Hello! Welcome to the team blog for Curtain Call – Fall 2023. We have been tasked with creating an installation in the lobby of the Purnell Center for the Arts for the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama production of Lear. This production is a collision of Shakespeare’s King Lear with Sesame Street, tied together by themes of one’s father and dealing with the grief of his passing. Our point of contact is Eliot Herron, a dramaturg at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama.
Summary of the week: We got settled in for a successful semester, took care of some logistics, met with ETC faculty and our client, toured the Purnell Center Lobby, and started brainstorming concepts!
First Meeting, Core Hours, and Roles
On Monday, the team had our first meeting. We got our project office ready and set up our computers so that we could begin work for the week. Once the area was prepared and we had the project seminar to kick off the semester, the team met to discuss planning tasks such as defining core hours and our roles. We decided on meeting Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 am to 5 pm and Fridays from 10 am to 4 pm, due to our electives taking up most of our time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We split our team roles based on our interests, our individual learning objectives, and what skills we brought to the table.
Our team roles are as follows:
Aldora: Experience Designer and Artist
Angie: Producer and Assistant Designer
Charlie: Technical Designer and Narrative Designer
Jiaxin: Visual Designer and Artist
Lauren: Hardware Engineer and Concept Designer
Instructor Meeting
Our next goal was to meet with our instructors: John Dessler and Shirley Saldamarco. John Dessler was out sick, so we were only able to meet with Shirley Saldamarco. In this meeting, we discussed what we decided for our roles, what the project entails, what we should do regarding meeting with our client, and general advice for a successful semester.
Some of our major take-aways included:
- Have a client meeting as soon as possible to understand their goals and priorities
- Balance client expectations with academic goals
- Shirley’s previous experiences with lobby installation projects proved that scope and quality of delivery are important elements of a successful installation
- Get immersed in the world of drama. Go see plays if possible, tour the lobby, and test in the space!
CMU Drama Meeting with Eliot and Shirley
We decided to meet our client Eliot Herron in the Purnell lobby, where our experience will be installed. We traveled to CMU main campus, took a self-guided tour of the lobby, and snapped some photos for documentation. Once our client, Eliot Herron, arrived, she showed us around the lobby and brought us to a more quiet room to meet, since the lobby was full of activity from School of Drama students. We discussed her goals for the project, what she expected from us, and what impact she wants the lobby display to have on the audience.
Some of the major take-aways of this part of the meeting were:
- The theme of the production design and set will be children’s toys and building blocks, as opposed to Victorian dress as has been done in other productions of this play
- CMU Drama performances are mostly attended by CMU students, particularly first year Drama students as they are encouraged to see every production. The other expected group of audience members will be those who subscribed to the season, with an estimated age of 40+. Ideally, our experience would bridge this gap and appeal to both audiences.
- Project deadline: Our experience must be completed and installed on November 27 for showings beginning on November 29
We also had the opportunity to share some preliminary ideas we had with our client. These ideas were:
- Charlie’s concept: A conversation between two animated figures that guests would be able to influence