Theater Superstition

Behind the Scenes – October, 2024

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, That are dreamt in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act I, Scene 5

Summer days are getting shorter and soon those crisp cool autumn evenings will arrive. Pumpkin Spice will be everywhere, including Pumpkin Spice flavored Spam, Oreos, Red Vines and of course, coffee. Kids will be planning their Halloween costumes and adults calculating how many bags of candy they will need for the neighborhood goblins. In spirit of the season, I’ve collected my top five theater spooks and superstitions to share with you at this spine-chilling time of year!

#5 – Superstitious Actors
Theater people tend to be a superstitious lot, and many famous actors have their own unique habits.
Dame Helen Mirren has a pair of lucky shoes that she wears to every award show. Collen Farrell has a pair of lucky shamrock boxer shorts and belt given to him by his father.
Dame Judi Dench has a lucky penny that she will have sewn into her costume!
Many actors believe sleeping with a script under your pillow will help you learn your lines.

#4 – Don’ts of the Stage!
Don’t use peacock feathers, the “evil eye” of the feather will curse the production! Don’t use real mirrors on stage, they interfere with the lighting! Don’t use real money and jewelry, it just invites prop table theft! Don’t use a real Bible as a prop, its considered disrespectful of the holy text! Don’t light three candles on stage, it’s a fire hazard! And, the biggie, don’t whistle in the theater! In early theaters, many sailors worked the rigging due to their knowledge of ropes and knots. As onboard ship, they would communicate with whistles, and an errant whistle could result in a rigging catastrophe!

#3 – The Ghost Light
An enduring tradition in the theater is to leave a light burning when the performance is over and the actors leave the building. When the living leave, the ghosts take to the stage to perform otherworldly scenes from playwrights long gone. By leaving a ghost light the spirits are pleased and won’t interfere with your production. Can’t find your prop? Stage lights flickering? You may have upset your resident ghost!
The skeptical among us may say there are many practical reasons for the ghost light. A dark theater is full of hazards from tripping over scenery and props to falling into an open orchestra pit. There is even an urban legend that a burglar sued a theater after breaking his leg in the dark!
The Reif Center doesn’t have a traditional ghost light as pictured above. We leave our catwalk lights turned on when the theater is unoccupied. I’m not sure that the Reif Center even has a theater ghost! Although, a few years ago Melanie (a Reif Theater Technician) spent the night in the Wilcox Theater when we had an art installation that required security. She insists she will never do that again after hearing what sounded like footsteps on the roof in the middle of the night!

#2 – “The Scottish Play”
Folklore suggests that Macbeth was cursed from its very first performance! Supposedly, Shakespeare researched the weird sisters and used authentic incantations for their spells in the script. This incurred the wrath of a real coven of witches who put a hex on the play! Ever since then deaths, accidents and near misses have plagued productions over the years. Now it’s considered bad luck to even say the name “Macbeth” in the theater, instead, “The Scottish Play” is preferred by the superstitious.
There is a way to break the curse if you should inadvertently say the forbidden name. Exit the theater, spin around three times, spit and utter a profanity before returning!

#1 – Guthrie Theater Ghost
Chanhassen Dinner Theater is supposedly built on the site of a house that burned down and killed a woman. Her ghost frequents the theater still. The Fitzgerald Theater is haunted by a former stagehand named Ben. Maude used to play the organ to accompany silent movies at the Palace Theater in Luverne. Apparently she still does, even though the old pipe organ no longer functions. But, my favorite Minnesota theater ghost resided at the old Guthrie Theater.
The original Guthrie Theater was haunted by the ghost of Richard Miller (no relation) who sadly died by suicide in 1967. He was an usher at the theater and his final wish was to be buried in his usher’s uniform because his happiest hours were at the theater. The theater gifted his uniform for his burial as they were preparing to change to a new simpler usher uniform the following season.
The following season patrons began to complain about an usher that would walk up and down the aisles during performances. Someone else wanted to commend the usher who pointed out where she had dropped her keys. Both thought that perhaps he was the head usher as his uniform was fancier than the other ushers.
Appearances became more frequent. An actress complained to a stage manager about the usher that nearly caused her to miss her entrance by standing in her way. Some crew members were even on a first name basis, saying “Hi Richard” when they saw the hazy apparition in the old uniform.
In 1993 the Guthrie held a grand reopening after some renovation work and a Native American elder was enlisted to perform a ceremony of blessing and purification. Apparently it worked, as no further sightings of Richard were reported. In 2006, after opening a new theater, the old Guthrie was demolished taking with it one of the enduring ghosts stories in Minnesota theater history.
I’ll confide a little secret. I told you that I don’t think we have a ghost in the Reif Center, well I plan to be the first! Ideally, I would kick the bucket up in the booth during a performance! Ghosts usually stick around because they have unfinished business and I’m sure I won’t finish my “to do” list in time!
I’ll be a friendly ghost…if you leave the ghost light burning! Perhaps I’ll help out the crew when there is a problem with sound or lights. Maybe I’ll greet artists when they arrive in the green room. I’ll definitely be around when Melanie is here late at night by herself!
So if you happen to catch me around the theater after I’m gone, be sure to say, “Hi John!”

