With the exception of our lighting designer, our design team were all BYU students. I also worked with a student assistant director, stage manager, and dramaturgs. All student designers worked closely with their faculty advisors, as well as the arts production team to fulfill their design assignments. There are some with whom I interacted more frequently, so I've included information about our process below.
Denali is a bright, capable and creative director. She has proven to be a theatre artist who is hungry to learn all aspects of the production process. I'd seen her work prior to this project in several different capacities. I saw her work as a set designer for Much Ado About Nothing. She also has part-time employment in our shop so she understands the construction aspect of set design. Moreover, I'd worked with her closely as a student director in the directing capstone course I teach. As I watched her in the directing process, we had conversations about her instinct for the physical movement and the comedy of the show. While her skill to articulate her overall vision was still developing, she had a keen sense for rhythm and pacing.
Denali Linton was chosen as the assistant director for this project because of her interest in movement and its storytelling capabilities. Denali has some training in movement (stage combat and dance) so in our initial pre-production work together, we started researching how to create flight. As part of conversations, I encouraged her to do a "brain dump" of all her initial ideas. She added to our shared document in Google Drive and it was evident that she had done some key research on how movement might be approached in our show.
Because our show had so many elements, I knew I would need to rely on Denali heavily to accomplish all of the things we needed to do in our show. We spoke about where she could step in and help guide the vision but also where she would be able to create some of her own teaching and content for the actors. Denali was given a few rehearsals where she could help facilitate the flying in collaboration with the dance faculty while I was working on blocking in another room.
On her own voalition, Denali also asked to be the assistant fight captain. Our extensive fights often required a partner and she learned all the fights and assisted our fight captain during our fight calls.
Denali occasionally stepped in to roles for dialogue and fight choreography when several of our actors became ill during rehearsal. I think she knew the show better than anyone else in the cast or crew.
Finally, she also helped to create the movement flow chart, connecting all the videos we'd created for flight, fight, and blocking so the actors could find them easily. In short, Denali rose the challenge of everything she was thrown. She was an invaluable part of the process.
Stage Management
I worked with Kirsten Busse (Stage Manager) and Katie Arnold (Assistant Stage Manager) on Wendy and Peter Pan. Kirsten is a soft spoken but passionate artist. Katie is clear-headed and a go-getter.
One of Kirsten's strengths is maintaining calm under pressure. She had enough foresight to recognize that she would need extra support credit wise during this show and asked her faculty mentor for this support during the first few weeks of the show. Katie's assignment as an assistant director also came as a result from this conversation.
Kirsten was highly organized during our show and was able to keep track of the monumental amount of information for this show with skills beyond her experience level. She was able to schedule time for rehearsal to be in two places at once during our initital blocking sessions and also kept track of cast conflicts and production deadlines with little issue.
Katie was able to step into her role as the assistant stage manager without much preparation and she hit the ground running. Her confidence in abilities allowed her to take the reins and help Kirsten divide the responsibilities. Kirsten and Katie worked very well together.
Both Katie and Kirsten worked to schedule scene change transitions, fight call, cues, and costume changes prior to the beginning of tech rehearsal. The sheer volume of cues made this a very tricky task, but I never once saw them falter.
Kirsten, Katie, and Denali were also excellent sounding boards for the work we were doing in rehearsal.
Moving forward, I would encourage Kirsten to really look at how to take charge during her set tech and tech rehearsals. Occasionally, her softer-spoken nature did not allow her to command the space as she needed and it took a minute for the cast and crew to give her their full attention. We spoke about this a few times and I think were we able to perform the play, it would be something I would have spoken to her about in our post-mortem.
Kirsten Busse, Stage Manager
Katie Arnold, Assistant Stage Manager
Dramaturgy
Angela Moser, Dramaturg
Emily Trejo, Assistant Dramaturg
Makenna Johnston, Assistant Dramaturg
There were three dramaturgs assigned to work on this production. Our primary dramaturg, Angela Moser, went on maternity leave during the middle of our production, so I also worked with Emily Trejo and Makenna Johnston during rehearsal.
Throughout the process, our rehearsals were open to any member of the production staff to observe. Our dramaturgs attended often, so I used them as much as possible to help with sightline issues and to help me clarify the story. We spoke often about wanting to make sure the journey of Wendy was very clear. The assistant dramaturgs were consistent about taking notes and asking questions of me throughout the process.
Angela had a unique perspective on the work because she was also a third time mother. I worked with her to talk about a workshop she could conduct with the cast. We collaborated on enriching the world of the play by encouraging our cast to physicalize play. She brought in her toddler age son for observation and to help facilitate the play. Looking back, I think I needed to have provided her a bit more structure for the workshop. The pacing was a bit off and I think we could have used some additional critical analysis of how children move.
I was very impressed with Angela's work ethic as well. She was back at rehearsal within two weeks of giving birth.
Both Emily and Makenna were helpful resources for our audience perspective. Emily has experience as a director and was able to help ask questions specifically about composition and acting. Makenna's experience with movement and dramaturgy helped me keep a focus on on the storytelling and themes.
There was one point where I did need to speak to the faculty advisor, Shelley Graham, about helping to re-focus some of the notes Emily was giving me since they were less dramaturgical and more directorial in nature. After speaking with Shelley, she helped to course correct with Emily and we continued without incident.
Dialects
Clara did double duty by playing our Tink and by working as our dialect coach. I worked with her and her faculty advisor, Stephanie Breinholt, to determine which dialects we'd be using for the show. Then Clara put together resources for our cast and held small and individual coaching sessions for cast members as they worked on their dialogue.
Clara suggested that the cast speak in their dialects both on and off stage to re-train their voices to the new sounds and shapes. The cast did this to mixed success.
Clara Wright, Dialect Coach, Tink
Fight Choreography
Dylan Wright, Fight Captain, Smee
Dylan also served in two capacities: as our Smee and our fight captain. Dylan collaborated with faculty advisors David Morgan and Matthew Carlin during the choreography process and then worked with Denali and the cast to hone the choreography and maintain safety throughout.
Dylan is a natural leader and we were able to maintain both weapon safety and physical safety throughout our process.