Scenes from The Book of Will TD & Designer/Mentor UIL OAP Area Qualifier March, 2019

Laura Lundgren’s historical drama is a play about Shakespeare’s friends who, shortly after his unexpected death, band together, to save Will’s plays by having them published, which at that time, was extremely expensive. We chose to use the Gutenberg printing press as the Commanding Image of this play, which is revealed at the end of the production. Also appearing at the end are the wealth of printed pages of Will’s various plays needed to complete The First Folio. We split the stage with the tavern scenes stage right and the Globe Theatre stage left.

 Disney’s Newsies TD & Designer/Mentor January, 2019

We chose to not use scaffolding to represent the buildings of New York, as many past productions have done. Instead we created skeleton-like structures that allowed projections to be seen through the set, yet look like buildings. For this to take place, we had our welding classes create a system we designed that made it possible to view the projections without the appearance of platform bracing that would otherwise be needed to support two-story structures. We also created our own digital paintings that were used in all of the projections. We wanted these buildings to appear cold, monstrous and uninviting., as these children, most of them first-generation immigrants, were pitting themselves against the wealthy and controlling newspaper industry.

Disney’s Newsies received 14 nominations from Lyric Stage, Schmidt & Jones High School Musical Awards, including, Best Musical, Best Lighting Design, and Best Scenic Design.