Theater Logic 

Behind the Scenes – August, 2024

In is down, down is front
Out is up, up is back
Off is out, on is in
And of course –
Left is right and right is left
A drop shouldn’t and a
Block and fall does neither
A prop doesn’t and
A cove has no water
Tripping is OK
A running crew rarely gets anywhere
A purchase line buys you nothing
A trap will not catch anything
A gridiron has nothing to do with football
Strike is work (In fact a lot of work)
And a green room, thank god, usually isn’t
Now that you’re fully versed in Theatrical terms,
Break a leg.
But not really.

~ Author unknown

Are you confused? Don’t be, the world of theater has its own language and logic that often baffles the uninitiated.  This is encapsulated perfectly in the nonsense poem, “Theatrical Logic”.  Let me guide you through the “logic” of this poem!

In is down, down is front
Out is up, up is back

In and out is the movement of the fly system whereby fly in (down) and fly out (up) scenery and backdrops.

Beginning in the Middle Ages, many English theaters had a raked, or slanted, stage floor.  For an audience seated on a flat floor, it improved their ability to see and hear the actors.  Literally as you came to the front of the stage, you walked downhill and walked uphill to go to the back of the stage!

Raked – slanted stage floor.

Current theaters have abandoned the raked stage in favor of raked audience seating and modern sound systems, much to the relief of actors, I would imagine!

Off is out, on is in
And of course –
Left is right and right is left

Continuing with stage directions, if you go offstage you are exiting the stage or going out.  Coming onstage you are entering the stage or coming in.

Stage directions are given from the perspective of an actor on stage looking at the audience.  Thus, when an actor exits stage right, it’s the left from the audience’s perspective.

Surprisingly the written use of “stage right” and “stage left” only began in 1931, I don’t know how the poor stage managers kept track of the actors before that!

A drop shouldn’t and a
Block and fall does neither

Regular readers will know that a drop is a painted scenery backdrop, and having it literally drop would be a very bad thing!

Block and fall is another somewhat antiquated reference to the fly system, where blocks are pulleys and falls are the rope that runs through the pulleys.

A prop doesn’t and
A cove has no water

Props are objects handled by the actors.  A glass, torch, gun or suitcase are all examples of props.  I suppose if you have a prop walking cane then you would have a prop that props!

A cove is a lighting position in the auditorium that is somewhat hidden from the audiences view, and we certainly don’t want any water in it!  I learned long ago that water and electricity don’t go together!  I haven’t heard “cove” used often lately, modern theater architecture tend to leave lighting positions in the auditorium open and exposed.

Tripping is OK
A running crew rarely gets anywhere

I would never trip someone, but in the theater it is ok to trip a drop!  Before the Reif Center renovation in 2015-2016 we had a very short fly loft over the stage.  It was difficult to use rented backdrops because they could only fly out 8 feet over the stage!

One way to solve this problem is to “trip” the drop, so that it only takes half of its full height to store.  First you fly out the backdrop as far as you can.  Then, a 2^nd batten (pipe) lifts the bottom of the drop so that the drop doubles up on itself.

Running crew is simply the stage crew needed for operations during the production’s performance, as opposed to a loading crew.  When we have a big show come to the Reif Center we may need 20 or more load in and load out crew, but maybe only 5 running crew during the performance itself.  Running crew includes the crew for moving and flying scenery, operating sound, lights and follow spots, and costumers helping with backstage quick changes.

A purchase line buys you nothing
A trap will not catch anything

Purchase line is another term used in the fly system.  It is the rope that connects to the counter balance that the fly operator pulls on to raise or lower stage scenery.

Did you know the Reif Center has traps!  And not just to catch the mice we sometimes have.  We don’t use them often but we have two 4 foot x 8 foot sections of the stage that can be removed to create an opening in the stage floor.  You may have a set design that calls for a cellar below the floor or you want to melt the wicked witch in Wizard of OZ!  “Trap” also lends its name to the area below the stage, a trap room.

Wilcox Theater Fly Rail

A gridiron has nothing to do with football
Strike is work (In fact a lot of work)

The Reif Center does not actually have a gridiron!  Typically a gridiron is high over the stage and allows access to the wires and pulleys of the fly system over the stage.  This would be a “walk on” grid, you can easily move around on it.  This allows you to rig extra drop points over the stage for touring shows.

In the Reif the fly system is connected directly to the roof beams.  Our personnel lift will not reach the roof over the stage, making it impossible to add additional drop points for our touring shows.  But, we anticipated this during the renovation and installed 30 “drop points” over the stage.  These points are high enough to remain hidden from view, but low enough for crew to reach with our personnel lift.  Whenever you see a touring show at the Reif Center using overhead lighting trusses we are making use of our drop point system!

When the crew strikes, they are not joining a picket line (usually).  Strike happens when the performance is over and the crew removes all the sets and equipment for the production.  For out Theater Arts youth productions, strike means breaking down the set, putting away props and costumes and cleaning the dressing rooms.  As you can imagine this is a lot of work, and often the entire cast will stay at the close of a show to help the crew!

