Waiting to Develop Wait Until Dark

The BYU Department of Theatre & Media Arts provides students with opportunities to gain hands-on experience in technical theatre by assigning them as lead designers for main stage productions. Wait Until Dark is a unique and thrilling experience to create the design for ultra realism on stage.

As dramaturg, I interviewed some of our designers and asked them about their experience creating the world of Susy and Sam’s apartment in Greenwich Village.

What was your process like, going from page to the stage?

“I always start with meeting the needs of the script and director, but after that, I try coming up with as many sketches and ideas as possible. When ideas become more solid, some of the most creative solutions come from budgetary constraints. It's always important to remember the teams who help contribute to the final show, and I couldn't have done it without them!” (Cooper Tribett, Set Designer)

“The process for a sound designer slightly differs from other designers. After I have read through the script to experience the story, I do another readthrough and mark all the possible sound cues I can, putting them into a list called the Sound Plot or Cue Sheet. Then, instead of starting to build something physical, I spend a good portion of time looking for sound cues. A show can be made of many sound cues, or very few. I then work with the director to make sure the sounds fit his vision for the show, and then I get to work putting the sound cues into a program called QLab, that helps me run audio for the show. I then get to work deciding where the speakers go, how loud they are, etc., and then we’re ready for the show!” (Joey Wright, Sound Designer)

“It was important for me to understand a bit about the characters, their personalities, and their environment. I took notes as I read the script and analyzed each character's lines and ways of saying things to get an idea of that. Then, I tried to translate that into their makeup and hair, so that once you look at the characters we can know at a glance who they are and what they represent. So, for Susy for example, a more rounded look with cheeks and brows to show her softness and femininity, as compared to all the other male characters that are around her with an evil, sharper and more angular look.” (Alice Roque, Hair/Makeup Designer)

“When designing the costumes for this show, my primary sources for historical research were Sears catalogs of the late 1960s. And while it never made much of an impact on the final designs, I also did a lot of research on what getting dressed and closet organization looks like for a blind person. (A common response from the blind community was that they attach braille tags with the colors and descriptions to each piece)Then after the research process was over, I went through a few rounds of costume sketches before drawing up the final renderings that you can see in the lobby display!” (Maggie Harper, Costume Design)

What about your design are you most passionate about that showcases the world of the play?

“I love the depth and layers we were able to bring to this set! It feels so alive and inviting to the audience as though we are all part of the show! As much as I want to, they told me I can't move into the set when the show is over.” (Cooper Tribett, Set Designer)

“I wanted to create a believable world within and beyond Suzy’s apartment. We are surrounded by sound all the time, even if we don’t hear it exactly. You often won’t hear the clock on the wall ticking, but when you enter your kitchen in the dead of night, that kitchen clock is the only thing you here, and it is loud. I have worked to create that effect for the audience, enhancing the moments of tension throughout the play. Then, when everything goes dark, the audience is still in the world, in the apartment.” (Joey Wright, Sound Designer)

“I really like the simplicity and subtlety of all the looks together. There are such small details, but all come together to add interest to the characters and match their role in the show. I'm excited to see all my designs executed in harmony with the costumes and bring the essence of the time period and the different personalities to life to tell this thrilling story.” (Alice Roque, Hair/Makeup Designer)

“I'm excited about the color palettes and texture profiles of the characters, and how they work together to create a cold, dark, and rainy fall atmosphere that lends to the suspense of the play.” (Maggie Harper, Costume Design)

Past Productions at BYU

The last time BYU produced Wait Until Dark in its main stage season was back in 1999 in the Pardoe Theater of the Harold Fine Arts Center. Take a look at the BYU library archive records of the production here.

Photo Negatives — Production photo negatives from the 1999 run of Wait Until Dark in the Harris Fine Arts Center.

Tags

Wait Until Dark

overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= promoTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection= overrideCardHideByline= overrideCardHideDescription= overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= promoTextAlignment=

data-content-type="article"

