On the Arts

drama

From Page to Stage

How Pingry’s Theater Tech Students Create the World of the Play

By Joseph Napolitano, Head of Technical Theater and Design

It starts with a script. From there, Pingry’s theater tech students develop solutions to an array of creative problems presented by the story. The essential questions on any given day range from “How do we produce a larger-thanlife version of Amycus, Poseidon’s son of Greek mythology, onstage?” to “How do we fit a 16-foot-wide, 24-foot-tall ship into the theatre?” These, of course, are unique to the 2021 Fall Play Argonautika, a modern adaptation of Jason and the Argonauts’ mythical quest for the golden fleece. This highly anticipated return to indoor theater marked the first mainstage production with a live audience of Pingry parents, guardians, alumni, and family in the Macrae Theatre since 2019. With a specific set of challenges unlike anything the drama students have encountered in the past three years, Argonautika was a voyage for the ages and leveraged into one fantastic production all of the special skills the theater tech students have learned.

This mix of soft and hard skills that theater tech students (or “Techies” as they are affectionately called) have honed covers carpentry, scenic painting, and design theory, but also includes leadership, communication, collaboration, and problem solving. These skills, coupled with their understanding of contemporary stage craft’s tools, mechanics, and conventions, allow them to conceptualize anything indicated in the script.

For Argonautika, puppetry and upcycled material served as a solution to some of the script’s fantasy requirements. Theater tech students designed the puppets out of foam, cardboard, and recycled fabric. The method of upcycling—or creative reuse—is integrated into the theater tech crew’s process and is their first step in prototyping and modeling.

These ideas are scaled into the set construction. While 60 percent of the scenic elements for Argonautika were fabricated from recycled lumber, students custom built the whole set for the production. Working drawings, elevations, and cut lists (lists of the parts needed to construct a set piece) were created while the crew began construction. Memories are embedded into some of the materials they used—luan hardwood recycled from a 2019 musical, pine from a 2020 play. There’s a sense of palimpsest and lessonslearned from past theater-making experiences.

For Evan Berger ’22, the 2022 Winter Musical Urinetown is the 10th production he’s helped stage at Pingry. When he’s not leading his peers backstage in construction and rigging, he’s operating an intricate lighting system from the booth. When a challenge strikes during a performance, such as a broken set piece or missed cue, Evan knows how to solve problems creatively. “During the run of a show, it’s the crew’s job to perform their technical roles like lighting and sound, but also to ensure the actors have what they need to put on the best performance possible,” he says.

During the first weeks of production for Urinetown, Evan and his team traded their drills and hammers for title blocks and T-squares. Students drafted elevations from technical drawings and assembled scale architectural models of the set. These models help the crew work through the construction and installation of the set, and serve as a tool for communication to the rest of the company. “The most

Puppetry and upcycled material represented some of the Argonautika script’s fantasy requirements.

LEFT: The tech crew’s mood board for Argonautika.

obvious skills I’ve learned in theater tech have been of the physical variety— building flats and platforms, using power tools, scenic painting, designing props—but additionally, I’ve also learned to effectively communicate and collaborate,” Evan says. “More than anything, I’ve gained confidence from tech that has been widely applicable to other areas of my life. Tech has enabled me not only to develop as an artist, but also as a problem solver and leader.”

This is how success is measured behind the scenes. The moments of ingenuity and applied thinking in the wings are how the techies create the world of the play—and learn along the way.

TOP: Morgan McDonald ’23, Olivia Hung ’22, Chelsea Urgilez ’22, and Sia Ghatak ’25 sculpt relief details onto the Amycus puppet’s face for Argonautika. MIDDLE: Olivia Hung ’22, Chelsea Urgilez ’22, and Evan Berger ’22 construct a Hollywood-style flat. BOTTOM: Cast member Lila Weckesser ’25 collaborates with tech crew members Sia Ghatak ’25 and Evan Berger ’22 on the design for the set of Urinetown: The Musical.

On the Arts

visual arts

Nature Becomes Art

One of the more recent additions to Pingry’s visual arts program, a Middle School elective called “Art and Nature” (added several years ago through the efforts of former Visual Arts Teacher Peter Delman P ’97, ’98), offers eighth-grade students the chance to use the outdoors as a resource to create art. They peruse the property to collect natural materials and bring them back to the classroom for use in sculptures, drawings, and other projects. Earlier this school year, Middle and Upper School Visual Arts Teacher Melody Boone’s students made inks, paintings, mandalas, and rock sculptures.

Students used their inks to create landscape-inspired paintings and drawings (inspired by the students’ photographs taken around campus). “Students referenced their photos when making their paintings—not duplicates of the exact scenes, but inspired by the photos,” Ms. Boone says.

Leaves, sticks, rocks, flowers, and other objects lent themselves to the students’ mandalas (man-DAH-lahs). These symbolic geometric designs are “supposed to speak to the impermanence of life,” Ms. Boone says.

“Rock balancing” (or “stone balancing”) sculptures are another type of art with which students experimented. “It takes a lot of focus to balance rocks. The students found larger rocks around campus and played around with them until they stayed put,” Ms. Boone says. The key to rock balancing is that nothing is used to help the sculpture stay in place.

Natural inks were made from pokeberries, blueberries, and walnuts. Using mortars and pestles borrowed from science classes, students mashed the berries, creating a jelly. They strained the juice, added water, and used clove oil to preserve the ink.

On the Arts

music

All three divisions returned to live music this fall: the Lower School Holiday Concert; Middle School ensembles shared their trimester repertoire in a performance for Middle School students; and the Winter Festival Concert with Upper School ensembles.

“Rock balancing” (or “stone balancing”) sculptures are another type of art with which students experimented. “It takes a lot of focus to balance rocks. The students found larger rocks around campus and played around with them until they stayed put,” Ms. Boone says. The key to rock balancing is that nothing is used to help the sculpture stay in place.

“Mr. Winston auditions the senior Balladeers for a chance to conduct a piece in the Winter Concert . . . As a conductor, you have to know each voice part and every entrance. I learned so much about how an ensemble comes together. It truly takes each person to create the beautiful music we performed! I was so grateful for the opportunity that Pingry provided, and I loved my first experience of conducting!”

- ALIVIA CLARK ‘22, WHO

CONDUCTED “LAUDATE

NOMEN DOMINI”

Reaching New Heights Together

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