View of a “walk on” gridiron from below.

And a green room, thank god, usually isn’t
Now that you’re fully versed in Theatrical terms,
Break a leg.
But not really.

The green room is where the performers can relax before the performance.  The Reif green room has a fridge and a comfortable couch and will have snacks and drinks available for the cast and crew.  Our green room is actually more of a mauve, with the walls covered with signatures of previous artists!

Why is it called a green room?  I was told long ago it was because of the use of calcium oxide, or limelight, in early theatrical lighting.  But limelight wasn’t used until 1820 and the use of the term “green room” dates back to the 1600’s.

The oldest and simplest theory is that London’s Blackfriars Theater had a room backstage where the actors waited and it happened to be painted green, and eventually came to refer to the room and not just the color.

Wilcox Green Room

Oh, and break a leg?  This might get complicated, there are many popular theories!  This is just one possibility.

The German phrase Hals-und Beinbruch literally means “neck and leg break”.  There is a Yiddish phrase, Hatsloche un Broche, with a very similar pronunciation, which means “success and blessing.”  At some point, Hals-und Beinbruch began to be used as a humorous pun to wish someone “good luck”.

A 1921 article, “A Defense of Superstition”, states that in the world of horse racing to wish someone good luck was considered unlucky, so you should say something insulting like, “May you break your leg!”

Possibly German speaking Jewish immigrants brought the superstition and the phrase to England and America after World War I.  The earliest published reference to “break a leg” in a theatrical context dates from 1939.

I hope you enjoyed this journey through theater logic!  Feel free to impress friends and family with your newfound knowledge!

My Letter to Santa 

Behind the Scenes – July 2024

Dear Santa Dewey,
I know you are very busy around the holidays, so I thought I’d write in July with my Christmas wish list. I hope I’m not interrupting your beach vacation in the Seychelles!

Santa Jeremy Dewey, Development Director. He finds money and grants for the Reif Center programs and equipment!

Jim, Judi, Amber, Katie, Amy, Melanie, Greg and Emily all say I’ve been very good this year! I’ve kept up with the Reif’s busy schedule with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart! I’ve designed the sets and lights for multiple shows to wide acclaim, and I’m even doing better at getting my time sheets in on time! And, I’m truly sorry for being naughty and scaring Melanie all the time! I’m working on it!

Santa Dewey, as Development Director you’re so great at finding money for operations and programs at the Reif! Please Santa, could you write some grants for us to upgrade our lighting? And, if it’s not too much to ask maybe a hazer, cable covers and barricades?

This is my Christmas wish list this year, Santa Dewey. I’ve even priced my wishes out so you’d know how big of a grant we need!

ETC Source Four LED lighting upgrades ($650-$15,600)
Santa Dewey, we have over 150 ETC Source Four fixtures at the Reif Center. ETC introduced this fixture in 1992 and by 2017 they had sold over 3.5 million of them, so you know this is quality equipment! Greg, Melanie and I have been very good at keeping them maintained and they will serve us well for many years to come. But, most of our inventory was acquired in the 1990’s, before LED technology was widely available in the entertainment industry.

Luckily Santa Dewey, ETC makes an LED retrofit for the older Source Fours! All you have to do is change out the base from the old incandescent lamp to one with a LED lamp. The most exciting thing about LED technology is color, lots of color! I’m sure if you’ve come to a show at the Reif you’ve seen our LED Pars, we use them over our stage for a down wash of light that can be any color of the rainbow!

Now Santa Dewey, I’d like to bring this technology to our Source Fours. Besides all the different colors, it also means less time and money spent on replacing lamps, and LED’s are so energy efficient!

I’m not asking to retrofit our entire inventory, that would be over $100,000, and I know Santa Dewey can’t afford that! The nice thing is that we can do a few at a time. You know our moving mirror I-Cue units in the Wilcox and Ives? I use them all the time in shows as roving spotlights, or moving them around the stage for lighting specials.

I’d like to start by retrofitting those 8 lights with moving mirrors. Then, if I could get 16 more we could put them in the side light in the Ives and in the gobo wash in the Wilcox! I think I could really step up my lighting game with these!

ETC Color Source Cyc ($18,480)
I don’t mean to harp on LED’s Santa Dewey, but LED color changing technology is just so versatile. LED’s would be a huge upgrade for our cyclorama (cyc) lights. I think I’ve told you about the cyc before, it’s that large white background at the rear of the stage that we use for musicals and concerts. Currently we have a 4-cell cyc light, meaning we can put a different colored gel into each cell to have 4 different colors. 4 colors sounds like a lot, but with LED’s we could choose from millions of colors! And, we’d save time and money by not needing incandescent lamps and colored gel! Unfortunately, we cannot do this piecemeal, we’d need to replace them all at once.

Side Wall Projectors ($20,000-$25,000)
Santa Dewey, you are very familiar with the fine businesses in Grand Rapids that underwrite our performances. One of the ways we recognize their contribution is to project their business logo on the side walls in the Wilcox Theater.

