The Witches
Director: Chad Parsons
Scenic Designer: Randall McMullen
Lighting Designer: Natalie Davies
Costume Designer: Izzy Kitch
Music Composer: James Stryska
Sound Engineer: Emma Montgomerie
Photos: Bert VanderVeen
The Witches was a mainstage production produced by the North Carolina Theatre for Young People at UNCG. There was a cast of 22 and original music composed for this production. There were two crews for both deck and wardrobe crew due to morning performances. During tech rehearsals, all crews were called resulting in around 80 people in the theatre with cast and department heads/supervisors. This show involved a lot of shadow puppetry and puppetry. The shadow puppetry required intensive paperwork tracking as well as entire rehearsal periods dedicated to working with actors on operating puppets and manipulating their bodies for shadow work. This was my first experience with a production that centered around shadow puppetry.
This show had 12 actors in wigs (and more than one!) and extensive makeup for the majority of the cast. Costumes and I worked very closely to ensure that the wigs fit the designer's vision and also allowed for the movement the director desired from the actors. The makeup needs of the show also required careful tracking of who touched whom so that we could limit makeup transfer as much as possible.
Shadow puppetry became a central tool for the story-telling. There was no designer for the shadow puppets, so the director worked directly with the cast on brainstorming ideas and finding out what puppets were going to be used to tell the story. I created a build sheet for the shadow puppets so that the props department could build the show puppets.
* The cat head was originally created by the cast.
Alongside the shadow puppetry build list, I crafted a screen tracking sheet. This sheet was utilized primarily by the lighting department in the building of cues and the planning for the show. Through this sheet, the lighting designer was able to learn what moments the director wanted the screens in use and for what purpose.
This show also included quite a few puppets. The mice puppets were available a total of two times before we moved into the theatre and available for continuous use once tech rehearsals began. The witch head was only available for the dress rehearsals (there were three before performances). We worked carefully with the costume department, puppet builder, and the actors on providing rehearsal time and teaching the actors to use the puppets (none of them had experience at the time).
I have included a daily call, a rehearsal report, and a performance report from this production. This show required the design process to continue past the show hitting the shops for build primarily because of the puppetry needs. These documents from the production best reflect the production's process and the needs of this particular production.