Seussical the Musical

Seussical, the Musical

Directed By: Bill Kennedy
Set and Lighting Design, Technical Direction: G. D. George

I designed Seussical! for Capital University during my tenure there as Technical Director between 2004 and 2006. The theatre space, as Director of Theatre, Professor Bill Kennedy notes, is:

a converted basement storage room in [the] student center. [There is] a proscenium [stage] with little wing space and no fly. There is a small shop and the house seats approximately 120. [The crew] consists of four to six enthusiastic, if largely untrained, work study students.

Professor Kennedy and I (and the cast and crew of the show)  created Jojo’s world based on the notion that s/he was day-dreaming after having been held after school for thinking bad thinks. Blackboards from Jojo’s classroom became backdrops for the scenes within Nool. Thing 1 and Thing 2 became stage hands. The show took over most of the stage –we were a bit limited by sightlines– and about one-third of the nominal house space but we still managed to safely offer about 110 seats.

For me the real challenge to this production was the lighting design.  Although we had plans to expand the stage lighting systems in the Cabaret Theatre, these had not yet come to fruition. A good bit of the production budget went for rent additional dimmers and fixtures. In addition to standard and special area lighting the lighting design featured a show logo the was created using four ERS fixtures with custom gobos.