We’ve been using a Rosco I-Pro Image Projector inserted into a Source Four holding a custom made plastic slide. The quality isn’t very good sometimes and the slides burn out easily, also the I-Pro units have been discontinued and we’re not sure how much longer we’ll be able to get new slides made.

And Santa Dewey, this wouldn’t just be for underwriter logos! Remember during our recent production of The Little Mermaid how I projected waves onto the side walls during the underwater scenes? I did that with an effects scroller, but if we had projectors we could project all kinds of scenic elements on the side walls to enhance the set design on stage!

Recently the Itasca Orchestra and Strings Program held a concert that featured a movie that accompanied the music. That would have looked much better if we could have projected the film onto the walls!

Hazer ($1500-$2000)
Santa Dewey, did you know that light is invisible? You can’t see light until it hits something! That’s usually the set or the actors, but sometimes you want the beam of light itself to be visible. A hazer puts out a fine particle fog and makes the whole beam visible, without blocking it from lighting the performers! It lets you create some amazing looking lighting effects, so that’s why I’m adding it to my wish list this year!

Barricades/Cable Covers/Wheelchair Ramps ($3000-$3500)
Now Santa Dewey, I’m getting to the socks and underwear part of my wish list. Sometimes you need equipment that isn’t as exciting as LED’s and hazers! Cable covers and barricades aren’t as sexy (can I say sexy in a letter to Santa?) as LED’s but they would be very useful for the increasing number of outdoor shows we do at the Yanmar Arena Pavilion.

Sometimes we need to run cables where the public has access or where heavy gear moves over the cables. Cable covers would protect the cable and be less of a trip hazard for the public, and make it easier for wheelchairs to cross over the cables.

Santa Dewey, do you remember that show at the pavilion where the audience was so close to the sub-speakers that they set their drinks on them? I’m sure those people are already on your naughty list, but if we had some barricades we could prevent rowdies from getting so close to the stage and sensitive equipment.

Santa Dewey, thank you for all you do at The Reif! I hope I’m not asking for too much. I will keep working hard at being a good Technical Director and staying off your naughty list!

Little Johnny

Little Shop of Horrors – Feed Me!

Behind the Scenes – June 2024

A large placard bearing the words LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS hangs suspended in dark fog. (SMOKE MACHINE) WINO #1 sleeps peacefully on the far left edge of the forestage. (MUSIC CUE 1) A VOICE NOT UNLIKE GOD’S thunders in serious, prophetic tones:

VOICE: On the twenty-first day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced – as such enemies often do – in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places.

So begins one of the more unusual Broadway musicals ever produced, featuring a man eating alien plant bent on world domination! This July prepare yourself for the invasion reaching Grand Rapids as the Reif Repertory Theater brings Little Shop of Horrors to the Wilcox Theater stage.

1982 Little Shop of Horrors cast album.

Little Shop of Horrors began life as a low budget 1960 horror film directed by Roger Corman and featuring a young Jack Nicolson. Over the years it developed a cult following and in 1982 was adapted into a stage musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman, the team behind the Disney hits of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. In 1986 the musical got the Hollywood treatment, directed by Frank Oz of The Muppets fame. Currently there is a popular revival playing on Broadway and there is talk of yet another film, based on Corman’s 1960 film and directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins) called Little Shop of Halloween Horrors.

With a small cast and popular songs such as “Skid Row (Downtown),” “Somewhere That’s Green” and “Suddenly Seymour” Little Shop is very popular with community theaters. The Reif’s production, directed by Katie Smith, will feature an expanded ensemble and fabulous Audrey II puppets rented from a company in Wisconsin, and includes a seven page Puppet Manual!

Audrey II Puppet Manual.

This is my fourth production of Little Shop. My first one was as a stagehand in the summer of 1989 in the old 4th Avenue Theater in downtown Anchorage. I have memories of helping the dentist put on his clear globe shaped gas mask and resetting the vines that dropped down onto the audience for a good scare during the finale! I also appeared on stage as one of Audrey II’s “pods” that help terrorize the characters near the end. My poor parents though. My parents were devout Southern Baptists, but they did love the theater and never had any problem with me making it a career. But, I do have a tendency to mumble sometimes, and all summer long they thought I was working on a production of Little Shop of Whores!

Since that first production, I’ve also worked on productions of Little Shop at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and at the Grand Rapids High School. In fact, we are using a piece of scenery from the high school production that was saved in the choir room. It’s the sign that hangs in front of the set as the audience enters, “A large placard bearing the words LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS”

Set model for Little Shop of Horrors, Flower Shop and Street.

Little Shop has two main locations, Mushnik’s Flower Shop and the street. Many times when we are in a street scene there is a scene change happening in the flower shop, so a way to hide the flower shop became necessary.

The images of the skid row tenement houses, bricks and signs came to me first. Ideas for the flower shop came a bit later, mostly based on blocking needs and technical needs to accommodate Audrey II. For example, in order to move out the largest Audrey II puppet the entire back wall of the shop will fly out!

Set model for Little Shop of Horrors, Street.

A large 25’ wide by 10’ tall wall will fly in to hide the flower shop. This allows the crew to make the changes inside the shop, while also providing a good background for the street scenes.

