Designing Peter Pan

Designing a show is neither easy or automatic. A lot of thought goes into planning the mood, staging and requires an intimate knowledge of the space's limitations.

After working on Bethesda shows since 2008, I'm very familiar with how small the box stage is and the harsh reality that there are no wings for storing props and set pieces.

While small stages built into the side of a gymnasium are popular with older, small schools, it is possible to still put on a quality show. You just have to get really creative. I've found that versatile single set designs work best. Finding ways to re-purpose or change a look without changing the set give greater flexibility.

Because the actors would be flying in such a small space, the set needed to remain open so the wires would not be obstructed. Side platforms give some upwards dimension but the real trick is the design of layers, providing depth more than height. This depth is increased through the use of light.

The overall theme was that of a child's blanket fort through a patchwork of sheets hung instead of traditional stage curtains. The entire set piece is painted white, providing a standard base for lighting. The cyclorama was painted a gray so that it would always appear farther back than it actually is.

Lighting can be a huge part of this process. Until this show, we have used traditional incandescent lights with gels. This also required renting a dimmer and running a lot of cabling. Slowly we introduced Flat Par Tri18 LED lights into shows. But because we were limited to a 12 channel analog light board, we could only produce one or two LED colors at a time.

For Peter Pan, the school was going the extra step and renting flying apparatus, requiring us to step up our game in the lighting department. In the Director's video blog, you can see my daughter's lighting plan. She used Blender to mock up a basic set and then plan lighting scenes.

With the rental of a digital light board, we are able to produce separate colors on every light. We also rented three Inno Spot LED Moving lights and hung them from the basketball goal supports. These increased our flexibility in where the light could be placed.

Overall I am pleased with the way the show design and lighting has turned out. Someone asked if this was my favorite, but each of my designs has an element that I like: Fiddler's use of Chagall, forced perspective in Annie, textures in Sound of Music are just a few.

The best part of this production has been having my daughter designing and running the lights. This was the only element of a show she has not done before. While proud of all her accomplishments: shadow puppets in Oz, lead in Hounds of Baskerville, percussion in Annie and dog wrangling more than once, knowing that she has a full understanding of a show's production gives me the greatest satisfaction.