To view some of the production photos for “Cabaret”, please click here.

 

Cabaret was the very first full scale musical production at Skyline in over 25 years.  It combined the talents of Skyline College’s music, vocal, and dance departments and was an overall success.  It was received with three full houses and was a real challenge to present a set that would impress audiences after such a long hiatus in our drama/production department.  In the end, I designed a simple “V” shaped set that would allow for flying walls to represent spaces other than the “Kit Kat Klub”, creating area lighting in the playing space and dimly lighting the upper platform from behind to allow for the dancers to play “voyeur” while the drama between principals took center stage.  Also, we created a separate “stage” on the upper deck that doubled as an “elevator” which lowered the performers to the stage when they would be introduced in the “Club” before their acts were performed.  The rig was suspended from two battens lashed together at the rail and counterweighted for the performers.  At the height of its ten foot travel in the upper position, the battens were maxed out at the grid, allowing a safe travers in either direction with minimal exertion from the fly rail operator.  In order to create a more “intimate” setting, I removed the first three rows of the orchestra section and built a 3/4 thrust that extended out beyond the orchestra pit, which I kept limited to a simple 8’x8′ opening while baffling all surfaces inside with pleated black tap in order to control/limit the acoustic properties of the band so that a more controllable mix could be achieved through individual microphones on each instrument.

To view some of the production photos for “Cabaret”, please click here.