Using these initial ideas I built a set model out of foam and poster board. I found images online that I liked for the skid row tenements, old bricks and signs, and used these to flesh out the model.

Expect some changes before opening night! As much as I liked how the model looked, sometimes you have to consider the budget and how much build time you have. As I began to figure up how many stock flats we had I realized we were going to have to build about 8 more, which would be time consuming and expensive. We are going to cut down on the amount of brick masking units so that those stock flats can be used for the flower shop. We also saved money because we were going to print the bricks using a commercial printer, and now we will only print the bricks for the wall that flies in front of the flower shop.

We are still working on getting all the signage that I wanted, but they will probably appear to be floating against a black background rather than mounted on brick buildings. I thought this would be an acceptable way to save some money (those Audrey II puppets are expensive!) without influencing the overall look, and I can come up with some great lighting to distract the audience!
I’m looking forward to Little Shop of Horrors, I generally have a soft spot for musicals. But, a dark comedic musical with a giant plant snacking on body parts really gets me going!

There is only one weekend of performances, July 11-14, so get those tickets early!

Little Shop of Horrors Tickets

Thumbelina: The Girl in the Flower

Behind the Scenes – May, 2024

“There once was a woman who wanted so very much to have a tiny little child, but she did not know where to find one. So she went to an old witch, and she said: “I have set my heart upon having a tiny little child. Please could you tell me where I can find one?”

“Why, that’s easily done,” said the witch. “Here’s a grain of barley for you, but it isn’t at all the sort of barley that farmers grow in their fields or that the chickens get to eat. Put it in a flower pot and you’ll see what you shall see.”

“Oh thank you!” the woman said. She gave the witch twelve pennies, and planted the barley seed as soon as she got home. It quickly grew into a fine large flower, which looked very much like a tulip. But the petals were folded tight, as though it were still a bud.

“This is such a pretty flower,” said the woman. She kissed its lovely red and yellow petals, and just as she kissed it the flower gave a loud pop! and flew open. It was a tulip, right enough, but on the green cushion in the middle of it sat a tiny girl. She was dainty and fair to see, but she was no taller than your thumb. So she was called Thumbelina.”

-Hans Christian Anderson, Thumbelina

The enchanting beginning of Hans Christian Anderson’s Thumbelina has the title character magically appearing out of a flower, and Dance Director Bev Wilson wanted to recreate this moment on stage in the Reif Dance production of Thumbelina!

The production staff of myself, Greg Johnson and Melanie McCoy along with the Artistic Directors, Bev Wilson and Katie Smith met to discuss the scenes and set pieces needed for Thumbelina. The piece that seemed the most complicated was having Thumbelina appear out of the flower. We batted around several ideas, including using puppets, shadow play or projections. Eventually Greg suggested a large flower prop that the dancer who plays Thumbelina would be in and then revealed by falling petals. Building the flower would fall upon Greg and he was excited because he loves a challenge!

Research images for Thumbelina’s flower.

Video capture of another production’s Thumbelina flower.

We began by searching online for images of Thumbelina’s flower to help spark some ideas for the look of the flower. We also searched for any videos or instructions for making giant flowers with people inside! Sometimes you get lucky and find a video from someone else who has already built one. We did find some videos of a Thumbelina ballet that showed a couple of possible solutions. In one the dancer knelt down in the middle of some large petals and just stood up to reveal herself. In another video, the petals completely enclose the dancer. It appears she pushes out on them and all the petals fall flat to the floor for the reveal.

Greg took these ideas, filtered them through his own thoughts on the flower and came up with some plans of his own!
“During our Thumbelina production meeting, we discussed various ideas of how the reveal of Thumbelina would occur. I suggested having a giant flower open up to reveal Thumbelina. I didn’t know exactly how it would work, but I had a few idea! Luckily, the first production meeting happens early enough to give me time to think and do research before I begin building.”

Greg Johnson drawing up plans for the Thumbelina flower.

“Shortly before building the flower, I talked with Bev to get more information about how she wanted to use the flower and any other requirements for it. Then I drew up some plans, built a mock-up of one of the petals, bounced a few ideas around with Buzz and showed Bev my concept to make sure it was what she wanted.”

Greg Johnson begins building the Thumbelina flower.

Another view of the Thumbelina flower in progress!

“I usually have a favorite piece when I build a set. For Moana it was her outrigger boat, for Annie it was the New York City stoop, for Alice in Wonderland it was the giant foot-stomping Alice and for Little Mermaid it was Ariel’s grotto. If the flower works on stage like it does in my head, then it will be my favorite piece from Thumbelina!”

At the time of this writing, we are still five weeks away from opening night, so you will have to come to the show to see the final product!

In addition to Greg’s flower, Melanie is working on oversized cattails and flowers and I’m working on ideas for lighting! After appearing from her flower, Thumbelina has many more adventures! She is captured by frogs who bring her to their swamp, attends the Beetle Ball in a jazz club and goes to a wedding in a fairyland forest!

These will be some of the many magical moments in the Reif Dance production of Thumbelina, and we think the flower will be a highlight!

