Technically Speaking

Our theatre is doing the original Bela Lugosi scripted "Dracula", and it's probably -- make that definitely -- the most technically challenging show we've ever done...besides multiple scene changes (and mind you, we have no wings or backstage area to store extra set pieces); there are lighting challenges; an intense and intricate sound design; and multiple special effects.

Guess who was the technical director for the show? I designed the set (and re-designed (and re-designed the redesign)); designed the sound; designed all the special effects; and (of course) built the damn thing.

It's pretty good, too, all in all. Act I is in a library, and it has a fireplace and large window and a couple of large bookcases, victorian architecture, so forth. In Act II, that scene becomes a young lady's boudoir, with dressing table and french doors and pictures. In Act III, it becomes the library again; and then (in less than a minute) transforms to Dracula's vault -- with vine-covered columns, and a coffin; gargoyles and stone walls and fog rolling across the stage floor.

The library has a special bookcase that swings open to reveal a hidden passage; in the boudoir, one of the pictures (of a pastoral scene with lakes and hills and swans) becomes transparent, and the actor playing Dracula can be seen behind it, threatening and ominous. A bat flies across the stage at one point, flapping its wings and chirping scarily. Dracula appears to walk through a wall, and at one point disappears from behind his cape. These effects all work pretty well.

The one effect that doesn't work so very well is the window bat. Two or three times in the show, a bat flies at a window and hovers there. I basically put together a bat on a stick; but unfortunately there's enough ambient light around that it really pretty much looks like a bat on a stick. Ah, well.....I did the best I could.

Here's the thing, though.....this was untold hours of engineering and design. I figure I spent, easily, 45 or 50 hours in design and drawing, and another 6 or 8 hours procuring all the things we'd need to get it built -- then the actual construction probably represents about 80 hours of my time; and maybe 300 man-hours total. And this cast of semi-talented line-dropping divas does not seem to appreciate it AT ALL. Exactly one member of the cast has so much as mentioned the job we've done for them, and that in passing.

Generally, I don't need the back-pats and such; generally I can derive my satisfaction from knowing that we did a pretty good job within our (many!) constraints. But it would be nice to hear at least an acknowledgement that we worked hard to give the actors a suitable venue to produce a good show.