University Opera's La traviata (2023)
Directed by David Ronis, scenic design by Keith Pitts, assistant scenic design by Juliana Gessner, scenic charge artist Teresa Sarkela
The design elements I most contributed to for this show were the herringbone floorboards, recreating famous late 1920s modern art, and painting the huge revolving walls. This production was set in France in the 20s and the designer included two famous pieces of modern art in the design. I recreated those pieces, shown below, on painted wood rather than canvas. For the Miro I exaggerated some elements to make it recognizable from a distance. |
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Reproduction of Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. III, with Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black (1929)
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Reproduction of Joan Miró's Maternité (1924)
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University Theatre's First Date (2022)
Directed by Ross Shenker, scenic design by Juliana Gessner, scenic charge artist Juliana Gessner
For this show I was both the scenic designer and scenic charge, meaning I had full control over how the show would look. The biggest projects were experimenting with different types of woodgrain, the large checkered floor and the surrounding spray meant to diffuse the edges, and painting the brick walls on 3-dimensional panels. The props director, Kaya Sarajian, created the light up subway sign and many of the road signs used as decoration around the set. |
University Theatre's Heathers (2022)
Directed by Jake Penner, scenic design by Keith Pitts, assistant scenic design by Juliana Gessner, scenic charge artist Emily Rudolph
I worked as both assistant scenic designer and as one of the scenic painters and was able to spearhead work on the many stencils needed for the show. There were two large logos representing Westerburg High, along with a wall underneath the stairs that had a word cloud featuring words that represented the school's culture. To create these stencils I used the VinylMaster Pro software and the vinyl cutter within the University Theatre scene shop. |
University Theatre's Rashomon (2021)
Directed by David Furumoto, scenic design by Neil Mills, assistant scenic design by Juliana Gessner, scenic charge artist Teresa Sarkela
As assistant scenic designer for this show, I was tasked with creating the large surround located all the way upstage reusing large canvas panels from a previous show. I illustrated the design, pictured below, in Adobe Photoshop and was inspired by traditional Japanese six panel screens. The director wanted skulls to be a background motif along with the shredded white fabric hanging from the dead tree's branches. The process of painting the surround consisted of snapping a charcoal grid across each of the panels, sketching the design according to a gridded reference picture, and using the scene shop's paint frame so I didn't have to paint on a ladder. |
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