The Reif Dance production of Thumbelina is June 7^th & 8^th at 7pm and June 9^th at 2pm!

The TheaterWorksUSA Experience!

Behind the Scenes – April, 2024

Mother Nature can be a cruel and capricious companion for the Northland. We enjoyed an atypical winter with very little snow and above average temperatures, which makes our life a lot easier when we are loading in performances. But eventually it had to happen. We had a TheaterWorksUSA production of Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical (CKCC: TM) scheduled for March 26, 2024, got hit by a blizzard and ISD 318 closed the schools for two days!

Originally, this article was going to be about loading in, setting up and performing CKCC: TM for two packed audiences of local students. But now I’d like to talk about the TheaterWorksUSA (TWUSA) experience. We’ve had TWUSA productions here at the Reif Center for as long as I can remember and now I don’t even need to look at their Technical Rider when we book them. When I hear it’s a TWUSA production I know what time they will arrive, how much crew they need, what sound needs to be set up and what they will need for lighting!

TWUSA was founded in New York City in 1961 with the mission, “Create exceptional, transformative theatrical experiences that are accessible to young and family audiences in diverse communities throughout New York City and North America.” TWUSA is known for their delightful adaptations of children’s books, from the classic Charlotte’s Web to newer titles like Junie B. Jones and Pete The Cat. Many young actors, directors and writers began their careers at TWUSA, their alumni include Jesse Tyler Ferguson, F. Murray Abraham and Henry Winkler.

The TheaterWorksUSA Experience!
Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical arrived at 7am in a tall cargo van as the snow fell and the wind howled! Greg shoveled the snow around the loading dock because the school hadn’t plowed yet. At this point we knew that schools were going to have a delayed start, but we decided to load in because we thought we might still have a 12:30pm performance.

Greg Johnson shovels snow at 6:30am for Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical load in!

All the sets, props, sound equipment and costumes are tightly packed into the van along with the luggage for the cast and crew, generally 5-7 performers and a stage manager. TWUSA have some amazing designers and set builders on their team! They get so much scenery into that van! It must take a great deal of work to design, build it and figure out how to make it all fit! I will probably date myself here, but if you ever played Tetris, it’s a lot like that!

Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical load in. Note the blizzard and everyone bundled up! This van is typical of what every TWUSA production travels in.

I’ll reveal a few of their tricks that I’ve seen on almost every production. There is no wasted space, smaller pieces of scenery and props get packed into the open space on bigger set pieces. If the set includes flats (painted wall sections of scenery usually constructed of wood and canvas) they are built with welded metal frames covered with wood. Not only is this more durable for touring but they are thinner than typical flats and take up less space in the van. Every production travels with a full stage cloth backdrop. Unlike most productions where we would hang the backdrop on one of our line sets, they travel with metal frame that assembles and is self-supporting. None of their scenery is ever designed to “fly” in and out, I’m guessing it allows them to tour to smaller venues that may not have a fly system where scenery can be hung and flown. Nearly all the scenery is on castors making it easier to load and unload, and move around on stage to create different locations needed for the performance.

Some of the scenery and backdrop from Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical.

One great thing about TWUSA is the cast does most of the unloading and set up! We usually only have 2 crew people helping and unloading and setting up usually happens in about an hour! Taking down goes even quicker!

As the set is being assembled their Stage Manager and I work on setting up sound while Melanie and Greg refocus lights as needed. TWUSA travels with their own self-contained sound system but here at the Reif they rarely use it. They travel with a rack that contains all the receivers for their wireless microphones and we can tie those into our own sound system. The Stage Manager will mute and unmute the microphones for the performers and run the sound for the show off a laptop.

Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical Stage Manager Zoe Paraskevopoulos at the Reif soundboard prior to sound check.

Like the scenery, the lighting needs for TWUSA are very flexible to match the venue they are performing in. For venues with limited lighting they can perform with just a simple wash of lights. For venues with greater capabilities, the Stage Manager provides a cue list with descriptions of the lighting looks they want. We have state of the art lighting here at the Reif and we give them more than they expect! We like it when we point out that we have a mirror ball all set up and ready to go and they decide to work it into a cue!

A sample of the Light Cue list for Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical

Back to the blizzard! We were nearly done with assembling the set when we got word that ISD 318 had closed schools for the day. After a quick meeting with the Reif staff we decided to finish setting up until we heard from schools outside the district and non ISD 318 schools. The cast relaxed in the green room and had some lunch, luckily ISD 318 food service was still working! Eventually we got word that all the schools we were expecting had cancelled. We briefly toyed with the idea of them staying over a day, but due to a conflict on our stage it wasn’t possible. Around 1pm the cast and crew took it all down and packed it into the van. Everyone was very understanding, but we were disappointed. It was going to be a great show!

I always look forward to having a TWUSA tour. I know what to expect and their cast and crew are friendly and professional. On Tuesday, April 30th TheaterWorksUSA will be performing Charlotte’s Web.

