For more production photos of “Kiss Me Kate”, please click HERE

Kiss Me Kate was the second show that I designed at the Croswell in Adrian Michigan.  Designing this set was a unique challenge in that I wanted to give it a real Broadway scale in the backstage scenes, and a rather less “polished” community theater scale in the show-within-the-show scenes.  The set was definitely one of the larger ones that we built while I was there.  The “backstage corridor” was 40′ wide and 8′ deep.  it was separate from the staircase and SR units so that it could roll back against the upstage wall completely and hide behind a “fake” upstage wall so that we could give the illusion of an empty stage in the opening act.  This became known as the “hat trick” by the deck crew who motivated the scenery.  This show scale was a struggle to fit on and off stage and in order to simplify the parking lot in the wings, some scenery served dual purposes depending on which side faced the upstage/downstage.   This show also allowed me to design and paint my own drops (with help from my technical director and scene painter) which is something that I don’t often get the opportunity to do due to budget constraints.

For more production photos of “Kiss Me Kate”, please click HERE