"One Act Festival 2012" by Zack Davis

"Sea Change"

The sergeant scene in the 2012 One Act is one of the hardest scenes to do while we were using the St. Jay stage. There is only about 10 feet between the platform waves and the end of the 4 foot drop off. The actors were faced with the challenge of doing all these commands and getting in place in such low light. The lighting for the beginning of this part makes the audience suspend and ask themselves what is going on. It almost has an eerie effect to it.

The platforms don’t only act as a prop that is stood on, it also hides objects and people from the audience. Here we have the three girls that do the voices for the main character Shoshanas’ Grandmother who has passed away in a storm. They sit behind the tallest wave, helping describe the physical aspects of Shoshanas’ grandmother. The Tallest wave has a fan that is hidden from the audiences eye, it is used to make the dress that Grandmer wears have a floating effect, along with a blue spot light that is shot from behind.

“Murder Mass Murder!” These are lines of this scene. The cast screams this to the audience in one loud, terrifying and creepy blow. The costumes are representing the ocean and how it is responsible for the death of grandmer. There is a lot that goes into this part. There is 1/3 of the cast making snarling noises, while 2/3 are doing a sea breathing that gives the scene an more life like effect. The audience does not have time to realize all of these actions because they all sit back in fright of the loud noise. It almost stops your heart for a moment its so powerful.   

The “Look at me” dance is one of the funniest scenes because everyone changes from single lines and goes into a rap all about Alyson’s “Pants from France.” Behind the tallest platform we have a techie who cues when the kids start to snap their fingers. The costumes that you see are not really costumes, they are infarct the actors real school clothing to make it as life like and relatable as possible. In the chair, bottom left, Merrill sits dressed as a therapist listening to shoshanas story’s. This is a funny scene because the cast is singing about Alyson’s butt and her pants.     

In the tech booth is where half the play is preformed. The lighting technician, Parker Robinson, has to manually assign lights to form a cue. The cue is then set up to match the timing of the play so that the lights go up and out as the actors interact with the set. The buttons in the front consist of a 0-9 number pad to set percentages of lighting lumens. The analog nobs shown lower are used to bring up lights and sets of lights. Once the play begins is almost pitch black in this booth making this job highly tricky.