These Student Matinees are not open to the public, but there are a couple of ways you may be able to attend. If your child’s class will be attending, ask if you can accompany them as a chaperone! If you homeschool you can also purchase tickets for yourself and your children. If you are a teacher or a homeschool parent and would like more information visit www.reifcenter.org/student-matinees.

The Reif has a great line up of Student Matinees for the 2024-2025 season, including a number of TheaterWorksUSA productions. Ask your children’s teachers if they can include a fun (and educational) trip to the Reif Center!

Under and Over the Sea: Digital Scenery for Little Mermaid

Behind the Scenes – March, 2024

King Triton’s court, Ursula’s Lair, and a storm-tossed Galleon; are just a few of the many scenes set under and over the sea in the Reif Theater Arts production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid JR. How do we go about designing these scenes without breaking our budget? Very often we will make use of digital scenery.

Digital Scenery can be still or moving images and can be projected onto a set or displayed on a TV or LED wall. It’s not just smaller productions using it either, “projection design” or “video design” have become an integral part of live concerts, Broadway shows, and Hollywood blockbusters! Many of the skills involved in creating a digital world also cross over with video game graphic design. It’s quite an employable field!

One of the latest and most impressive uses of LED technology and digital design is the Sphere in Las Vegas, where both the inside and outside of the structure are covered in LED lights, 1.2 million LED lights just on the exterior! It’s hard to out-Vegas Vegas but the Sphere has done just that. “Invokes pure awe,” “A new industry standard,” and “Bucket-list item” are just a few of the superlative reviews it has received.

U2 concert at the Sphere, Las Vegas.

Exterior of the Sphere, Las Vegas.

Our budget for Disney’s Little Mermaid JR. won’t quite cover this level of extravagance, but there are good budget-friendly options for smaller theaters.

Disney’s Little Mermaid Jr. is a Music Theatre International production. This means we have to apply to MTI to get the rights, or a license, to perform the show. MTI collaborated with Broadway Media to create digital scenery packages for most of the shows where MTI holds the rights. We have used these packages for several Theater Arts productions and Katie Smith, our director, and I have a good sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

Broadway Media packages are relatively cheap, a digital package with multiple scenes is just $450, while renting a single stage backdrop can run $600 once you factor in shipping. Digital scenery saves money because less physical scenery needs to be built. Digital scenery helps make the “magic” happen on stage. For Disney’s Little Mermaid JR., the digital scenery is not just still images but incorporates movement and special effects. Waves move up and down, storm clouds swirl in the sky and Ursula’s wizardly spells all add to the production without extra work and expense.

Sea waves crash and storm clouds billow before Prince Eric’s ship founders.

Some drawbacks of digital scenery relate to how we project them at the Reif Center. With a huge budget, it would be great to have a LED wall at the rear of the stage. That would give you the brightest, crispest images (anyone with deep pockets out there?). At the Reif we use a projector located over the sound booth to project onto our rear cyclorama, also simply known as the cyc. The rear cyc isn’t really designed as a projection surface, so there is some loss of quality there. In addition, bright stage lighting will wash out the projected image. Katie Smith tries to keep the cast far enough away from the cyc so that we can light the cast without hitting the cyc. It’s not always possible with 75-80 kids in a production! One final problem is projecting the images from out front. Any scenery or kids that are too tall or too close to the cyc will cast shadows on the cyc where the projection hits them. Sometimes we can work around it or we just live with it. It’s more important to light the cast than have perfect looking projections.

King Triton’s court.

The lagoon.

There are design choices we make when we rent Broadway Media packages. All their packages tend to be very cartoony, which is great when we do a Disney show. When Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical JR. was selected I couldn’t see bringing myself to using their projections. Much of my inspiration for the set design came from the Broadway musical and the recent film, and cartoony was not the look I wanted. In fact, it’s the only recent production I can think of where we didn’t use Broadway Media.

Digital Scenery has changed the entertainment industry and will continue to do so as technology is continually improving and getting cheaper. Maybe someday I’ll even get that digital LED wall I want! In the meantime get your tickets to Disney’s Little Mermaid JR., it will fill up fast!

Reif Dance Company Show & Get To Know Your Tech – Melanie McCoy

Behind the Scenes – February, 2024

Dancers live in light as fish live in water. The stage space in which they move is their aquarium, their portion of the sea. Within translucent walls and above the stage floor, the lighting supports their flashing buoyance or their arrested sculptural bodies. The dance is fluid and never static. Designing for the dance has been my most constant love. I have designed the decor as well as the lighting for a good many ballets and I have installed the basic systems with which I have worked in dance repertory. If I leave anything to posterity, it will be, I think, most importantly in the field of dance lighting.
~Jean Rosenthal, The Magic of Light

I’m sure that somewhere I still have a well-worn copy of Jean Rosenthal’s The Magic of Light. Her book was key to my growth as a lighting designer, moving beyond the mere technical aspects of lighting and seeing it as an art.

I began lighting dance on a regular basis in graduate school as the dance and theater programs were closely related. Usually dance performances have very minimal sets and often it is just the dancer and the lights. There are much fewer restrictions in lighting dance. A play you have to stick to the script; in dance, anything goes!

