Weathervane Playhouse

August 2 - 11, 2018

Directed by:  Valerie Accetta

Scenic Designer:  Matthew Hamel

Costume Designer:  Ivy Swinski

Lighting Designer: Dylan Bollinger

 

 

Pippin tells the story of the son of Charlemagne and his desire to discover his life, to find truth and meaning to himself.  During the story he seeks to find these things through many different aspects, including war, sex, power, and love.  What he discovers is that joy is found in the unextraordinary parts of life.  His story is told by a performing circus that plays all the different characters.  The ensemble encourages him at the end to dive into the fire and become extraordinary, but he refuses, and they strip away the world to nothing, leaving him standing with his love with no costumes and work lights only.

 

This show’s challenge was in coordinating the onstage presence of the orchestra.  This presence is necessary, as the lead performer will interact with the orchestra, particularly at the end when they tell the orchestra to pack up and go home.  This always creates sound challenges to balance the on-stage volume of the orchestra with redirecting their sound for the benefit of the cast, and keeping the microphones for the cast balanced.

 

In my discussions with the director, it was decided that we would let the sound world be driven by the performers.  We would end up not using any prerecorded sound effects.  Any needed effects for particular moments would be created by the cast using what was available.  This gave the performance a very centered feel, the world of this circus was self-creating, and they could enhance moments as was necessary.  It was exactly the right approach for the show.