Sunday, September 18, 2011

Scene Shop

This past friday, I had a few extra hours in my evening and made my way down to the Fine Arts building on campus. The scene shop is open on weekdays from 1 to 5, and they always have people in there working on a show.

Currently, the theatre department is focused on God of Carnage. A brief synopsis: two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving into chaos. It sounds like a rather funny play that I'm excited to see! That, however, is not the topic of this post.

I went into the scene shop, and immediately met two theatre kids (whose names escape me - I'm terrible with names) who were working on two tribal masks that would eventually hang on the walls in the play. The graduate, a male who had the same major as I do, had me take a jigsaw to some foam and carve out teeth for the masks. After I did that, he worked on fine tuning the teeth while I helped the younger girl, who I'd guess is a sophomore or junior, secure one of the masks with glue and a nailgun. The details on the two masks were very ornate, yet ingenious in their simplicity. At about 4:50, we needed to start cleaning up, so everyone (and I mean everyone, not just the few people who wanted to) immediately got to work, sweeping up and cleaning up the shop. We were done in less than ten minutes, despite how spacious and dirty the shop was!

At the end, everyone went over to a board to sign out. I didn't know I needed to sign in, so I went over and asked someone. They asked me if I was in the scene shop for credit for a class or I was paid. I told them I'd come simply to volunteer my help. They were ecstatic! I guess they don't have people coming in "to volunteer" all that often, which puts me in a very small but enjoyed minority. If I do this a lot more (which I plan to), it'll give me great experience along with showing the people who work in the scene shop that I'm dedicated and care about theatre. Heck, maybe in the future, I can work there for pay!

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