The Reif Dance program is very strong and typically has three performances a season, The Nutcracker, the Spring Dance production, and a Company Dance performance. What is unique about the Company Dance show is the focus on students. Co-Director Christina Anderson, “This year’s performance is about going back to the roots of our mission and showcasing the versatility of our dancers. The performance will be fun and approachable for our audiences.”

The focus on the students has always been a highlight of Company Dance. Co-Director Grace Derfler, “It is a way to showcase our seniors who are graduating perform innovative choreography of their own. Even Greg, from our backstage tech crew, choreographed a piece back in 2020! I am so grateful to be able to work with such creative minds and for my students to be able to bring the story to life on stage!” Greg loved his experience choreographing, I think mostly because he chose an instrumental cover of his favorite KISS song, “Black Diamond!”

Some of you may remember when the performance included “Dancing with our Stars.” We had “celebrities” from the community such as teachers, doctors, bankers, and politicians. They would be paired with a senior dance student who would select a style of dance, pick the music, and choreograph their duet. A panel of judges would narrow the field down to two, at which time the audience voted on the winner! The celebrities usually did a great job, although they still had to endure some good-natured ribbing from the judges!

West Side Story

Another year the production featured a collaboration between the Reif Dance Company and the Grand Rapids High School Band. The Dance Company performed selections from West Side Story with live accompaniment by the GRHS band. I mostly remember the mad scramble at intermission to set up risers for the band against the back wall behind the dancers!
For many years I did the lighting for the Company Dance performance, but as things have gotten busier at the Reif I’ve had Melanie step in the last few years. I thought this would be a great time to get to know her better!

Get to know your Tech – Melanie McCoy

Melanie McCoy

How did you come to work at the Reif Center?
I knew about this being a job opportunity in high school. My brother worked here when he was in high school and we are six years apart in age. I began working here in ninth grade in 2001. After I graduated high school and attended college for a few years, I came back and loved working here so much I never left! I have been one of the regular tech crew since around 2012 and within the last year I took on more responsibility as the Production Manager. I do quite a few more shows on my own, including both local and touring productions.

What are some of your most memorable shows, experiences, or stories?
One of the first shows I worked at the Reif Center was a touring production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The main part I remember from this show was that they came with four semi-trucks and it was the biggest show I’d ever helped with at the time.

Another show that stands out in my mind was when Ed Asner did a one-man on our stage. As students we were taught to avoid being “star seekers” and treat everyone equally no matter how “big name” they were. Ed Asner was lovely and was happy to chat with anyone. His manager had to encourage him to get moving after the performance, otherwise Ed would have stayed all night just chatting and spending time with anyone who wanted to.

Melanie and Ed Asner in 2011.

One of the crews I really look forward to working with comes with Rock ‘n’ Roll Christmas Spectacular. Scooter who sets up and operates the lights, Rustin and John who set up and operate the sound. They have been here with many shows other than Rock and Roll Christmas and have become like family to us.

With all the professional touring shows at the Reif Center we get to see a lot of technology that is newer for us, and I like to check it out to see if it’s something we can use here. I enjoy shows that come through with crew patient enough to take the time to teach us techniques and skills used for their show. I love learning new things!

It’s so nice to work with groups who are so appreciative of the time we take to make their show go as smoothly as we can make it go. A simple “Thank You” goes so far to making an experience a good one!

How did you start doing the lighting for Company Dance?
One year John said, “You’re doing lights for Company Dance this year,” and that was the start of it. I remember being nervous as that may have been the first time for me to be running a show with lights and audio entirely on my own, but I’ve enjoyed it ever since! It’s a chance to have creative freedom on a larger scale.

What do you like about doing the lighting for Company Dance?
I like the opportunities the Company Dance show affords me to be able to create something and collaborate with the choreographers in constructing a cohesive vision for each part of the show. It’s something that’s basically a blank canvas of sorts to just be able to have fun with.

Melanie running sound and lights for Reif Company Dance in 2023.

Within the last year we’ve moved into the 21st Century and started using QLab for sound effects and music. Can you talk about what we used to do and how QLab is an improvement?
Prior to Nutcracker 2022 we used CDs for music for each show, splitting act I and act II onto separate discs due to length. At intermission we would have to swap discs. QLab is audio software that runs on a Mac with a visual display showing us how much time is left in a track and more detailed information for each track. A nice feature of QLab is that it, by default, pauses after each song whereas with the previous method we would have to manually pause the CD player before it would play through to the next track. Sometimes it felt like we needed an extra arm or two to run the show, with one hand on the “GO” button for lights, another hand being able to turn the page of your script and then somehow figure out how to hit the “pause” button on the CD player. QLab is the industry standard for sound playback, used by many shows, so it was the logical program for us to embrace. The move to QLab was a new challenge for me as it’s a program that only runs on Mac, which is something I’m not entirely familiar with, but now that we’ve got it going it’s hard to imagine doing things any other way! It’s also nice to be able to use QLab for different themed preshow music playlists.

Thank you, Melanie, for telling us more about you and your work at the Reif Center. Come see Melanie’s lighting for the Company Dance Show March 2nd and 3rd in the Wilcox Theater!