Weathervane Playhouse

July 19 - 28, 2018

Directed by:  DJ Salisbury

Scenic Designer:  Jeremy Hollis

Costume Designer:  Madison Booth

Lighting Designer:  Justin Burns

 

 

Merrily We Roll Along is an incredibly unique show.  It centers around the life of three friends during their journey.  However, it’s told backwards.  The first scene sees two of the friends at the moment of their separation, and it goes backwards from there, telling the story of love affairs, fallouts, falling in love and divorce, the birth of their first show as musicians and writers, their struggles to make ends meet, and it finishes with the moment they all meet on a rooftop, seeing a moment that would change their future.

 

The director wanted the story to be pictures of moments in their lives.  The scenic concept used lots of picture frames in different configurations that would change as the show timeline got earlier and earlier.  Each moment of the story had a different practical light that would closely represent that time.  For me, each moment would have a slightly different sound feel, with a few ambiences and some careful balanced effects.

 

Being a Sondheim show, the music is intricate and complicated.  The 3-person orchestra backstage had a lot to fill for these musical parts, and I had to go through some extra steps to make sure that the cast could hear their moments and balance to them.  This also meant we had to shuffle emphasis of some instruments around as the show progressed.

 

The director wanted the projections to represent the capture of moments like the picture frames did.  I built backdrops that felt like picture moments for each scene, and the scene shifts were punctuated with kinetic text showing the year we were progressing to.  The opening of the show was a large collection of the history and future of the three lead characters, including pictures of them at graduation that merged together, moments of them in a photo booth, and headline clippings detailing important moments.