by Makenna Johnston, dramaturg In a ‘special projects’ theatre class held between January and March of 2020, four students and their professor began devising a show. Their devising team? David Morgan (professor), Clara Wright, Mikah Vaclaw, Sten Shearer, and Dylan Wright. Their source text? The Turn of the Screw, a novel by Henry James. Though the team’s original devising process was cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, aspects of their invaluable contributions to the production live on. Each student deviser's unique perspective about the story and devising process are explored below. Clara Wright Our professor David Morgan had the idea to create a devised piece of theatre to take to the Edinburgh fringe festival with a group of students. He was drawn to the script of the Turn of the Screw, but wanted to do his own take on it, so he decided to create a new adaptation of the original book with a group of students. He was drawn to the eerie nature of the piece, the elements of horror, and the slow descent into madness of the governess. I joined Dave's class to write and devise this script because, first of all, working with Dave has always been a pleasure, but the story was intriguing to me as well. I loved the idea of studying and understanding a layered female character. I don't think there are enough interesting female characters out there at the moment. The governess was affected greatly by societal pressures and a deep, depressing history that drove her to madness when she arrived at Bly. The story was mesmerizing. I was also excited to work the muscle of creating a new piece of theatre. I am not confident in my writing abilities, but it was exciting to take a piece of literature that already existed and make something new and interesting out of it, using visual elements that you can't get from reading a book. We not only wrote dialogue, but we also wrote out ways we could use movement, sound, lighting, puppetry, and more to tell the story in the most effective way possible. The devising process was a blast! Dave would tell us what scene he wanted us to write and we would each go home and write out our own interpretation of the story. The next class, we would get together and go over which elements of people's scenes we liked best, which moments were the most clear, and which lines we for sure wanted to keep in the final script. Sometimes our interpretations were so different and unique that it was difficult to choose which direction the piece needed to go. Ultimately, Dave would piece together each of our scenes into a cohesive script. Other moments I enjoyed were when we would put scenes on their feet and act them out to see how they translated to the stage. The introduction especially benefited from this exercise. The last exciting part of the devising process that I'll talk about is writing the music. I hadn't written original music like this before so it was such a cool experience creating sound like this for the first time. I didn't ever think about what scene I was writing for, but Dave told me what tone he was looking for in a piece of music and then I experimented until I found something I liked by layering on different sounds I could make on my violin. It was an overall thrilling experience! Turn of the Screw example music Turn of the Screw example music 2 Mikah Vaclaw Because of COVID, we didn’t get to fully get the script up on its feet, so we focused a lot on writing. First, we all read the book over Christmas break, and when we had our first meetings as a group, we talked about what stood out to us in the story and what we wanted our retelling of the story to be. Something we really wanted to explore was the idea that the ghosts were actually things born out of trauma the governess had experienced in her youth, and how she was the only one that could see them/was affected by them. We also wanted to explore jealousy between Mrs. Grose and the Governess. Once we had fleshed out what was important to us, we started writing. Dave would tell us what scene he wanted us to write for homework, and we’d all come back with our different written versions of that scene. Then, in class, we would read them aloud together and talk about what we thought worked, and what didn’t. Dave would then take all of our scripts and compile them together into one cohesive scene. We were able to start toying with the introduction to the play, and Clara wrote some really cool violin music for it. Sten Shearer The process of devising the script was the five of us (David Morgan, Clara and Dylan Wright, Mikah Vaclaw, and myself) would get together a couple times a week. Initially, David gave us some conceptual ideas he had for the show (like using movable screens that could utilize shadow work). Then we all read the original story. At each meeting, we would assign a chunk of the original story as our writing assignment. Using that chunk of the story as inspiration, the four students would go home and write a scene that translated that section of the original story into a play scene. Through that process, we collaboratively came to an understanding of the themes that we wanted the play to explore as well as theatrical devices and ideas that we thought would work well in putting the play on its feet. Simultaneously to writing these scenes, we were also using our class time to experiment with staging and blocking using the earlier scenes that we had written. So for instance, when we were about halfway through writing the script, we were also staging what the early scenes would look like to help test if the script we were writing worked in practice as well as on paper. Dylan Wright We chose this project because we obviously needed something in the public domain that we wouldn't need to pay royalties for, but aside from that this story really highlights the mental turmoil of a young governess as she grapples with her duties as a woman and her place in the world religiously as well. We took this story to an extremely dark place-- it has since been edited for this particular production-- that orbited around this idea of religious toxicity, something all too familiar in Utah. We felt that it was important to excavate and expose the uncomfortable and truly ugly parts of religion and the toll it can take on us. I wanted to work on this project because Mikah, Sten, Clara, and Dave are some of my favorite people and artists. The driving force really, as mentioned earlier, is that we wanted to create. We were all itching to create something. None of us needed this class credits-wise so the idea of coming together to tell a ghost story that echoes modern themes in a bare-bones, devised manner was extremely appealing. Unfortunately we were never able to perform this production because of COVID. But the devising process was an invaluable gem. We would each read the same chapter of The Turn of the Screw and then come to class with our own interpretation of this chapter in scene-form, creating dialogue and stage directions. Dave would then pull the pieces from each that rendered a clearer, more specific story and then we would go from there. When we would arrive in class we would also read each other's scenes out loud to get a feel for them. It was a marvelous process.

Waiting to Develop Wait Until Dark

What was your process like, going from page to the stage?

What about your design are you most passionate about that showcases the world of the play?

Past Productions at BYU

Related Articles

Filming Day for Turn of the Screw

Post Mortem Photography

Interviews with the Student Devising Team