BY: Brittany Vallely
Have you ever wondered who works backstage to help make a play come life?
There is an entire technical aspect in theatre called a designer team. Theatre AUM’s designer team for their production of “Child’s Play” is made up of students, which includes makeup design and lighting design.
Olivia Crutchfield, a senior, is the makeup designer and helps make the actors fit their character.
“The research starts off with what do you want to do and then finding your examples. It’s basically using key words and putting that into Google or Pinterest, and taking bits and pieces from imagines and putting that into one,” said Crutchfield.
Crutchfield mentions that there are a lot of fantasy characters in this play, such as toys coming to life and those designs took about two weeks to put on paper.
“Honestly, the toys are my favorite design, because they are not normal people. The King was actually difficult for me when it came to research, because what I had in my mind, I could not find anything that existed from the real world. So, it forced my creative juices out,” she said.
Emily Aveldanez, a junior, is the lighting designer for the production and lighting is known to help set the mood for each scene.
“You have to know where your instruments are and know exactly your areas for the show, and that way when you start designing you have a better idea of where you want your light pointing at,” said Aveldanez.
According Aveldanze, AUM provides students different kinds of lighting equipment to help them get creative with their design.
“We have LED lights that we are using for “Child’s Play,” and we have big cyclorama (Cyc), so that helps gives you the color that you want,” said Aveldanez. We also have moving lights that already have gobos installed in there.”
Aveldanez believes these lights are very effective verses using traditional lights because it allows to project different colors, shapes, and can be moved almost anywhere on stage.
Makeup design and lighting design are only two of the elements on the tech side of theatre. There is also set design, sound design, costume design, and props. Each area is important but without makeup and lighting, putting the production of “Child’s Play” together would not be possible at Theatre AUM.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuHyerarM14[/embedyt]
