Directed by Dawne Swearingen, ''Little Shop'' is filled with catchy showstoppers. Vidos rose above the rest of the vocal talent with her beautiful solos.
Little Shop was my first show to be the stage manager for – it was my second semester sophomore year, and I was with many other sophomores who reigned that show. Seymour was played by sophomore, Seth Bazacas, Audrey, was sophomore, Alyssa Vidos, and two out of the three Do-Wop girls were sophomores, Michelle Alexander and Jasmin Richardson. It was kind of awesome to work with all of my class mates, and that we were so young. The plant operator, Terence Lindeke, was a sophomore too. When senior, Kaitlin Whilock, as assigned to be my ASM I was wondering how that would work. If she would be cool with someone younger than her above her or if she would be upset about it. But it wasn't like that at all. We were a team, and she was put there deliberately to be able to teach me better how the stage managers in the department worked. Ages didn't get in the way at all.
On top of being the stage manager I was also one of the three student assistants that helped build the puppets for the show. Travis Eason, designed all four puppets and started making them in November of ‘06 (the show scheduled April ’07). It was a big deal for our scene shop. The project was pretty huge and it took a lot of time. But the designs were phenomenal. I specifically worked on puppets three and four along with Travis. To harden the mouth so it would last, we covered it in several layers cheese cloth and crystal gel. We coated every inch with glue and gloss to keep it hard. We painted several coats of different color greens and maroon veins.We then crystal gelled the final product to make sure we wouldn’t have to make tons of repairs throughout the run. The main body of the 4th plant was cut from a block of Styrofoam that was over 8 feet tall. The legs and branches of each were foam noodles covered in muslin sleeves so it was easy to paint with fake greenery all attached up and down the branch. Leaf gobos were on the walls to give the illusion of the plant crawling up the walls.
The day the plants were scheduled to be taken over to the theatre is a day that I will never forget. It was the day before Dry Tech and we knew it was going to be cold, but we had no idea that it would snow! But of course it’s going to be snowy and rainy the day we had to take our 6 foot by 8 foot puppet over to the theatre. About a three minute drive from scene shop to theatre might not be that dangerous, but when our cargo is fabric, foam, paint, and easily damaged we could take no chances. We had two loads, one for plant 3 and the other for plant 4 – two tarps, because they each would get wet and couldn’t be used twice, and some cold students who sat in the back of the truck protecting the plants from the elements. On the drive over with plant three in the back a huge gust of wind caught one of the foam “legs” and broke it off the plant pot and threw it out of the back onto the street… On the drive with plant 4 the wind caught the tarp and it started flying out but luckily caught by a student and covered it up again before the snow could do too much damage… I thought we were cursed, but we were lucky there was no lasting damage and the plants arrived safely to perform the jobs they were made for. To eat people.
Terence Lindeke, was selected to be the puppeteer inside of Audrey 2. He ran plants 1, 3, and 4. For plant one he crouched underneath the plant shop counter his arm through a hole and up into the pot of the first plant and his hand controlled the plant that first talks to Seymour. For the largest plant, Terence had to use his whole body to maneuver it. The bottom “lip” of the puppets’ mouth rested on a block of painted foam with branches attached, while the top “lip” was raised up and down by Terence’s full body – when it was closed he was bent over, and then when he had to open he would raise up and twisted around to make it look like the plant was talking. He sat on a stool, with his legs wide open, and when Audrey 2 would eat Mushnik and Seymour they were actually “swallowed”, and the actors would wiggle themselves down the plants mouth into an opening, and crawled out under his legs and escaped out a hole in the back of the set that was concealed by the plants mass.
Directed by Dawne Swearingen, ''Little Shop'' is filled with catchy showstoppers. Vidos rose above the rest of the vocal talent with her beautiful solos.
And it would be criminal to fail to mention Audrey II, whose fantastic design and construction (Travis Eason), masterful manipulation (Terence Lindeke, sophomore theatre major from Anchorage, Ala.) and deep, effective voice (Josh Martin, senior theatre major from Abilene) combine in a way that makes it a star in its own right.
