what I say, I remember everything and I am never wrong.

Unfortunately people are not willing to pay the same price for a high quality Theatre or Music event in Brockport as they would in downtown Rochester.

Someone must have done a study at some time of Arts Snobbery between Urban and Suburban venues.

We are happy for the loyal audience members who do come to our events and enjoy them and the money they save. 

Just before the end of my third year and before the start of Peter Pan I had arranged to buy my sister’s 1977 Camaro.

I wrote about the car back in an August 2011 Blog entry;

http://viewsfrombackstage.blogspot.com/search?q=camaro

My sister just had a baby and another on the way and because it is hard to get a baby seat in and out of Camaro I offered to take it off her hands so she could get a van or some big ugly sedan.

Just before I went back to Long Island my old Javelin blew its transmission.

Before I had the Javelin towed to the junk yard a piece of it was able to help me on my next job, the story of which is coming up in the next Blog

Not having much time I flew in, bought the car, got it registered and then drove it back up to Brockport.

The worst part of it all, the DMV on Long Island; hours of waiting to talk to people who do not care and could not work any slower.

The car was fast, fun to drive but it was always in need of something being fixed and as it turned out I would buy a brand new car the next summer. 

Every time I think about all the many different types of events and theatrical productions I have worked on I always seem to forget one or two.

As I have been writing this Blog entry I have been doing a job I have had to do many times before, babysitting the Theatre.

Currently here at the college we are having one of the 5 sessions of freshman orientation and they are using the Theatre.

My student assistant has done much of the set up and because of our new lighting system we can pre-program the house light switches so some basic stage lighting looks can come up without having to have someone, me, turn on and run the lights from the booth.

The orientation staff runs most of it by themselves and I am here “just in case” and to lock up at the end of the night.

My job is so exhilarating and crazy at times but this is not one of them.

A truly fun experience is coming up next.

The Good Doctor

So where was I . . .

The second play in the summer of 1985 was The Good Doctor by Neil Simon.

It is a series of about ten short vignettes based on the stories of Anton Chekhov.

For this production I would serve as the scenic designer and technical director.

For a play to be produced in August I began working on it six months earlier.

Because of the many scenes I had to work out how we could build and fit all the scenery on the stage and did many sketches most of which I still have.

The Audition

I had planned for platforms to in and out from upstage, both stage right and stage left and diagonally from upstage right and upstage left.

These platforms would have fixed castors and roll in mostly straight lines guided by tracks that we cut into the floor.

Well it did not work as well as I had hoped.

The Sneeze

This was back in time when we still used canvas flats and because I designed many of the walls in forced perspective; most of the walls were custom made.

The play was lots of work but I think it looked good when it was done.

I have many more drawing then I have posted here but cannot find any show photos at this time and will update my Blog if I can find them.

We had an outside lighting designer for this production and as is often the case I was not happy with the lighting of my set.

I like it when I can design both the sets and lights for a show, but it is not always possible or my choice.

As a lighting designer I hope that the many scenic designers I have worked with over the years feel that I have done their set designs justice and have not hated my work.

I always try my best but know that I have had a few duds along the way.

By my third summer in Brockport I felt comfortable and really in charge and that most of the students were “my” students and working along with  and for me and not talking always talking about how it was done before I got there.

We did not get to work on the fireworks show that summer but still had a good time.

This was the last year that we did two summer shows but there was still plenty of work in the years ahead.

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